I think vanity is a huge part of the problem; maybe the biggest thing. Architects are a little tribe all their own. Most have been trained in the Ayn Rand/Bauhaus way of thinking about architecture; i.e., form follows function, and the plainer the better. When they design these buildings, they are basically “talking to each other”, and don’t care at all what people want. (How many people build their “dream homes” in a modernistic style?) Wanting to be “with it” too, many priests and bishops buy into the “latest”, just as they bought into psychobabble about child molesters some years back, with tragic results.
I simply do not buy into the notion that a traditional design is necessarily horribly expensive. Sure, if a person wanted to buy gold leaf now, it would cost massively more than it would have cost in 1910. But one can use modern materials in beautiful and uplifting designs. Look up “Henry Menzies” and “Adam Stroik” on the internet, and you will see modern materials used in traditional ways. Most of the decorative stuff is manufactured, and I found more than one website where they sell it…really beautiful stuff.
In any event, some of the stuff architects foist off on parishes and diocese are needlessly expensive, and do not necessarily aid function at all. Our parish just got snookered (against my protests, I offered to pay Henry Menzies myself, but was turned down) with a modernistic parish hall. The accepted bid was 2.6 million (meaning 3 million, of course) in a parish with maybe 450 families. Halfway on, the front facade masonry fell off because the architect thought it was “aesthetically pleasing” to alternate wide bands of brick with thin bands of faux stone, all balanced on an angle iron so it would seem to be without support in front, thus presenting a “clean line”. Well, it had support, but it was inadequate. The pastor now wants to put supports under the facade, but the architect doesn’t want his “aethetics” spoiled. So it just sits. Yes, and the architect talked the priest into building a sort of semi-tower to house the really wonderful bells that were taken out of the bell tower of the church because nobody seemed to know how to restore a wooden cradle-and-wheel. I offered to hire the local Amish to restore it, which they certainly are able to do, but no, the parish had to spend tens of thousands of dollars to build a half-tower on the parish hall because the architect (who I am sure looks forward to doing a rebuild of the church someday, and no doubt plans a flat building without a tower) just had to have that half-tower and convinced the pastor and the chancery that it just had to be.
It’s vanity, pure and simple. The architects want to impress each other, and convince priests and chanceries who know nothing about it and want to be “with it” and “modern”, to build things the people hate but have to pay for.
The only really good thing about these modernesque buildings is that they will be fairly easy for future generations to retrofit. You can make almost anything out of a cardboard box.
