Church Architecture, Layout & Design?

[Onegin]

That 45-degree angle sounds gruesome. I wonder if the place was designed by a chiropractor looking to drum-up some business?

I read somewhere who it was designed by, but I forgot the guy’s name. An local architect, I believe? It’s probably on the website. Anyways, it’s agonisingly off-centre!

Is this by chance one of the odd situations where the abbey church is also a parish church? If not, it would be really kind of strange for there to be a baptismal font. Wich would leave it as a holy water font. Unless it’s an optical illusion, it looks kind of big for that, which is what made me think of a cistern in the first place.

No idea. It is open to the public for Mass but I’m not sure if they celebrate baptisms there. I was baptised at an abbey so I know it’s possible, just not sure if they have that option there?

But yeah, cisterns have so large you could practically swim in them. I once saw one at a parish that was so big it had a waterfall-like contraption in it.

 

[malphono]

I read somewhere who it was designed by, but I forgot the guy’s name. An local architect, I believe? It’s probably on the website. Anyways, it’s agonisingly off-centre!

Maybe his brother-in-law is the chiropractor. With such an angle, I can just imagine all the twisted necks just aching (literally) for an adjustment!

 

[PA650]

What a beautiful Gothic church! It reminds me of the Lincoln Cathedral out here (though, sadly it is CoE):

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_a8jjasyiP-U/SxnCb5qKLbI/AAAAAAAAAIs/znsFUZVmXtA/s512/DSC_0051.jpg

I concur. The Lincoln Cathedral is quite beautiful and it once was a Catholic structure.

When we enter ornate and clean Basilicas, adorned with crosses, sacred images, altars and burning lamps, we most easily conceive devotion. But on the other hand, when we enter the temples of the heretics, where there is nothing except a chair for preaching and a table for making a meal, we feel ourselves to be entering a profane hall and not the House of God.’

St. Robert Bellarmine

Sadly, the last statement from St. Robert Bellarmine is what some Catholic churches have become.

 

[dsears]

Not having read “Environment and Art in Catholic Worship”, i can repeat only whats been written elsewhere, but apparently it was never approved by the US Bishops (nor for that matter, the Australian Bishops). In more "Traditional" circles, that book has been heavily criticised for removing the sense of the Sacred, and making churches Man-centred, rather than God-centred. Horizontal, rather than vertical. Emphasis on Family Meal, rather than Sacrifice. Cuddly wuddly. Its been used as the excuse for a lot of the vandalism inflicted on older churches; so-called “Spirit of Vatican II” style. Our own former parish church suffered badly, along with so many others. As for the present parish church: … Entertainment centre!

That book seems to have helped to foster a cult of ugliness.

This is why I drive the extra few miles when I am in Indianapolis to go to the Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul. I don’t have to worry about it here in Ohio because the local Catholic Church is rather old and beautiful (If memory serves me right it was built in the 1880’s or 1890’s). I CAN NOT stand modren church design.