I think your comment is offensive and uncharitable toward the many ordinary people who sacrifice, in the face of so many other demands, in order to contribute to the building of a new parish church. I don’t see that you get to sit in judgment over their efforts.
We need some great church architects who appreciate the traditions of the Church, not necessarily to ape the old masters, but to build in continuity with them (something “modern” architects eschewed).
I tend to agree Carolyn. To me a church can be way too busy. The Cathedral where I used to live had 8 altars and 5 tabernacles, five. Count 'em. The eye never came to a rest. I guess you could say the style was Italianate.
Interesting. The Orthodox Churches I’ve been to impressed me as perhaps busier than even Baroque Catholic churches what with the Iconostatis. Beautiful, but not less busy than their Catholic counterparts.
Actually there is a movement currently to simplify Orthodox churches as well. The cathedral I spoke of is Immacvlte Conception in Springfield Illinois before I converted to Orthodoxy. There being no Orthodox church nearby I am still more aqainted with Catholic churches. I did not mean at all to make fun of Rococco Catholic churches at all while letting the Orthodox have a free pass.
I partly agree with you, as there are a lot of ways to communicate transcendence in a way that glorifies God but doesn’t restrict an architect’s creative license. That being said, due respect should be paid to tradition and precedents. But as long as the focus is glorifying God and creating a proper and well designed space for a Catholic (in this case) congregation, I feel like most of the other aspects will fall into place. Few, if any, architects I know of design things without any kind of external reference, so most of the time, historical precedents are usually preset even if they aren’t as obvious.
What I am talking about is not a minimally decorated church. There are plenty of parishes that started/start off as rather empty “shells” that are only greatly decorated in the sanctuary area, but which have a lot of architectural interest. I think of a Romanesque church, for example, where there are a lot of blank spaces which are anticipated in the future to be used for paintings, shrines, murals, etc. The building itself is in good taste, it’s just not completely decorated yet. As I understand, this is a very traditional way of doing things: build a completely sound and attractive structure, decorate well what needs to be decorated–like the sanctuary–and leave the rest to be decorated in the future by the parish over the years. I think this is an especially wonderful way for parishes that don’t have loads of money to build a church, which is, of course, very common. I think to have a church that the parish can fill in over time is really cool and shows that the parish is alive.In our Diocese, Architects hired by the Diocese make those decisions, and they leave the interior appointments up to what the parishioners can afford. Many of the interior appointments are donated in name of some family or deceased person.
So I’m not sure where to lay the blame for some of the more “tastefully challenged” churches.
I reject the notion that no one can have a negative opinion about anything at all without being called uncharitable, or offensive, or mean, etc. This really goes over the top sometimes. I make no public judgement whatsoever about the efforts or intentions --I really have no clue about someone’s motivations and I never even talked about that–of any group of people in this situation–unless of course it is public knowledge. I made no absolute statements about anything, nor any specifics.
Oh no, I’m sorry I was not clear…the Church picks out all the items…the committee, the Pastor, the Designer…and then the people are given a LIST of things along with pictures, and they may choose to fund one of the items. One parish near me has those little tags on everything…kind of tacky after a while. Another huge church north of here has great huge brass plated books with all the plates engraved within the pages. One can flip through them to see who gave what. Only the pews in the Adoration chapel have plates with names on them.
I see. Yes, this is a pretty common way of doing things. I think it is probably one of the better methods.Oh no, I’m sorry I was not clear…the Church picks out all the items…the committee, the Pastor, the Designer…and then the people are given a LIST of things along with pictures, and they may choose to fund one of the items. One parish near me has those little tags on everything…kind of tacky after a while. Another huge church north of here has great huge brass plated books with all the plates engraved within the pages. One can flip through them to see who gave what. Only the pews in the Adoration chapel have plates with names on them.
We used to have one of those books with the pictures and the names…but someone put it away a couple of pastors ago…no clue where it went.
I guess they figured the donors had enough publicity,
Peace!
I much prefer the bottom two than the top three.
The thing is… those are monastic churches within functioning monasteries. Spartan is part of their tradition. The bottom church is also in a Benedictine monastery, but it is completely contrary to Benedictine tradition. A better example of an early expression of Benedictine tradition is a chapel within that same monastery (11th century):
This one is fine. It is spartan but still “looks like a church.”