"New" Cathedral in Haiti...

[Filii_Dei]

All I know is that Heaven will be filled from floor to ceiling with saints, so I am going to lay my bet that the Byzantines have it most correct in this regard. I have known some pretty Latin churches, but nothing fills me with awe and fear of God more than stepping into the holy space of an Eastern church.

Sounds like an awful lack of space if the saints and martyrs are stacked on top of each other!

But personally, I also love how the Eastern churches are simply festooned with icons. It really makes you feel like you are praying in communion with all the saints and martyrs.

 

[Eufrosnia]

I understand that a church should inspire us toward the transcendent. What I’m finding is a resistance among you to believe that the Benedictine, Franciscan and Carmelite schools of art and architecture can do this and have done this for 1,000+ years.

I am not quiet sure what you mean Brother, unless you mean BEAUTY in the subjective sense though.

I come from a school of thought that something is considered beautiful to the degree in which it communicates its ontological truths.

The Carmelite and Franciscan ones like the ones in the pictures can certainly get the job done as much as a modern meeting hall like church can. BUT, it would be considered less beautiful as a church (objectively speaking).

I think the problem might be that you are thinking in terms of age of the practice rather than whether it meets the standard of beauty. If one were to put the Notre Dame Cathedral side by side with that in those pictures, it would be natural for any observer to claim that the first gives them a greater sense of awe and a sense of entering a heavenly reality as they enter the Church.

The chapels on the other hand seem like a nice and quiet place to pray.

You’re not going to get a parish built by any of these orders that will look like St.Patrick in NY. You will get a parish church that will be very boxy, with little or no statues at all, no candles, a cross or an icon instead of a crucifix, no communion rail, basic seating, stained glass, and a table style altar. If it’s Franciscan, it will have the Blessed Sacrament at front and center and a statue of St. Francis where you would normally have the Blessed Mother or both, St. Francis and the Blessed Mother.

Well, it is good for a church by an order. When I speak of the trend today, I am not particularly referring to those made by an order but big funded projects. These are the ones that look like luxury meeting halls with multiple projector screens. Not exactly the kind that poor pockets of an order can build.

I fail to see why the resistance. Why can’t we simply accept that we’re always going to have both, the very elaborate churches built by diocesan clergy and clerks regular and the bare bones churches built by friars and monks. They all serve as parish churches, places of pilgrimages, spiritual centers, university chapels and more.

I think the issue is that lately the diocesan clergy are building churches that are not exactly familiar manifestation of churches. Some, quiet accurate to the intuitive senses of the faithful, are pretty off in terms of communicating the ontology of a church. This can be unnerving.

I’ll give you a simple example. Franciscan University has more than 10 chapels. Not a single one of those chapels has railings. They have no statues other than Mary and Francis, a table type altar, a tabernacle on a pedestal, stained glass and bear walls.

I will take this church over some of the new ones any day

The new ones tend to not have a single devotional statue sometimes, even of our blessed mother. And when they do, it can sometimes be a very ordinary looking one or some abstract looking piece that causes more confusion than conveys any truth that lifts our hearts toward the transcendent that it should be conveying about the blessed mother.

he design for cathedral in LA is ugly, but not because it’s modern.

I am not aware of the others but this Cathedral does have its issues. The huge fresco of the saints for an example is extremely problematic. It makes them look like ordinary people when the statues or pictures in the church are suppossed to communicate the glorified, perfect sense of the saints in heaven. That is what the faithful are to find inspiration and a lift toward the transcendent.

I showed you folks two very modern churches that are very beautiful. St. Gregory’s is visually deceptive. From the outside, it looks much smaller. When you get inside, it seats 1500 people and there is not a single column holding up the ceiling which is incredibly large. It’s an engineering masterpiece. Bl. John XXIII is very pretty on the outside, but too small. It only sits 1,000 at a time. They always have people standing.

I really liked how it looked too actually from the pictures on the site you shared brother. There could have been some more things done differently to the architecture but it is certainly much better than some of the newer ones.

 

[Eufrosnia]

You seem bent on promoting only that form of architecture that you like, to the point of manipulating the Scriptures to push your point.

Most of us have already said that we have an appreciation for the classical art and architecture; but that the classical also includes the austere and less ornate, not only the ornate.

We have also agreed that there is ugly architecture out there, modern and old, as well as new architecture that can be very beautiful.

The old custom was that there were chapels and churches attached to institutions such as religious houses. These buildings reflected the spirituality and discipline of those who built it and those who lived there.

It is also a well known fact that the older churches were built by the hard sweat and tears of poor immigrants. The donated the money or donated their talents. These donations and the fact that materials and artisans were available at a much lower cost than today, made these buildings possible.

Today, many people want the Romanesque or Gothic Church. Ask them to put out the money to build it and see what you get back. Try to find the artisans who know how to do this type of work and you’ll find that you’ll have to leave the continent to do it. Tally the budget and you’re talking about debt that may go on for decades.

The Poor Clares built the Shrine of the Blessed Sacrament in the Romanesque style. It took them more than 20 years to get together the money. Then they had to travel to Italy, Spain, Germany, Portugal and South America to find the artisans and the materials to build it. They were able to do this, because they were known around the world, since they also owned EWTN at the time. This is not the case of the local parish.

The local parish depends on the working man who lives there. The pastor cannot pull money out of his sleeve. Very often, parishes are composed of people who are about to lose their homes to foreclosure, because they can’t keep up with the mortgage. The parish with which I’m associated was once a middle class parish. Today it’s a parish of 3500 families where only 1/3 are employed. They are still worshiping in what was originally going to be a multipurpose room. It looks like this will continue to be their church for the next 20 years. They can’t raise the $10 million needed to build the kind of church of which you speak and the parking lot that goes with it as well as the other rooms and buildings that go with such a building.

However, they have turned their mufti-purpose building into a temporary church that looks very much like a Benedictine church. There is nothing wrong with that. This style is also part of Catholic tradition. Actually, it outdates the Gothic, Romanesque and Baroque.

I don’t see why you keep pushing one idea when the Church is rich with many schools of art, architecture and spirituality.

If I may take a jab at this Brother, I think the poster perhaps feels the same concerns I do regarding modern churches.

You cannot argue that they are all too often devoid of any devotional statues or paintings in a somewhat unusual manner. Even when they have such paintings or statues, they are more modern abstract pieces which the faithful have a hard time appreciating as beautiful.

Now if I may share something from my travel experience, I have been to some poor countries in Asia and visited quiet a number of Catholics churches in parishes where houses are just made of unpainted bricks. These churches still look like what many would call or find familiar as a church. Even the poorest church will have a statue of the blessed mother and Christ and not confusing looking ones. The tabernacle will be kept in a very sacred and central place, the altar as well. The faithful will decorate the church with flowers for the liturgy (giving a sense of a call back to the pre-fall Garden of Eden), and it actually feels very much like a Church. You can see its poor but its still very identifiably a beautiful church.

Oh and most of these poor churches have a very decorated looking structure/wall behind the altar and tabernacle. Sometimes there will be a statue of the saint the Church is dedicated to placed high up on that wall and topped by a Crucifix. These are not big budget churches with multiple projector screens either. Most people sit on the floors.

It is this aspect that I feel that people miss. There is a sense that the modern churches are deliberately built differently without any accommodation or consideration for these older things that people have come to love. Now initially we might say that it is because they are used to it and that its nostalgia. But the truth is, that the older architectural concepts did a better job at conveying the transcendent than the modern ones.

I think it might be that aspect that has bothered the poster. The revelation passage quoted is indeed not out of context either and there have been lots of old churches that followed that. These churches would include these gems (I think even the Jewish Temple is said to have had them) in the walls to reflect that. There was a new Church built using this same principle as well though the name and locations doesn’t come to my mind at the moment.

 

[YoungTradCath]

Exactly, modern architecture is qualitatively different from everything that came before it. It is not a matter of decoration (or lack of it), or size, or scope, or anything. The motifs are different, the look is different. Whereas with the more traditional styles we see an organic connectedness. Gothic looks quite different than Romanesque, but it is clear that they are related to each other and they complement each other. Baroque looks quite different than Gothic, but again, they seem related and complementary. Romanesque looks quite different than the early Christian churches of Rome, but there is, again, that sense of relation and complementarity. Even all these traditional styles are related and complementary to the great Eastern style, the Byzantine.

But modern architecture is just different. It is not a matter of liking or disliking it. It isn’t a matter of building materials; you can do a good church in any of the traditional styles with modern materials and construction techniques. It isn’t a matter of money either. Lord knows some of the spaceship horrors were insanely expensive, and you can build a good traditional church for a modest price. It isn’t a matter of simplicity, as I have argued that is an entirely separate point altogether. Simplicity is legitimately Catholic, as I’ve said. It is not these things, no. It is a matter of the ideology and thinking that bore the modern movement. To be modern is to reject everything that came before just because it is old(er). I am not so much criticizing the building of Catholic churches in the modern style and those styles that came after it as I am criticizing the legitimacy of those artistic movements in the first place, not on the basis that I am some great art critic–contemporary art criticism seems to be a joke anyway and artists in one of my threads in L&S forum said so themselves–but on the basis that the ideology that created the modern and post-modern movements is corrupt and bad in itself.

Again, this is not about simplicity vs. ornateness.

These artistic movements do not naturally flow from that which came before them. They are jarring and roughly contrasting from that which came before and seem to flow from altogether different premises and thinking.

 

[OraLabora]

You cannot argue that they are all too often devoid of any devotional statues or paintings in a somewhat unusual manner. Even when they have such paintings or statues, they are more modern abstract pieces which the faithful have a hard time appreciating as beautiful.

I think you missed the point altogether. It is normal and traditional for a Benedictine church to have only three statues (Mary and Child, St. Benedict and St Scholastica), no paintings, and little or no stained glass.

Now if I may share something from my travel experience, I have been to some poor countries in Asia and visited quiet a number of Catholics churches in parishes where houses are just made of unpainted bricks. These churches still look like what many would call or find familiar as a church. Even the poorest church will have a statue of the blessed mother and Christ and not confusing looking ones. The tabernacle will be kept in a very sacred and central place, the altar as well. The faithful will decorate the church with flowers for the liturgy (giving a sense of a call back to the pre-fall Garden of Eden), and it actually feels very much like a Church. You can see its poor but its still very identifiably a beautiful church.

Oh and most of these poor churches have a very decorated looking structure/wall behind the altar and tabernacle. Sometimes there will be a statue of the saint the Church is dedicated to placed high up on that wall and topped by a Crucifix. These are not big budget churches with multiple projector screens either. Most people sit on the floors.

Again, a centrally-placed tabernacle is not in the Benedictine tradition.

It is this aspect that I feel that people miss. There is a sense that the modern churches are deliberately built differently without any accommodation or consideration for these older things that people have come to love. Now initially we might say that it is because they are used to it and that its nostalgia. But the truth is, that the older architectural concepts did a better job at conveying the transcendent than the modern ones.

What I rather sense is a strange desire to homogenize Church tradition and crushing any spirituality within the Church that does not fit that homogenized concept of what a church is “supposed” to look like. I fear you’re attempting to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

That does not strike me a very Catholic, in the traditional sense, or catholic, in the sense that the Church is supposed to be universal by embracing and allowing to spread those spiritual movements that are part of her rich patrimony. It would be a very great shame shold you succeed. The Church would be much poorer for it.

I think it might be that aspect that has bothered the poster. The revelation passage quoted is indeed not out of context either and there have been lots of old churches that followed that. These churches would include these gems (I think even the Jewish Temple is said to have had them) in the walls to reflect that. There was a new Church built using this same principle as well though the name and locations doesn’t come to my mind at the moment.

 

[QuestingKnight]

What I rather sense is a strange desire to homogenize Church tradition and crushing any spirituality within the Church that does not fit that homogenized concept of what a church is “supposed” to look like. I fear you’re attempting to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

That does not strike me a very Catholic, in the traditional sense, or catholic, in the sense that the Church is supposed to be universal by embracing and allowing to spread those spiritual movements that are part of her rich patrimony. It would be a very great shame shold you succeed. The Church would be much poorer for it.

The problem is that modern churches, taken as a group, are tending not to be particularly Catholic. There is a tendency to the highly stylised and bare. They are not following a spiritual movement, unless Expressionism and Deconstructivism are spiritual movements.And it’s not for want of money, for the more outlandish examples.

I guess, and guess only, that whoever commissions them puts them out to tender. There may be few architects today who are Catholic and who can build a Catholic church and who want to. Insert a committee in the process and maybe that’s the recipe for the big box church: a bold artistic ‘statement’ which isn’t actually terribly original and is actually not best suited to its purpose.

A skyscaper can simply be a box for people and work Ok. A church has a lot more work to do.

 

[Eufrosnia]

I think you missed the point altogether. It is normal and traditional for a Benedictine church to have only three statues (Mary and Child, St. Benedict and St Scholastica), no paintings, and little or no stained glass.

Not sure what you are attacking here? I never said Benedictine churches should have more statues? And I am also referring to the ontological nature of a church. In that sense, even a Benedictine church can be measured as to how “beautiful” it is in an objective way.

I am simply stating that in this sense, a Benedictine Church would look less beautiful compared to a Notre Dame Cathedral. And that is OK given that there are restraints on them from their order or money restrictions. In the case where the restraints are from the Order, they might be able to reconsider as they study more about the ontological nature of a church building.

Regardless, the main objection here is more on a different matter. It is on the issue of those who want to perhaps build churches using a more subjective notion of beauty (that thinks bear and meeting hall like is appropriate for the church). Such things are unnerving to faithful who have seen the more superior version that a church could be and the effectiveness of it.

Again, a centrally-placed tabernacle is not in the Benedictine tradition.

I am not sure why you thought I was arguing for a physically central placement. Rather, I was arguing for it to be placed in a way that people understand its centrality rather than in a corner somewhere that no one sees.

I don’t think I am alone with this one since I believe there have been numerous calls by the Bishops of the US to even physically move the Tabernacle to a centralized position so that people start to regain some of the lost/forgotten sense of the real presence.

What I rather sense is a strange desire to homogenize Church tradition and crushing any spirituality within the Church that does not fit that homogenized concept of what a church is “supposed” to look like. I fear you’re attempting to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

That does not strike me a very Catholic, in the traditional sense, or catholic, in the sense that the Church is supposed to be universal by embracing and allowing to spread those spiritual movements that are part of her rich patrimony. It would be a very great shame shold you succeed. The Church would be much poorer for it.

The thing to understand is that even in the case of spirituality itself, there are different ones that one can construct. Not all of them can be accepted based on diversity. A good case in point would be the spirituality fostered (or shaped) by Thomas Merton in his latter years. That is considered unacceptable and has no place for it in the Church.

In the same way, a Church has a set of ontological truths it must convey about itself. Regardless of whether the church is Benedictine, Franciscan, or Diocesan, it needs to convey and raise the hearts of the faithful to the heavenly realities. In terms of this, one can measure the beauty of every Church. In cases where these realities are violated and negatives of the truths are shown, one can actually say the Church is incorrectly built (thankfully none from Orders have this problem).

So I am not sure that the idea is to homogenize Church architecture. Rather, it is the acknowledgement of what a Church needs to be and that there is an objective way to measure its beauty. Perhaps even those in Orders can reconsider their position but considering that they are not rich in terms of funds (as Brother pointed out), this would not be feasible. So my guess is that they will continue to build churches the way they do and that is fine.

But the issue is with those who have funds, trying to build something deliberately with some weird misconceptions of what a Church should be. Then the faithful will start to feel unnerved.

 

[10thCrusader]

The new design is really disappointing. Artistic inspiration and abilities seem to be on the decline among humanity.

However, last I checked, bad taste is not a mortal sin…

 

[OraLabora]

In the case where the restraints are from the Order, they might be able to reconsider as they study more about the ontological nature of a church building.

A pretty breathtaking statement to make to a 1500 year old order. It might be the other way around, they might teach you a thing or two about the “ontological nature of a church”, among other things.

The thing to understand is that even in the case of spirituality itself, there are different ones that one can construct.

Not all of them can be accepted based on diversity.

I said and I quote:

That does not strike me a very Catholic, in the traditional sense, or catholic, in the sense that the Church is supposed to be universal by embracing and allowing to spread those spiritual movements that are part of her rich patrimony

Note I said “that are part of her rich patrimony”. It should be pretty obvious that I meant legitimate and official spiritualities within the Church, i.e. Benedictine, Franciscan, etc.

A good case in point would be the spirituality fostered (or shaped) by Thomas Merton in his latter years. That is considered unacceptable and has no place for it in the Church.

I’m not going to get into a debate here about Merton but I think you need to learn a bit more about his “later years”. Contrary to popular belief he never strayed from Catholicism.

In the same way, a Church has a set of ontological truths it must convey about itself. Regardless of whether the church is Benedictine, Franciscan, or Diocesan, it needs to convey and raise the hearts of the faithful to the heavenly realities.

The “ontological truths” are different for the conventual chapel of a monastery.

Hint:

Seven times a day I have given praise to thee, for the judgments of thy justice.

(Ps. 118 v. 164)

It is not designed to “convey and raise the hearts of the faithful…”, it is made to serve the community on its search for God in community life that has as its focal point the chanting of the Divine Office and Mass in choir.

This thread is beginning to remind me of this one forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=696611

It got nowhere as well. There is too much subjectivity to the word “beauty”; there is too little acknowledgement that “church” in Catholic terms can be anything from a temporary conventual chapel for a new monastic foundation set up in a barn, to a great basilica, and too little acknowledgement that the spirituality of the orders should be allowed to thrive and influence the Church well beyond the enclosure. This notion that the Orders should only limit their spiritual expression to their enclosures is minimalist in a way that is far more damaging to the Church than minimalist architecture.

 

[AnneElizabeth]

What would be interesting is if there’s a tendency to embrace modernity for its own sake and rejecting older styles just because they’re old.

1. To not make a Catholic Church look like a traditional Catholic church is a lost opportunity in teaching and marketing.
2. A Church filled with stained glass, statues, altar rails and the like is a permanent lesson in itself: see what we believe, even ye that can’t read. You save time on lectures.
3. Architects! Just because you can draw it on a computer doesn’t mean you should build it!
4. Funny how samey ‘revolutionary’ designs are.
5. Sometimes less is not more. Sometimes less is just … less.
6. There are fashions in architecture. Fashion can date very quickly.

LOVE IT. Thanks for sharing!

 

[simple_soul]

And we have a winner. This is why monastic churches have, in general, usually been very austere, and why the overly decorated “new” church at Monte Cassino is so scandalous for some Benedictines.

The church in the abbey I’m affiliated with, which was accused of looking “drab” not only plays to light as I mentioned, but is an oasis of peace and silence when one enters it. It’s almost as if the silence, as you say, is loud enough to drown out the background noise of our society.

*I tried to come on here a few times to clarify this part of your post but have been getting lost with all the posts on this thread in trying to keep up with the conversation and at the same time keep my own thoughts strait. For the rocord I really like what Br. Jay said in post #68. I have read it a couple of times. Not to say that your posts have not been helpful but I believe his post, that one in particular, is more were I am coming from. He just says it better.

Anyway the kind of “noise” or “wild horses” that I was refereeing to was more than just the back round noise of our society.

The noise I am referring to is the noise that comes directly from the ornateness it’s self. Don’t get me wrong. Some day I want to go to Europe and see all the old and beautiful basilicas, I love rose art / stain glass windows and yes it all makes me think about God. But I believe our relationship with God should go so much deeper than just looking at and admiring the beauty of a beautiful church.
There is just so much to look at and see that I have a hard time hearing God. It’s like I know He is there and portrayed in so many ways but the “ornateness” and “portrayals” hinder me from establishing a relationship with Him. It is like I become more focused on the ornateness than I do on Him and it keeps my mind filled and I find it hard to just find a quite place to just be still and know that it is God. That “Be still and know I am God” silence is the silence that I am talking about and when I go into the more “modern” or “drab” Church’s I do find that silence to be louder. It is like God is saying ssshhhhhh! To me or saying “be quiet and let me do the talking.” I just never really understood what that silence was and in some way it was kind of frightening. But I believe I am beginning to see what Pope Benedict has been trying to say about us having to loose ourselves in order to find ourselves. Whenever I felt that fear creep in it made me just shy away and I would go back to just admiring the ornateness of the other style’s of Church’s. It was something I now and am comfortable with and I find it safe and familiar. After following this thread I decided to actually face that fearfulness and suddenly realized why I feared it. I had to let go of all these things in my mind that kept me from hearing God’s voice and it was then that I realized that for me the ornateness of some Church’s are actually a hindrance to me finding a way to be still and know God. It is like, for me, the ornateness of the church is what I have read from posters hear describing St. Theresa of Avila’s writings about the “wild horses” that she struggled with quieting down. The one thing that is kind of frightening is that if I found that silence to be frightening, am I going to find God to be frightening when I die too. Am I going to hate that silence so much that I turn away from Him and reject Him completely when I die because I never learned how to be silent and find Him when I was still here? If the answer is yes then all I can say is thank you God for giving me the grace to finally find that silence is You!
As always I am not sure if this makes sense to you or anyone else. I do have a hard time putting into words what it is I am trying to say I just wanted to try and clarify a little more as to what it was I was trying to say. I told my son he could have a computer turn so I need to turn it over to him now. I so I hope and pray it all came out understandably enough.*

 

[AnneElizabeth]

… Insert a committee in the process and maybe that’s the recipe for the big box church: a bold artistic ‘statement’ which isn’t actually terribly original and is actually not best suited to its purpose.

A skyscaper can simply be a box for people and work Ok. A church has a lot more work to do.

Actually, I don’t mind if a church is a grass hut or looks like a big box. I think that is a different case from what we are seeing now in some church architecture and if they were just mundane looking, I would have no problem with it. Its just that some of these new ideas in church architecture are so far removed from anything known, it smacks of pride. It reminds me of how “lady gaga” dresses. Its for shock effect. Its what people reach for when they are all out of the real good stuff. They have nothing to share, but everything to SAY.

 

[Eufrosnia]

A pretty breathtaking statement to make to a 1500 year old order. It might be the other way around, they might teach you a thing or two about the “ontological nature of a church”, among other things.

Not at all. Most of the people who built churches back in the day didn’t necessarily study a course for it. In the absence of such a formal look in to that aspect, it is possible that it can be sometimes discarded as merely a practice but not essential (as it has been done today). So lets not try to play “they know better than you” cards here. What is there to know is available for everyone to know with respect to this issue.

Therefore anyone can look at the evidence and decide.

Note I said “that are part of her rich patrimony”. It should be pretty obvious that I meant legitimate and official spiritualities within the Church, i.e. Benedictine, Franciscan, etc.

And I was making analogies that you seemed to have taken personally as an accusation that you were indeed proclaiming an illegitimate spirituality. Please take the time to read my original reply for clarification.

I’m not going to get into a debate here about Merton but I think you need to learn a bit more about his “later years”. Contrary to popular belief he never strayed from Catholicism.

Oh really? Have you actually read his books or are you just stating this? The man tried in his latter years to fuse pantheism in to Catholicism. That is when he totally lost it.

The “ontological truths” are different for the conventual chapel of a monastery.

Well, if its a place to celebrate the liturgy, then same rules DO apply. But if it is more of a setting for prayer, then yes, that aspect of it might take prominence. This still does not change the fact that ontological truths must be upheld.

It is not designed to “convey and raise the hearts of the faithful…”, it is made to serve the community on its search for God in community life that has as its focal point the chanting of the Divine Office and Mass in choir.

Um? I suggest you read the replies of Br. JReducation himself. Even he acknowledges that the church is supposed to raise the hearts to the faithful to the transcendent.

This thread is beginning to remind me of this one forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=696611

What about it? I don’t have the time to go through the entire thread unfortunately. If you feel that something has been addressed in that thread that I should take a look at. It will help if you be more specific.

As for this thread not going anywhere, I feel it has already reached its destination and a clear conclusion which is why this will be my final post on this thread.

It got nowhere as well. There is too much subjectivity to the word “beauty”; there is too little acknowledgement that “church” in Catholic terms can be anything from a temporary conventual chapel for a new monastic foundation set up in a barn, to a great basilica, and too little acknowledgement that the spirituality of the orders should be allowed to thrive and influence the Church well beyond the enclosure. This notion that the Orders should only limit their spiritual expression to their enclosures is minimalist in a way that is far more damaging to the Church than minimalist architecture.

That might indeed be the error you are making. The whole reason the Church architecture slipped in to what it is today is because it decided to adopt the ever growing mentality after the enlightenment that beauty is merely a subjective.

There is a strict definition of what beauty means i.e. how well does it reflect the ontology of it. The more it does, the more beautiful it is. That is how we measure the beauty of a church as well.

Now in the latter part of your reply above, you seem to attack a straw man. I in no way said anything regarding how limited an orders building should be. I only said that it is not as beautiful if you put something like a Notre Dame Cathedral next to it. I was then giving the reasons (rather than appeal to subjectivity) as to why this is objectively the case i.e. how well does it communicate the idea of entering a heavenly liturgy. So I would appreciate it if you didn’t try to attack things I never said.

 

[OraLabora]

Not at all. Most of the people who built churches back in the day didn’t necessarily study a course for it. In the absence of such a formal look in to that aspect, it is possible that it can be sometimes discarded as merely a practice but not essential (as it has been done today). So lets not try to play “they know better than you” cards here. What is there to know is available for everyone to know with respect to this issue.

Well, actually, I daresay they do know better than you. They didn’t just build them “back in the day”, they’ve been building them for 1500 years.

And I was making analogies that you seemed to have taken personally as an accusation that you were indeed proclaiming an illegitimate spirituality. Please take the time to read my original reply for clarification.

This is what you said:

The thing to understand is that even in the case of spirituality itself, there are different ones that one can construct. Not all of them can be accepted based on diversity.

That would seem to imply that you think I was giving carte blanche to any spirituality, legitimate or not.

Oh really? Have you actually read his books

Yes. As I said this isn’t the thread to debate Merton. Feel free to start another one.

Well, if its a place to celebrate the liturgy, then same rules DO apply.

Umm, no they don’t. There are particular requirements on how they process in for the liturgy, on how they arrive for the Night Office, on how they chant responsorially, on placement of the abbot’s seat, on separation of the enclosure from the nave, on how many times they do the liturgy, on the placement of the choir stalls, on the schola’s placement, on the requirement that all priests in the community concelebrate (after Vatican II) that can result in 30 or so priests around the altar (and prior to Vatican II they would all say private Masses at side chapels) and I can go on. Few of these will ever occur in a parish setting, and are all part of how the liturgy is celebrated in a monastic setting; while the Mass is the Mass, the Divine Office in a monastic setting is much longer, more elaborate, and involves its own particular rituals that differ greatly from a parish setting; and the Divine Office and Mass are part of an organic whole so that the church has to be purposely designed with that in mind.

But if it is more of a setting for prayer, then yes, that aspect of it might take prominence. This still does not change the fact that ontological truths must be upheld.

The Divine Office isn’t just prayer, it is liturgy.

Um? I suggest you read the replies of Br. JReducation himself. Even he acknowledges that the church is supposed to raise the hearts to the faithful to the transcendent.

I never said that it shouldn’t. I said the their “ontological truths” as you put it, are not entirely identical to a parish church or cathedral. For one, the church mainly serves the community and is meant to raise primarily their hearts in a way that (in the Benedictine setting at least) brings them closer to mystical union with God in a way befitting their spiritual traditions. In today’s context, the faithful who gravitate to their churches and attend regularly will tend to be those who feel a strong pull towards their spirituality. Those that don’t, are free to have their spirits lifted elsewhere. The community doesn’t have to try to fit their church to others’ “ontological truths”, it’s the other way around, those who attend have to accept the community’s “ontological truths”.

That might indeed be the error you are making. The whole reason the Church architecture slipped in to what it is today is because it decided to adopt the ever growing mentality after the enlightenment that beauty is merely a subjective.

There is a strict definition of what beauty means i.e. how well does it reflect the ontology of it. The more it does, the more beautiful it is. That is how we measure the beauty of a church as well.

I’ve yet to see what those objective criteria are, either from you on this thread, or the other thread.

Now in the latter part of your reply above, you seem to attack a straw man. I in no way said anything regarding how limited an orders building should be. I only said that it is not as beautiful if you put something like a Notre Dame Cathedral next to it. I was then giving the reasons (rather than appeal to subjectivity) as to why this is objectively the case i.e. how well does it communicate the idea of entering a heavenly liturgy. So I would appreciate it if you didn’t try to attack things I never said.

You see, it is subjective. For some people, myself included, a bare monastic church that is well designed is more beautiful than Notre Dame (and before you ask, yes I have been there, and to many bare monastic churches as well). Because the spirit moves us in different ways, and we are moved by different things. We are not homogenous beings.

That is not wrong, it’s just life, and it quite shoots down your argument that there’s a set of uniform, objective criteria that make a church “beautiful”. You could, in fact, make a church that fits the criteria perfectly but happens to be hideously ugly, overly gaudy, rococo, or just plain in poor taste. So while I would agree with you that there’s a set of objective criteria that make a church, a church, just because the criteria are respected and that it is a church does not by extension mean that it is a beautiful church for everybody or even for anybody. That is logical folly and totally dismisses human nature.

 

[Eufrosnia]

I never said that it shouldn’t. I said the their “ontological truths” as you put it, are not entirely identical to a parish church or cathedral.

I know I said I won’t reply but I just want to say the following. The churches primary and most primary worship is the MASS. The Churches (all of them) are built to hold the mass. The ontological truth of a Church must thus always reflect the heavenly reality to which the faithful enter.

You are confusing things as if the Church has a different function and Churches are built solely for community work. These are invalid concepts.

It appears to me as if you have something that you really like that perhaps does not meet the ontological requirement and you just want to defend it. Please keep in mind that not every church has to be as beautiful as the Cathedral of Notre Dame. I thought I made that clear. The budget for one restricts that. It will help you if you keep in mind that most orders have this as a primary concern as they embark on their missions. Thus, they will have a church model that can accommodate that main constraint.

But it will be an error for someone to say that such a Church is as beautiful as the Notre Dame Cathedral. Such a claim would be based on a subjective feeling that has no clear understanding of the ontological reality behind a Church. We can start dissecting entire church tradition now to develop what this reality means but it is outside the scope of this thread and I am not sure that is what really interests you. You want me to concede that all churches are somehow beautiful regardless of how well it meets the ontology behind a Church. That I cannot do and with that I bow out of this conversation for good.

 

[clem456]

The perception and expression of beauty is subjective. Human perceptions and preconceived notions, inculturation, are at work… “We see dimly now”.

If beauty was all bound up with “ontology”, half of us would not be worthy of a second look as holy marriage partners, due to the warts on our noses, tubes around our waists, and smells we emit…and what a sad world that would be. Thankfully the appreciation of beauty resides in the individual human heart and the appreciation of a person’s existence is not bound to any particular standard of beauty. Could it be said that the idolization of inculturated beauty is responsible for some very evil social policies over the years?

I think we are getting the idea of beauty all mixed up with truth here. The existence of a thing is not defined by our expression and perceptions of it’s beauty, and thank God for that. If beauty is subjective and is not objective truth itself, it is not God, and should not be worshipped. Beauty can inspire us to seek God, and can be an attempt to represent God, or reach God in prayer, but it is not God.

CS Lewis has a good treatment on the subject of beauty in “The Weight of Glory”.
a quote:

“The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.

 

[TimothyH]

A pretty breathtaking statement to make to a 1500 year old order. It might be the other way around, they might teach you a thing or two about the “ontological nature of a church”, among other things.

That’s what I thought when I read it, that a nearly sixteen century old order which produced more Doctor’s of the Church and more Popes than other group really has no need to reconsider anything about the nature of the Church nor its architecture.

-Tim-

 

[JReducation]

Some clarifications.

The 1500 year old order is the Order of St. Benedict.

The order that has given the Church the greatest number of saints and doctors is the Order of St. Francis

The orders cannot reconsider, adapt, rethink or make any changes to how they see and understand churches. Those principles are infallible. They are part of the faith of the Church. The problem is that most laymen don’t know them. We have a large gap in education in the area of Christian Spirituality.

Those styles, if one can call them that, are either described in the rules of the founders or are inspired by the principles found in the rules of the founders. The Church has ruled that the rules of the Benedictines, Franciscans, Augustinians, Norbertines, Carmelites, Basilians, Trinitarians, and Servites are of divine inspiration and cannot be touched. The most that can be done is to add constitutions and statutes to address what the founders did not anticipate.

Whenever a parish church is built by any of these orders and the bishop allows them to build it according to their spirituality, the lay faithful will have to finance it and have to accept it. When a bishop gives a parish to an order it is with the understanding that the order has his blessing to build the parish around its spirituality. The bishop commits the laity to comply or to leave the parish without making a fuss. The religious superior, on the other hand, agrees to listen to the laity in a consultative manner. Whatever the laity may suggest that is not in conflict with the life of the religious can be incorporated into the parish. Whatever is in conflict with the life of the religious, regardless of how beneficial it may be to the laity, may never be incorporated into the parish. Those are the terms.

Parishes have been closed when those terms have been violated. I know of one religious order that closed two parishes, three schools and one retreat house in one diocese because the laity in two parishes would not comply with the major superior and the bishop said that there was nothing he could do but to close the parishes. The superior decided that he would pull his men from the diocese, because he could not work with the laity there.

Why am I sharing this? Because people want to see the return of religious to parishes and schools. But they don’t realize what they’re asking for. In those places where the laity is submissive, the relationship between the religious and the faithful is a joyful one. In places where the laity is confrontational, the relationship can go south very fast.

I’m trying to remember the parishes, but I can’t. I believe that it was in Madison, where the bishop threatened to put two parishes under interdict if the laity did not submit to the religious who run the parish. They were giving these poor men a really hard time. These folks were not traditionalists. They were pushing the religious in the opposite direction. However, they wanted religious. When they had them, they couldn’t stand the direction of the parish. Go figure.

 

[simple_soul]

I know I said I won’t reply but I just want to say the following. The churches primary and most primary worship is the MASS. The Churches (all of them) are built to hold the mass. The ontological truth of a Church must thus always reflect the heavenly reality to which the faithful enter.

You are confusing things as if the Church has a different function and Churches are built solely for community work. These are invalid concepts.

*I am not so sure OraLabora is the one who is confusing things here…

Ok let me see if I am getting this strait. When I read “The ontological truth of a Church must thus always reflect the heavenly reality to which the faithful enter” I do not think so much of a building. I think more of the relationship that the building, the Church, is supposed to be helping me establish with the transcendent. I am taking transcendent to be refereeing to God.

If the ontological truth of a Church must always reflect the heavenly reality to which the faithful enter I would have to ask what is the heavenly reality?
To me the heavenly reality is God. Our relationship with Him and each other.
From what I understand and from what I have experienced myself is that the more “drab” or “modern” churches offer a way for the faithful’s heart to be raised to the transcendent with out all of the distractions that an “ornate” or “beautiful” church has. They seemingly point to and help to cultivate better a relationship with the transcendent louder and more clearly. As I said in my last post, I find that “ornate” churches are actually a distraction to me in my being still and knowing God. I seemingly get stuck and my heart is not raised up to the transcendence in the ornate churches as well as it is in what some would consider less beautiful or “modern” or “drab” churches.

From what I understand reaching the transcendent is what is important and beautiful. It is the beauty of our relationship with the transcendent that is beautiful and heavenly not how ornate a church is.
I personally believe that there is nothing more beautiful than being lifted up to the transcendent or seeing others lifted up to the transcendent. There is no ornate church of any kind that does it justice. We can try and try to get people to see what it is like with all of the “beauty” that you want to throw at them but the only way they will truly see it is if they experience it themselves. It is the experience that is beautiful or better heavenly. The only way for one to experience it is in silence and it is what a soul finds in the beautiful, reverent heavenly silence that allows the heart, mind and soul to be raised up to the transcendent. I believe it is Jesus, in the reverential heavenly silence and sacraments that are found in the church in communion with others that are the reasons why one is raised to the transcendent.
It is my understanding that it is our relationship with the transcendent and communion with others is what the ontological truth of a Church must always reflect and what is the heavenly reality.
I believe the reason I find some of the more “modern” or “drab” churches to speak the reverential silence of being still and knowing God in communion with others more beautifully, more loudly, more heavenly and more clearly is because they have less to distract or clutter my imagination with by not being as ornate as other churches.
I believe that in their simplicity they are more beautiful than the ornate churches because they convey the ontological truth of a Church more clearly than some of the more ornate ones do. They point to and help establish more clearly the heavenly reality to which the faithful enter and reflect this heavenly reality more clearly. The heavenly reality is, as I understand it, that one day it will just be God and us in communion with Him and each other. Nothing else. No golden ornate or elegant art portraying this but actually us living and breathing that reality that is heaven. Eternity.
In this way I believe the more “drab” or “modern” churches capture this heavenly reality that the faithful must enter more clearly. In this way I find them to be more beautiful than any ornate church.

I know I could be way off base on this but it is just how I see it right now….as always I hope and pray it made some sense…*

 

[OraLabora]

I know I said I won’t reply but I just want to say the following. The churches primary and most primary worship is the MASS. The Churches (all of them) are built to hold the mass. The ontological truth of a Church must thus always reflect the heavenly reality to which the faithful enter.

For Benedictines, it is for the LITURGY, the ENTIRE liturgy, which means the Divine Office AND the Mass, with the Mass being the summit of the liturgy.

A Benedictine church (or Cistercian or Carthusian for that matter) cannot be built for the Mass and ignore the rest of the liturgy. That would be incoherent with its mission, for which the praying of the Canonical hours (note: LITURGY) seven times a day plays the central role.

I think you have a very big misunderstanding of the role of monastic orders in the Church, and how their philosophy and approach to liturgy work.

I would suggest you brush up on it before pontificating on what the Orders are supposed to be doing.