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mdgspencer
Guest
This shows that a renewal in Catholic Church architecture is evident in some places.
Photos: Drab Modernistic Church of 1968 Replaced by One That Is Beautiful
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This shows that a renewal in Catholic Church architecture is evident in some places.
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Maximilian75
Guest
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CapitalistCatholic
Guest
Quite the beauty.
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7_Sorrows
Guest
Nice. Thanks for sharing.
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JimR-OCDS
Guest
It’s not a church, but the Student Center, which includes a chapel. a lounge and other facilities.
Jim
Jim
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Tis_Bearself
Patron
This is very nice, although I am amused by the number of people who found a bunch of stuff to nit pick about the new church in the comments to the article on it. You just can’t win!
Although I am perhaps weird in that i do not hate all brutalist architecture (I love many schools of architecture and think we need some of everything), I do not think a brutalist building with no windows into the worship space is a good design for a church. I read up on the history of this church at its website and I am sad that they had to demolish a 1909 church to make the bigger brutalist building in 1968. I also noted that that church in the 60s and 70s was apparently the hotbed of local social justice/ activism and that many people involved with it then were NOT students, which unfortunately mirrors my own experience in attending a Newman Center elsewhere in the late 70s. I did not like going to Mass there as it seemed like if you were not interested in anti-nuclear Jesus art or going on social justice jaunts, you didn’t really fit in. I found the former unnerving and the latter to be something I really did not have time for on top of my study schedule, and both things did not seem to fit with my values then or with the fact that I was just looking to attend a Mass sort of like my old traditional parish at home. This helped turn me off Mass going to an extent, although me and a lot of other students of similar mind would on occasion traipse or get a ride a couple miles up the road to a nice old Italian Catholic parish church that is still there and I still love to visit it when in that area.
Looks like the new church will be catering to students again, as it should be…not community hangers-on. I go to the Newman Center in my current town sometimes due to its very late Mass times, but that place is about the students, not about me, and that’s as it should be.
But most impressive to me regardless of which building is that they apparently have 1000 or 2000 Mass attendees there per week! Wow! Even when they had the brutalist building, they had something like 11 Masses a week. That is awesome.
Although I am perhaps weird in that i do not hate all brutalist architecture (I love many schools of architecture and think we need some of everything), I do not think a brutalist building with no windows into the worship space is a good design for a church. I read up on the history of this church at its website and I am sad that they had to demolish a 1909 church to make the bigger brutalist building in 1968. I also noted that that church in the 60s and 70s was apparently the hotbed of local social justice/ activism and that many people involved with it then were NOT students, which unfortunately mirrors my own experience in attending a Newman Center elsewhere in the late 70s. I did not like going to Mass there as it seemed like if you were not interested in anti-nuclear Jesus art or going on social justice jaunts, you didn’t really fit in. I found the former unnerving and the latter to be something I really did not have time for on top of my study schedule, and both things did not seem to fit with my values then or with the fact that I was just looking to attend a Mass sort of like my old traditional parish at home. This helped turn me off Mass going to an extent, although me and a lot of other students of similar mind would on occasion traipse or get a ride a couple miles up the road to a nice old Italian Catholic parish church that is still there and I still love to visit it when in that area.
Looks like the new church will be catering to students again, as it should be…not community hangers-on. I go to the Newman Center in my current town sometimes due to its very late Mass times, but that place is about the students, not about me, and that’s as it should be.
But most impressive to me regardless of which building is that they apparently have 1000 or 2000 Mass attendees there per week! Wow! Even when they had the brutalist building, they had something like 11 Masses a week. That is awesome.
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