What Makes a Church Beautiful?

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I think peoples ideas of beauty differ largely . I like gothic, Victorian etc. architecture and art and icon’s and paintings, sculptures, wooden pews, stained glass windows and high ceilings. I like the altar at the end and the tabernacle behind it and it clearly visible. I’m afraid modern churches with round altars and a guessing game on where to find the tabernacle are not for me even though you can at times appreciate the symmetry and I do see and appreciate the number of people they can hold. My little church built in 1881 with it’s striking Victorian copy of Gothic architecture is just the sort of beauty I want to look at each day. I am blessed .
 
Start with Aquinas’s definition of beauty:
Clarity - clearly expresses it’s ontological reality
Proportionality - physically proportional, and has features proportional to it’s purpose.
Completeness - has all required elements
 
Tangent: Every Catholic church in my town is different. Every church I have ever gone to is different. I suspect there is a lot of somebody’s ego that goes into that variation. There used to be more natural looking statues; now if there are any, they are monochrome wood carving, look like they must have been the cheapest in the catalog.

I can think of too many that were architecturally meaningless, especially the ones that emphasize arbitrary triangles and purely colored glass windows (no attempt at a picture of any sort). One “church” was merely the first floor of a school, underneath the basketball gym. When it was remodeled, the tabernacle was moved way over to the side where maybe a side altar or statue was. It had a flat ceiling with old style ceiling tiles.

I’ve lived long enough to have seen some cheap looking renovations. My home parish put colored gravel over the original mint green bathroom ceramic tile that was originally installed. You know what gravel looks like on the ground? Same thing, colored, all over the walls. If you’re not careful, you could lacerate yourself on the sharp edges and points of the gravel. I have never seen stone gravel used that way anyplace else. I can imagine how much difficulty there was to make all the points of the stone face outward. I’ll have to take a picture, close up, and show y’all what this looks like.
 
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Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago. The lofty ceilings of highly polished wood are stunning. The new Cathedral in St. Louis with the mosaics everywhere, like Patrick said, lifting your eyes and mind upward.
 
otrrl said:
Every church I have ever gone to is different. I suspect there is a lot of somebody’s ego that goes into that variation.
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There are a lot of Catholic churches where the building was built for another purpose. Here in Pittsburgh, we have an active Catholic church that was built as a streetcar barn.

Further, there are numerous churches which were built on impossible lots and crazy locations- that was the best lot they could purchase at the time and it was an age where people didn’t have cars to drive 4 miles out of town- the parish church had to be where the people were at.
 
Westminster Cathedral , the Metropolitan Cathedral of the Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, in London is unique in England for its Byzantine style .

Beautiful for great occasions , but also a place with chapels conducive to private prayer .

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I do love the architecture of Russian churches.

This is Assumption Cathedral in Rostov, not too far from Moscow.
 
These days? Any church where it looks like my kids’ wiggles won’t cause a major disturbance and I can stay close to the congregation when the baby gets fussy/chatty is gorgeous to me. My standards have changed over the years. 🤣

More seriously - meaningful stained glass and prominent stations of the cross are huge differentiators to me.
 
The "Striped " effect on the exterior of the Westminster church is interesting to me as it caught my attention here in Pittsburgh at the former St. John the Baptist Church which is now a restaurant.
 
If you are intrested there was a architect named AW Pugin who started the neo gothic movement he was a catholic english convert. He wrote couple books on architecture and his churches are beautiful.
For example St. Giles in Cheadle
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What makes a church beautiful?

The sight and sound of the worshippers inside 🙂
 
I find lots of different kinds of churches beautiful. I’m partial to my own parish, though:
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I do wish we had altar rails, though.
 
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blackforest said:
ve you visited a church or cathedral that particularly inspired you? If so, where was it, and what was it like?
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Simple elegance is the foremost factor for me… I find that Church’s with too much going on (i.e. lots of statues, icons, candle stations are too ‘noisy’ figuratively speaking. A clean transitional style is most comforting to me - classic crucifix, Mary and Joseph, the patron saint of the parish, stations of the cross, and let it be is good for me.
 
Pittsburgh has a lot of Russian style church buildings with the traditional onion domes, although some of them have been repurposed as newer groups of immigrants came in and displaced the original groups.
 
Thom18 said:
I find lots of different kinds of churches beautiful. I’m partial to my own parish, though:
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That’s pretty, too. My parish isn’t really very pretty. Built in the near-round, a mosaic of Mary and Baby Jesus on the wall behind the altar. We have a huge statue of St. Pope John Paul II down the steps and to the left of the altar, the only statue of Mary isn’t large enough for my taste and is in the lobby. The Church has a lot of wood and brick. Only two smallish stained glass windows in orangeish colors that don’t form any pictures, plus at the back of the Church a blue opaque glass or plastic “window” that you can’t see through. This church was built in a style that reflects the time it was built, 1973, I think.
 
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I’m inspired by different reasons, sometimes I really like the alter, stations of the cross, windows or crucifix. But I tend to like old historic churches, with lots of wood and brick. It’s difficult to pick just one.

If had to choose one that had an effect on me then it was the The Cologne Cathedral. I’ve never seen anything so big in life. It didn’t even look like it was built on this planet. I couldn’t see the top of the towers on a misty day. It was so surreal.
 
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michaelArc said:
If had to choose one that had an effect on me then it was the The Cologne Cathedral.
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Cologne Cathedral was severely damaged during WWII, its really remarkable that it survived at all.

The twin spires were a navigational aid to Allied bombers, its surprising that the German civil defense folks didn’t have it razed.
 
I’m aware those facts, it’s truly remarkable that it remained standing after 14 aerial bombardments while the entire city was flattened.
 
I have seen beautiful chirches in all styles, both old and modern. But personally I find gothic / neo gothic to be the most comforting and inspiring form of architecture. I sometimes struggle with all the little cherubs and gold plating of baroque which I find sometimes overdoes it. Romanesque / renaissance architecture with alli it marble I find to be a bit cold and lacking in emotion. A building like that would be very beatiful as a city hall or library, but not really as a place to pray. Modern architecture I find too reductionist and demaning too much attention in its own right rather than seeking to lead people in prayer. I love the feeling of old churches with lots of side altars, each with their own character, the smell of incense and of candles. I like the narrow tall windows that let in a lot of light. I like the sound of a full breasted organ, even if slightly off tune and having a life of its own, rather than the tinny modern contraptions many churches have acquired in recent decades. This is why I prefer gothic and neo gothic churches.

I must also declare self interest here, as my great grandfather was a stone mason who worked on many churches, including Cologne cathedral.
 
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