I have attended adoration at this Church and it is truly beautiful! I admit to loving the older, ornate style.
I hope I can effectively express what I want to say here.
If you look at some of the work of the “retrofitters” like Stroik or Menzies (mentioned above) you notice right away that they aren’t imitating some previous style. They aren’t copying, for example, the German 19th century gothic style, for example. Nor are they really using the materials of old.
So, why do their works look “traditional” to us even though they aren’t, really? In my opinion, it’s because in every culture and subculture, there are “impressions” that one might refer to as “ancestral memories”. Did the way my grandmother arrange her kitchen or living room impress certain design and color features on my mother, whose arrangements then impressed them on me? And if so, when they designed churches (or created art of any kind) long ago, did they deliberately hit those “impressions” that fit the “hot buttons” of the culture in which they were created? I think so, and I think so for what I consider very good reason. (too long a story for here, though)
(Ever notice that old German churches’ interiors are “woods like” with dark wood and overarching features that look like branches, when most old Polish churches’ interiors are “fields like” with sky colors and flower colors? Does one remember that “Polanie” means “people of the fields”?)
Now, when we look at the modern retrofitters, we can ask whether they are deliberately touching on themes that have long, longstanding reverberations within our consciousness. I think they are, and I have VERY good reason to believe it.
Is it better that they do? Well, I think so. Is there some compelling reason NOT to aid our minds in associating going to church with things that ring a pleasant bell in our minds?
On the other side of it, is there some compelling reason why our minds would make unconscious association of going to church with, say, a cardboard box? Most modern architecture is, in truth, a “conversation” between and among architects. They express abstract concepts within their discipline through their works. It’s like Esperanto. It isn’t “organic”, it’s an artificial construct they use in order to communicate with one another and, secondarily, with those who are (or think they are) “in the know”.
So, as between the two things, and knowing that church architecture is going to strike largely unconscious notes with us, is there some good reason why we should be faced with “cardboard boxes” in which we need to fight the mental reaction to being in a cardboard box, rather than be faced with decor that might strike very pleasant and perhaps uplifting notes with us?
I realize there are those who like a spartan, monastic style in architecture, in music, and in art. That’s fine. But one has to realize that those styles didn’t just jump out of nowhere. They were purposeful. The monastic life is not the life of a married man who likes to see flowers in his wife’s hair and ribbons braided into his daughter’s locks, and who delights in the (yes, often kitchy and overadorned) decor of his home. Is there some really good reason why the latter should be “reminded” of the former, any more that there is any good reason why a monk should be reminded of family, home and hearth?
I recall reading, I think from Alestair Cook, how a person traveling in Germany could instantly tell whether he is in a Catholic church or a Lutheran church. The Lutheran church is patriarchal and functional, whereas the Catholic church is “full of women and babies” in imagery. That, he said, tells a lot about the entire worldview of the various Germans, in religion and otherwise. Indeed, sometimes the Rhineland and Bavaria are referred to as “Mediterranean Germany”…that portion that was once within the Roman sphere of influence. The other is the “Germany of the Teutonic forests”.
Well, that’s enough for now. Be of good cheer.
