Church History Apologetics Series: The Catholic Church and Art

Anna Mitchell and I will continue our discussion of Church History and Apologetics on the Son Rise Morning Show tomorrow (Monday, August 24) at 6:45 a.m. Central time; 7:45 a.m. Eastern time--right after the quarter hour news headlines. Listen live online here.

We are a week later than usual because she was on vacation last week. This month's topic is a little different than the others: we are going to look at the Church's positive contribution to culture in art and architecture and how that often turns into an attack.

When we think of the glories of Gothic art and architecture or the great achievements of Renaissance and Baroque churches in all the great capitals of Europe, we must recognize that the Church, through its patronage and with the assistance of contributors rich and poor, built those churches and cathedrals, commissioned those paintings, mosaics, and statues for the honor and glory of God. At the same time that many appreciate the beauty of those works, some wonder about their source and value. As I noted a couple of years ago in an article for Homiletic and Pastoral Review:

The strange flipside of these achievements, however, is that someone might say that the Vatican, and the churches around the world, should sell priceless artwork, using the money to eliminate poverty. That adjective “priceless” points out one of the flaws of that argument: who could afford to pay what it’s worth? But, even if other museums, and private collectors, could pay what that vast treasure of beauty is worth, would it really be enough to take care of all the poor? What happens when that money has been distributed, and the problem of poverty has still not been solved?

As nearly every guidebook comments about each great European capital with a Catholic heritage, the cathedrals and churches are a great free refuge and resource for the weary tourist. They offer shelter from heat and rain, a place to rest, and a feast for the eyes to see great artwork by Titian, Raphael, Caravaggio, Michelangelo, Rubens, Tintoretto, and many others, especially that great and prolific artist, “Anonymous.” What about justice to the benefactors who gave artwork to the Church for the purpose of praising God in beautiful churches? Is it fair to their memory? Once the artwork is in private hands, for example, who will have access to it? The poor? Not likely.

I've encountered this rather twisted view of how the Church should sell this artwork--as if it belongs to the Church in the first place--often. When Pope Francis spoke about a poor Church for the poor, there were several comments (see this one in The Catholic Herald for example) that suggested he should sell off these priceless works. Even The National Catholic Reporter, with an article by John Allen, showed how ridiculous such an idea is:

To begin with, the legendary wealth of the Vatican is to some extent more myth than reality. The Vatican has an annual operating budget of under $300 million, while Harvard University, arguably the Vatican of elite secular opinion, has a budget of $3.7 billion, meaning it's 10 times greater. The Vatican's "patrimony," what other institutions would call an endowment, is around $1 billion. In this case, Harvard's ahead by a robust factor of 30, with an endowment of $30.7 billion.

The Vatican bank controls assets estimated at more than $6 billion, which is nobody's idea of chump change, but most of that isn't the Vatican's money. It belongs to religious orders, dioceses, movements and other Catholic organizations, and is managed by the Institute for the Works of Religion to facilitate moving it around the world.

Of course, these figures don't include the value of masterpieces of Western art housed in the Vatican, such as Michelangelo's "Pietà." The Vatican considers itself custodians of these items, not their owners, and it's a matter of Vatican law that they can never be sold or borrowed against. As a result, they have no practical value and are listed on the Vatican books at a value of 1 euro each.

National Geographic years ago published a special issue on great human artistic achievements: of all the buildings and sites mentioned, it was only in the article about St. Peter's Basilica that the author thought everything should be sold and given to eliminate poverty. Does anyone ever suggest that the National Cathedral in Washington or the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, two Episcopalian churches, should sell all their artwork and give the proceeds to the poor? 

Such a comment always reminds me of the episode of Jesus at Bethany being anointed with costly perfume: in St. John's Gospel, Judas Iscariot protests that the nard should have been sold to feed the poor, in St. Matthew and St. Mark, the disciples make the same comment, but Jesus defends her action: she has done something good for Him and they should not begrudge it.

Happy 203rd Birthday to A.W.N. Pugin

Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin was born on March 1, 1812 in London. His parents were emigres from the French Revolution and his father, Augustin Pugin was an architect. He set his son to drawing Gothic buildings. His interest in Gothic architecture led him to study the Catholic faith and A.W. N. Pugin joined the Catholic Church in 1835.

On the Continent, Eugene Viollet-le-Duc's career is roughly coterminous with Pugin's and both contributed to the revival of Gothic architecture. Viollet-le-Duc was more interested in restoration of Gothic cathedrals, churches, and castles throughout France. Pugin was convinced that Gothic was THE style for Christian buildings. He wanted not only to design churches and cathedrals in the Gothic style but to furnish them and decorate them throughout--designing every aspect of the building. Unfortunately, his patrons did not always have the money necessary to complete all that work.

When the Catholic hierarchy was restored in 1850 after emancipation in 1829, of course, Catholics had to build a new infrastructure: churches, cathedrals, convents, monasteries, schools, and seminaries--there was a lot of work to do! In collaboration with John Talbot, the sixteenth Earl of Shrewsbury, Pugin designed and built 14 chapels, schools, etc between 1836 and 1848 in Staffordshire. He also worked in Ireland, especially in County Wexford in the late 1830s and throughout the 1840s. He travelled on the Continent, visiting France and the Netherlands, but did not go to Rome until 1847--where the Renaissance and Baroque architecture of the churches disappointed him. (I think there is only one truly Gothic church in Rome, Santa Maria Sopra Minerva.)

He was only 40 years old when he died. He suffered from mental illness and tremendous stress--and perhaps syphilis, according to his major modern biographer, Rosemary Hill. His sons Edward Welby and Peter Paul continued his work in their partnership, Pugin and Pugin. E.W. Pugin also died at the age of 40, in 1875 and Peter Paul finished several of his works in progress and maintained the family style.

Gracewing publishes several books by and about Augustus Welby Northmore Putin, including THE TRUE PRINCIPLES OF Pointed or Christian Architecture and AN APOLOGY FOR The Revival of Christian Architecture. The bicentennial of his birthday was celebrated in 2012--find more background on that celebration here.

More on Chartres

The New Liturgical Movement blog has published another view of the renovations at Chartres, from someone familiar with the effort:

Many NLM readers will be familiar with the cathedral of Chartres as the destination of the Péle, the Pentecost pilgrimage organized by Notre-Dame de Chrétienté (Our Lady of Christendom). Every year several thousand Catholics from all over the world walk together the 60 miles that separate Paris from Chartres. The cathedral can be seen from miles around, like a beacon rising from the rolling green fields of the landscape. It is truly a breathtaking sight.

The great cathedral at Chartres is not only an important Catholic centre for France, It is also one of the best examples of French Gothic architecture. Chartres defines the archetype of what a Gothic cathedral should be. It’s proportions, arches, stained glass windows, spires, sculptures, are what all other Gothic churches in France are measured against.

The building has had a fortunately uneventful history. It survived the French Revolution almost unscathed, when churches such as Notre-Dame de Paris were plundered, vandalized or repurposed. It was also heroically saved from bombing during World War II by an American Army Officer. This makes the cathedral of Chartres one of the best preserved 13th century Gothic churches in France.

The author describes the restoration and approves of it:

The design painted on the vaults and walls of the cathedral was a simple one, a light ochre background over which lines were painted in white to simulate masonry. One of reasons medieval builders did this was to cover up any irregularities or faults in the actual stonework, and give the interior a tidy, continuous finish, with an appearance of strength and quality. Over time, this first rendering was darkened by dust, soot and grime. With the passing of the centuries the walls and vaults were whitewashed to give the interior a cleaner look. These washes were fairly thin, and so with time, the lines beneath them started to appear. This factor, coupled with more soot and grime, made the visitor believe that what he was seeing was actual stone.

The aim of the restoration in progress is to uncover these original decorations. I believe that most specialists agree that 13th-century mural decorations have the same historic importance as 13th century stained glass. Therefore, I find that the effort to clean, consolidate and preserve them very laudable. . . .

The vaults of the sanctuary, ambulatory and choir have been cleaned and reintegrated, while the rest of the nave remains a dark grimy gray. The contrast is enormous. Restoration has also concluded on the 18th century decorations of the sanctuary, including gilding and faux marble.

And then he discusses the critics:

Everybody is entitled to an opinion, and, in the case of these gentlemen, it’s the way they make their living. I would certainly not argue against criticism towards some of the criteria applied in Chartres. For example, one could argue endlessly on the manner and degree in which the walls were cleaned, or on if they should have reintegrated the missing parts using a muted color instead of reproducing the masonry motif, or if the vision of the stained glass has been distorted by a too bright interior.

Mr Filler, fueled by the feeling of disappointment during his last visit, accuses the team lead by Frédéric Didier, of repainting the cathedral in what he terms “garish”colors. He doesn’t seem to grasp the fact that what we see today has been there for the past 800 years. He is keen on the idea that what he saw when he last visited Chartres 30 years ago was not an accumulation of grime and soot over this decorations, but actual stone.

Read the rest there. I thought you should see another opinion--and the post cites two other specialists' reactions to the criticisms of the restoration I had posted earlier. One point we should always remember about these great cathedrals is that whatever their historic and artistic value, they are primarily for the worship of Almighty God, for prayer and praise and sacrifice.

Selling the Vatican to Feed the Poor

Sorry for not blogging the past few days--we had a hectic weekend and I've had a busy week so far at work and at home so I just haven't posted or had time to think of what to post!

In between events, I saw Kathy Schiffer's post on her Patheos blog about an encounter with a young man who thought St. Peter's Basilica was both beautiful and a symbol of corruption--that it should be sold and the money given to help the poor. “I looked up at the great basilica, and I had two reactions: First, I appreciated its beauty and reverence; but then I thought, ‘What corruption caused someone to spend so much on this building when people are hungry’?” 

She responded with four good points:

1. Gratitude Requires That We Preserve the Gifts of Those Who Have Gone Before Us.
2. Jesus himself expected that we would honor him with our wealth.
3. The Poor Deserve Beauty, Too.
4. Beauty Leads Us to Holiness.

Read her post to see how she fleshes each of these points out very reasonably and scripturally. 

I do have to wonder if the young man has the same response when he sees the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York City, the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, or even the Mormon's Temple in Salt Lake City, Utah--“I looked up at the great Episcopalian Cathedral, and I had two reactions: First, I appreciated its beauty and reverence; but then I thought, ‘What corruption caused someone to spend so much on this building when people are hungry’?” -- “I looked up at the great Mormon Temple, and I had two reactions: First, I appreciated its beauty and reverence; but then I thought, ‘What corruption caused someone to spend so much on this building when people are hungry’?” Or was it a viscerally anti-Catholic reaction?

I addressed this same issue in an article for Homiletic & Pastoral Review last year:

. . . someone might say that the Vatican, and the churches around the world, should sell priceless artwork, using the money to eliminate poverty. That adjective “priceless” points out one of the flaws of that argument: who could afford to pay what it’s worth? But, even if other museums, and private collectors, could pay what that vast treasure of beauty is worth, would it really be enough to take care of all the poor? What happens when that money has been distributed, and the problem of poverty has still not been solved?

As nearly every guidebook comments about each great European capital with a Catholic heritage, the cathedrals and churches are a great free refuge and resource for the weary tourist. They offer shelter from heat and rain, a place to rest, and a feast for the eyes to see great artwork by Titian, Raphael, Caravaggio, Michelangelo, Rubens, Tintoretto, and many others, especially that great and prolific artist, “Anonymous.” What about justice to the benefactors who gave artwork to the Church for the purpose of praising God in beautiful churches? Is it fair to their memory? Once the artwork is in private hands, for example, who will have access to it? The poor? Not likely.

Pope Benedict XVI emphasized the power of beauty--and personal holiness (the saints)--to attract people to God. Elizabeth Scalia offered some of his insights in a 2013 National Catholic Register article;

"The encounter with the beautiful can become the wound of the arrow that strikes the heart and in this way opens our eyes," said Cardinal Ratzinger at Rimini.

That wound, that opening in our hardened opinions, our complacent convictions, leaves us exposed. As the Pope said to artists, that dart "draws [man] out of himself, wrenches him away from resignation and from being content with the humdrum — it even makes him suffer, piercing him like a dart; but, in so doing, it ‘reawakens’ him, opening afresh the eyes of his heart and mind, giving him wings."

That awakening can make man thirst for truth, to reject the false, the superficial and illusory. Beauty is dangerous. If it captures the heart, it can make one change. Ovid knew it; Dante knew it. And Benedict has spent his pontificate telling us we have resources we haven’t even begun to tap.

Thanks to art and the exceptional lives of saintly men and women, the Church — the custodian of beauty and Truth for the past 2,000 years — still has a powerful voice in the world of culture. In the great cultural battlefield of our era, Pope Benedict has shown future generations how to get into the trenches and win with grace, in every sense of the word.

As he said last August, at a general audience at Castel Gandolfo, "Art is capable of making visible our need to go beyond what we see, and it reveals our thirst for infinite beauty, for God."

There are "artistic expressions that are true paths to God, the supreme Beauty," which "help nurture our relationship with him in prayer. These are works that are born of faith and express faith."

The Pope recalled a concert of Johann Sebastian Bach’s music: "After the last piece of music, one of the Cantate, I felt, not by reasoning, but in my heart, that what I heard had conveyed to me truth, something of the truth of the great composer’s faith — and this pressed me to praise and thank the Lord."

He reminded the faithful that visiting churches, art galleries and museums can be "where we can stop and contemplate, in the transition from simple, external reality to a deeper reality, the ray of beauty that strikes us, that almost wounds us in our inner selves and invites us to rise towards God."

Echoes of the Dissolution of Monasteries--in Philadelphia

Father Zuhlsdorf posted a link to a story from The Daily Mail of photos taken in Philadelphia of partially demolished, abandoned Catholic churches. As I scrolled through the story, I kept thinking of the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII, which left so many beautiful chapels and churches in ruins.

From the remains of these churches in Philadelphia, you can see that they were beautiful sanctuaries of worship; with wonderful architectural bones still standing, there are still glimmers of the art that filled the niches and the side chapels. Parishioners worshipped there, went to Confession on Saturday evening, brought their babies to be baptized, their sons and daughters to be married, their fathers and mothers to be buried. They paid their tithe and left bequests--you can imagine the life of the parish from the life of your parish today.

The parish priests said their first Masses, prepared First Holy Communion and Confirmation classes for the Sacraments, instructed pre-Cana couples--and then sadly, all of them had to see the church stripped, closed, and even partially demolished. The people in the parish may have fought against the closure, raised funds, held raffles, applied for historic building protections, petitioned The Holy See--whatever their efforts, the church was still closed and they went to another parish or parishes.

At the end of the article, the photographer, Matthew Christopher, explained his fascination with these ruined churches:

Mr Christopher's fascination with abandoned spaces started when he was a child. He enjoyed looking at artwork set in buildings that have since decayed.

His fascination with churches stemmed from this genre of art, as many painters in the late 1700s and early 1800s would paint churches and abbeys, closed under Henry VIII.

Later this year a book named 'Abandoned America: The Age of Consequence' will be released documenting some of the most spectacular ruins, including Mr Christopher's church pictures.

You can see more of his spectacular photographs on his website, Abandoned America, and its related Facebook page.

The common folk protested the suppression of the monasteries in England with the Pilgrimage of Grace, but as Father Zuhlsdorf comments, we don't need an uprising--we Catholic laity have to think about the glories of the legacy we've received and help it survive and thrive:

The point is that parishes have bills to pay and parishes need priests.  If you don’t pay the bills and if you don’t provide solid vocations to the priesthood through prayer, promotion and sacrifice, this is what happens.  That means that you, dear readers, must with joy support interest in a vocation to the priesthood in your families.  It also means that you should also provide feedback and support for formation for priests.  Lousy priests can equate to everything from emptying pews to emptying coffers.  Be engaged.

So, photos like these can also underscore the creative destruction that takes place from time to time everywhere.  Sometimes things break down.  Then something new is rebuilt.

But none of what you want and need as Catholics is free.  You can and must (it is a precept of the Church) contribute by your time, your talents and your treasure.

My husband and I have the great good fortune to live and have lived all our lives in a diocese that has grown with new churches and parishes being built in its major metropolitan area, but certainly rural churches have had to close and consolidate the Catholic communities because of changes in population. The parish church I grew up in was demolished to make way for a highway expansion--and that was sorrowful to me even though it wasn't that beautiful to my taste. I was confirmed there and both my sister and I were married there. In other words, it can't always be helped--but when it can, it's up to the Catholic laity to be faithful and fruitful!

When we attend Mass today in the parish church of St. Anthony of Padua, so lovingly and carefully restored several years ago, and so lovingly and carefully built many years ago, I'll look around gratefully for the survival of its beauty, pray for the benefactors, living and dead. Perhaps you can do the same thing today in your parish church. Bon dimanche--Good Sunday!

Attribution: Photograph by Mike Peel (http://www.mikepeel.net/).

Catholic Liturgical Beauty and Anti-Catholicism

I've read this letter from John Adams to his wife, describing the Catholic (Tridentine Rite) Mass, in which he sums up the experience: "Here is everything which can lay hold of the eye, ear, and imagination–everything which can charm and bewitch the simple and ignorant." The same sentiments were often expressed at the Court of St. James when Henrietta Maria or Catherine of Braganza's chaplains celebrated Mass--the Protestant onlookers were shocked by the incense, candles, music, art, and beauty in the service of the worship of God (evidently they had not read the Book of Revelation!). 

Oxford Movement converts were often chastised by their relatives and friends remaining on the Anglican side of the Tiber for falling for the beauty and sensuousness of Catholic worship. Gerard Manley Hopkins, for instance, responded to those charges by pointing out how simple the liturgies were in most Catholic churches. Low Mass would have been the norm, with far fewer "smells and bells". The Catholic rebuilding projects of the mid-to late-nineteenth century included great artistic structures by Hansom and Pugin but they also included small parish churches in simple buildings.

This attraction-repulsion pattern--outside viewers acknowledging the beauty and its attractiveness while expressing distaste and disgust for its sensual appeal--continued in nineteenth century America, as demonstrated in Ryan K. Smith's Gothic Arches, Latin Crosses: Anti-Catholicism and American Church Designs in the Nineteenth Century, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2006:

Crosses, candles, choir vestments, sanctuary flowers, and stained glass are common church features found in nearly all mainline denominations of American Christianity today. Most Protestant churchgoers would be surprised to learn, however, that at one time these elements were viewed with suspicion as foreign implements associated strictly with the Roman Catholic Church. Blending history with the study of material culture, Ryan K. Smith sheds light on the ironic convergence of anti-Catholicism and the Gothic Revival movement in nineteenth-century America.

Smith finds the source for both movements in the sudden rise of Roman Catholicism after 1820, when it began to grow from a tiny minority into the country's largest single religious body. Its growth triggered a corresponding rise in anti-Catholic activities, as activists representing every major Protestant denomination attacked "popery" through the pulpit, the press, and politics. At the same time, Catholic worship increasingly attracted young, genteel observers around the country. Its art and its tangible access to the sacred meshed well with the era's romanticism and market-based materialism.

Smith argues that these tensions led Protestant churches to break with tradition and adopt recognizably Latin art. He shows how architectural and artistic features became tools through which Protestants adapted to America's new commercialization while simultaneously defusing the potent Catholic "threat." The results presented a colorful new religious landscape, but they also illustrated the durability of traditional religious boundaries.

Smith quotes one Protestant minister's confusion: "Why do we abuse the papists, and then imitate them?" John Adams certainly did not want to imitate them--he was uncomfortable with either the Episcopalian or Presbyterian church service or meeting and much preferred Congregational or Independent services.

An Appreciation of Elgar and "Englishness"

From The Walsingham Society's blog comes this appreciation of two English artists by James Patrick:

Beneath their defense of beauty lay themes that gave their art its power. There was a reliance upon tradition in a way that presaged Eliot”s “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” which is to say that in the work of each the past lived in the present, transformed by a new moment of creativity. “Both Elgar and Strauss (like Brahms and in contrast to Wagner) acknowledged the weight of history and mirrored some degree of awe for the traditions of composition…. Despite recent efforts to construe Elgar as a modernist innovator, he remained within the framework of ideas, conflicts, forms and vocabulary of the late nineteenth century.”10 [endnotes in the the blog post] Voysey’s houses, the house that loves the ground, with its great sheltering roof, looking always as though it should be thatched, its white cast walls, the reminiscence of Tudor half-timbering, recapitulated in a new, subtly modern key the past of English domestic architecture.

Elgar’s music from the first was understood as expressing something authentic about the modern English character, landscape, and self-image. “Because the gesture, rhetoric and sonority he fashioned have come to locate the unique power, intensity, confidence, and refinement of the English, Elgar’s music has retained its role as an embodiment of Englishness.”11 His critics sometimes deprecated his music as expressions of jingoism, the nonsensical neologism descriptive of the perfervid patriotism that beset the nation in the shadow of the Great War, but the imperial swagger was pride in England and its past more than pride in imperial success.12 Critics have noted that in Elgar’s music at its most assertive what one sometimes hears is a sub-theme reflecting something of Kipling’s “Recessional,” a muted acceptance of an all-too-transitory glory.13 Voysey’s architecture was, obviously, rooted in what he conceived to be the national architecture of Tudor England, informed by a love for Pugin and Ruskin and by what the Ruskinian tradition considered the Gothic principle that buildings grow from the inside.

Few great composers are tied to a national heritage as tightly as was Elgar, whose works sing of a great nation, possessed of a heroic past (Froissart, The Black Knight, 1892), and of a great empire at its zenith, when the domination of the oceans by Great Britain and its government of a quarter of the globe seemed as solid as Everest. When the Pomp and Circumstance March in D Major, “Land of Hope and Glory,” was premiered in London on 22 October 1901 the crowd roared for an encore, and to restore order the conductor, Henry Wood, played it again; it has ever after been a kind of second national anthem.14 The great marches themselves were another sign of Elgar’s ability to use the tradition: “I did not see why the ordinary quick march should not be treated on a large scale, in the way that the waltz, the slow march, and even the polka have been treated by the great composers.”15 Elgar provided the setting for the coronation of George V in 1911 and the British empire Exhibition of 1924, for which he produced the Empire March and the Pageant of England. In that year he was appointed Master of the King’s Musick and in 1931 was created a baronet, Sir Edward of Broadheath. There was pride in the imperial bloom, but the love affair was with everything English. Elgar preferred that the very names of instruments reflect their English past— hautboy rather than oboe—, and Voysey would write, “Instead of studying the five orders of architecture, we had far better study the five orders of Englishmen.”16

I am not familiar with Charles Voysey, but according to wikipedia, he was:

an English architect and furniture and textile designer. Voysey's early work was as a designer of wallpapers, fabrics and furnishings in a simple Arts and Crafts style, but he is renowned as the architect of a number of notable country houses. He was one of the first people to understand and appreciate the significance of industrial design. He has been considered one of the pioneers of Modern Architecture, a notion which he rejected. His English domestic architecture draws heavily on vernacular rather than academic tradition, influenced by the ideas of Herbert Tudor Buckland (1869–1951) and Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812–1852).

There is an organization with a web page devoted to his life and work: The C.F.A. Voysey Society.

Churches and Beauty: Two Books

I attended a reading and book signing for Jay M. Price at Eighth Day Books last week. He is:

A native of Santa Fe, New Mexico, Jay M. Price directs the Public History Program at Wichita State University. His publications include Gateways to the Southwest: The Story of Arizona State Parks, Wichita, 1860-1930, Wichita's Legacy of Flight, and El Dorado!: Legacy of an Oil Boom. He and his students recently completed a history of the Cherokee Outlet Land Rush of 1893. He recently worked with a local public television station to turn his history of the El Dorado oil boom into a documentary. His other writings include works on local history, the history of tourism, regional identity, and American sacred architecture. A member of the Kansas Humanities Council speakers bureau and board of trustees, he has delivered the talks, "Reading Roadside Kansas," and "Sacred Landscapes of Kansas." Currently, his main project is "Temples for a Modern God," a study of mid-twentieth century sacred architecture.

A few people bought his book, which is rather expensive, being published by Oxford University Press--but he has also authored books about Kansas for Arcadia Publishing like this one about Wichita.

Temples for a Modern God: Religious Architecture in Postwar America (published by OUP) by Jay M. Price (Wichita State University)

  Temples for a Modern God is one of the first major studies of American religious architecture in the postwar period, and it reveals the diverse and complicated set of issues that emerged just as one of the nation's biggest building booms unfolded. Jay Price tells the story of how a movement consisting of denominational architectural bureaus, freelance consultants, architects, professional and religious organizations, religious building journals, professional conferences, artistic studios, and specialized businesses came to have a profound influence on the nature of sacred space. Debates over architectural style coincided with equally significant changes in worship practice. Meanwhile, suburbanization and the baby boom required a new type of worship facility, one that had to attract members and serve a social role as much as honor the Divine. Price uses religious architecture to explore how Mainline Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, and other traditions moved beyond their ethnic, regional, and cultural enclaves to create a built environment that was simultaneously intertwined with technology and social change, yet rooted in a fluid and shifting sense of tradition. Price argues that these structures, as often mocked as loved, were physical embodiments of a significant, if underappreciated, era in American religious history.  

Features:
~The first major treatment of religious architecture in postwar America
~Deals with mid-level and vernacular construction projects as well as the more famous post-war churches
~Compares mainline Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish construction as well as the contributions of Eastern Orthodoxy, Latter-day Saints, Evangelicals, Muslims, Buddhists, and other traditions

Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter 1: The Search for a Better Church Building
Chapter 2: The Postwar House of Worship
Chapter 3: Postwar Religious Building: A Negotiated
Chapter 4: Making a Modern Church Still Look Like a Church
Chapter 5: "Let's Stop Building Cathedrals"
Conclusion: An Unappreciated Legacy
Bibliography

Professor Price is an excellent presenter, with a slide show of pictures from many churches, some even in Wichita. His discussion of Catholic church architecture, particularly as it reflected changes in the liturgy after the Second Vatican Council, was enlightening and well presented. The suburban setting of churches and houses of worships for all the different religious communities effected several changes--because the churches needed parking lots! He also showed how consultants and marketing affected the building of new churches. In addition to the slide show he had some books and magazines from the '50s and '60s, including a magazine all about maintaining the physical plant of the church and school, with advertisements for everything from restroom stalls to floor cleaning/buffing machines--not to mention religious statues and candles!

Earlier that week I heard Duncan G. Stroik on the Son Rise Morning Show, speaking about the revival of beauty in churches being built today. His book is The Church Building as a Sacred Place: Beauty, Transcendence, and the Eternal:

How can we recover a sense of the sacred in liturgy and architecture? Why was it lost in the twentieth century? What signs of hope exist for the future? In his new book, The Church Building as a Sacred Place: Beauty, Transcendence, and the Eternal, Duncan G. Stroik, Professor of Architecture at the University of Notre Dame, answers these questions with wisdom gained from two decades of teaching, writing, and practicing architecture in service to the Church.

Writing to architects, artists, pastors, and all who see the urgent need for renewal, Stroik begins this compilation of essays by reemphasizing the nature and purpose of the church building. He then considers how the Classical Tradition can inform contemporary churches, analyzes the impact Modernist philosophy has had on architecture, and concludes by looking forward to renaissance and renewal. Along the way he gives principles of design, myths of contemporary sacred architecture, advice for priests, and explanations of the theology of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. Photographs and drawings of exemplary historic and contemporary churches fill the pages of this instructive and inspiring work.

Two interesting books on modern church architecture and its role in our worship. Bon dimanche!

A Couple of Surprises

During our Paris visit last month, we found two surprises: the restoration of the interior at St. Eustache in Les Halles, and the statues around the outside of La Madaleine (which had been obstructed by scaffolding before--or we just had not seen!). That's just one of the reasons to return to a place you love: you just might see something new.

The restoration at St. Eustache is cleaning the grime off the beautiful decorations in the side chapels. So many Paris churches contain great artwork in their chapels and aisles, but with the grime of so many centuries of candle and incense smoke, the artwork is obscure. Here is an example of the work that's been achieved along the right aisle of St. Eustache--this "Ecce Homo" statue has been cleaned and the decorative trim around the window, above the statue, and in the chapel repainted:

 

You can see what the statue used to look like here. This picture shows the ceiling of the chapel. gloriously restored:

 

On the left side of the aisle, many of the paintings were still covered with soot and restoration tape holding them to the wall, so St. Eustache restorers have a long way to go. It may have been that they started at the back of the church with the chapel of Our Lady (with the statue by Pigalle):

 

I'll post on La Madaleine another day. By the way, there is an English Reformation connection here in St. Eustache. One of Queen Henrietta Maria's ladies-in-waiting, Susan Feilding, the Countess of Denbigh, followed her mistress in exile to Paris. There she became a Catholic and patron of convert poet Richard Crashaw. The Countess died in 1652, and is buried in St. Eustache. I guess I'll just have to go back and find her tomb to take a picture!