ALL TOO often in recent years modern churches are erected n total ignorance of the laws, rules and traditions which form part of the Catholic way of honouring God.

This has resulted, combined with an uncannily matching liturgy (both its cause and its fruit), in an alienation of many ordinary Catholics, that is to say not those who are experts in this field, or those of an unusually heightened piety or sensibility, but those who were once regarded as immutable members of the great body of the Catholic Faithful.

 Of course we must be wary of laying all our ills at the door of insensitive architecture or liturgical ineptitude, for many other outside factors have also been at work, seducing our faithful away, but whereas we might have used the beauty of Tradition to entice them back, current practice has been to force the door shut upon those souls who waver on the threshold.

 A friend recently observed to me that the single greatest evil of the recent changes was the abolition of the Friday fast. In itself, to the modern eye, this may seem a peripheral thing, and after all, other disciplines are recommended in its stead, but by doing so the Church took away a most tangible thing which made Catholics different, and in one fell swoop banished God from the kitchen and locked Him up in church, where He can be avoided and, indeed, ignored.

 The ignorance of Church arrangement and design is made more serious by not being confined to the artists and designers involved, who might be expected to work and learn, as had always been the case, under the expert hand of the bishops and diocesan liturgists. But these too, for the most part, are woefully unaware of the requirements of the modern Church, and labour under their own errors and idiosyncratic prejudices, or a vague notion of what the "Spirit of the Council" was aiming at. To many, any documentary evidence from the Council against them is either not understood or pooh-poohed as a reactionary rear-guard action of no relevance. After all, the argument often runs, the Council Fathers sometimes lacked the courage of their own convictions, and we must make up for this. (The argument is very similar to that used by feminists when claiming that Our Lord was too weak to overcome the social customs of His time to ordain women as He really wished.)

There are several Diocesan Liturgy Committees in England, and physical evidence alone would suggest that this is true elsewhere, which are clearly quite unaware of the liturgical requirements of the New Rite, though these have been set out clearly enough. The English Bishops' Conference has produced a guide to new and reordered churches, as all Conferences were required to do, which is a clear exposition of the requirements of the Council (including the clear injunction to make no changes where artistic or pastoral considerations suggest they would be damaging), even if one may have preferred certain emphases to be slightly different. Unfortunately this document has been out of print for ten years, apparently at the instigationof the Bishops Conference. Use is sometimes made of the Irish equivalent, which is also well produced, considered and moderate, but, looking at new Irish churches, and their draconian reorderings, presumably nearly wholly ignored at home.
 

 
We have, too, a new Cathedral, designed by a non-conformist protestant architect of admitted architectural skills, working closely with the Bishop, which appears to have been designed solely on the premise of overturning every tradition the Church has clung to for over 1000 years, while fondly following architectural tradition, which only emphasises this rejection of Ecclesia. It is unrecognisable as a Catholic Church, although with fine arcades of classical columns, and in spite of its architectural uniqueness shares an emptiness of spirit with many new churches. There is no Sanctuary, rather the table-altar stands in the centre on a few steps, remote from the Bishop's and celebrant's chairs, and from the ministers, who are reduced to the level of the nave floor, where the Choir sits among the laity, and thus becomes their equals. Gone is the Presbyterium where the Priests serve the Holiest, gone are the Canons stalls, gone the shrines of the saints. The Sanctissimum is relegated to an empty corner of the retained old church, set tastefully in an antique Tabernacle displayed more as an objet d'art than a centre of devotion, and the Stations of the Cross are reduced to a row of architectural medallions, set high up above the arcade far from the field of vision of the faithful, and incapable of a processional progress around them. The whole creation is devoid of emphasis or direction, set in a stark pagan light, that, on account of the myriad brass chandeliers which hang down in place of the crucifixes, baldacchini and lamps of an holier age, has been compared to a dutch synagogue. A blow for ecumenism?

All gone! Gone the numinous holiness that even the great baroque churches, in their glorious humanist triumph could never dispel. Gone the sense of awe as we approach the altar, God's angel whispering to us every step - "Worship, worship!". Gone the hierarchy of the Church, that imperfect but divine reflection of the world which may one day be ours for eternity, Gone that odour of sanctity, as incense and candle smoke fill the air and filter the coloured light of a painted window. Gone the gentle focus of devotion nestling through arch and behind pillar, Gone the hushed bustle and murmur of countless faithful joining their hearts to the prayers of the great procession of saints before them. Gone the dark corner welcoming the prodigal son as he make his first tentative steps on his journey home. Gone the tangible grace that binds us all together through the ages in the great Sacraments by which we are promised our forgiveness and redemption. Gone the sense of the sacrifice of Calvary. All gone, all sacrificed on the altar of sophistication, of intellectual superiority, of self-sufficiency, of unbelief, of pure humanism, of ourselves. Why?

It is very difficult for many traditional Catholics to put forward with confidence the arguements which can and must be used if we are to fulfil that work of charity, the opus Dei, of striving to serve our fellowman and correct his error: difficult because we often feel that by so doing we are adopting that very lack of humility, that celebration of self and intellect which we recognise to be the enemy. However we do not do so upon our own authority or preference, but within the framework of the teaching of the Church, contained in tradition and within the documents of the Council; for the abuses of the last decades have come about not because of, but in blatant disregard for that framework within which we are set to work. Those involved in the work of building and reordering churches, and those who are called to give advice, have an obvious duty to acquaint themselves with these texts.

What we must strive for is to maintain and reinstate the Catholic atmosphere of the sacred, the numinous, by architectural means of light, colour or space, and particularly by means intrinsically Catholic, the juxtaposing of various spaces and elements in the timeless hierarchy common to all church buildings, whether Byzantine, Romanesque, Gothic, Baroque or Modern, to create one of the sweetest essences of true Catholic character, that of belonging, as an individual being, to a greater whole. Every element must be subordinate to things around it, throughout the cosmos, for only God Himself is independent of His environment. Even in the smallest chapel, this visible hierarchy should be maintained, not necessarily by aisles, arcades and chapels, but still by levels, windows, colour and decoration, so that it may fulfil that role of reflecting the celestial realms, as the earthly liturgy should reflect that eternity of praise and adoration where its creator dwells.

The second part of this article will look in detail at the traditions and current rules for the design of churches, along with some of the recent trends in Europe which point the way to a restoration of liturgical architecture.

Return to Oriens, Summer, 1998

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