CODY, Wyoming — When the monks of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel wanted to design a new church for their Wyoming home, they turned to a building style just as ancient as the 800-year-old Carmelite order itself — Gothic architecture. Designed by Jim McCrery of McCrery Architects in Washington, D.C., its plans call for towering spires, flying buttresses, twin bell towers, wooden trusses, rose windows and more of what typically might be found in Europe’s greatest spaces of worship.
The monks are not alone. Parishes and religious orders across the United States also are turning to traditional design for new churches and renovations.
“That is an enormous change from 10 years ago,” said architect Ethan Anthony of HDB/Cram & Ferguson Architects of Concord, Mass. “I’ve seen it go from nobody even thinking about this to it becoming kind of a cause. It’s a big deal things are happening.”
The trend pushes against the modernist architecture that frequently typified church construction in the second half of the 1900s — and returns to design seen in the first half of that century. In the United States, traditional architecture gave rise to churches such as St. Florian in Hamtramck, Mich. Built with a penny campaign and dedicated in 1928, it is a “most spectacularly huge,” Gothic church, according to Anthony.
It is as much statement as it is stature. St. Florian was designed by renowned Boston architect Ralph Adams Cram (a founder of Anthony‘s firm). The St. Florian website notes that “Cram rebelled against the hard-nosed social Darwinism of the Industrial Age and sought to reclaim the beauty and spiritual values of the cathedrals of the Middle Ages.”
Not long thereafter, though, such churches became a thing of the past.
First the Depression strapped parishes and put church construction projects on hold, Anthony said. World War II caused another interruption, and Anthony said men returned from the war “really in love with science.” That, he added, coincided with “a huge secularization, even in the Catholic Church.”
Architecture, meanwhile, began to emphasize “basic, simple, modern, straightforward” design. More changes were sparked by Vatican II, especially the document addressing art in churches, Sacrosanctum Concilium. That document, though primarily about the reform of the liturgy, also spoke about church architecture. Some church designers, though, went farther than the document itself.
“People within the various dioceses in the United States seized up on that because they wanted to promote modern architecture in the Catholic Church and said, ‘Well, Vatican II said we have to tear out all this old furniture because it’s old,’” Anthony said. “What a terrible destruction happened.”
Duncan Stroik, an architect in South Bend, Ind., said, “The misinterpretation of Vatican II was like Pandora’s box in which architects and clients thought that it meant anything goes. Anything as long as it was not traditional styles.”
That spawned what Stroik called the “consistently dull” suburban churches of the late 1960s and 1970s.
“Cheaply built, ugly, dysfunctional and iconoclastic,” Stroik said. “If they had been built as commercial or residential buildings they would have been torn down by now. There are some churches designed by famous architects which, though sophisticated, are rather poor places of worship.”
He mentions Seattle University’s Chapel of St. Ignatius, the Chapel of St. Basil at the University of St. Thomas in Houston and St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minn. He also cites the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption in San Francisco, which some locals refer to as “Our Lady of Maytag” because its dome looks like the agitator of a washing machine.
“Interestingly, they all received awards from the architecture community,” Stroik said.
But beginning about 20 to 25 years after Vatican II, Stroik said, laypeople and younger clergy started to question modernism and began asking for “churches that look like churches.”
The trend, he said, is “almost only in the Catholic world” and is driven “by a sacramental sense that Catholics have and an inherent understanding that churches should be beautiful because they reflect the Creator.”
That means rejecting radically sloped floors, auditorium seating in the round, a “big-box-church type of mentality” and other fare of modern architecture that Anthony mentions. Instead, Stroik said, clients are seeking “beauty, verticality and traditional iconography.”
“There are those who want simple elegance and others who believe in rich colors and decoration,” Stroik said. “Both are part of our artistic patrimony.”
The South Rises
Anthony said he sees this trend to tradition “everywhere,” including in his home Archdiocese of Boston, where he said modern architecture especially took root.
“The local people here, the grassroots people here, are working to try to break that down from the bottom up,” Anthony said. “The fact that the people here wanted to do what they consider more church-like architecture is a huge thing, a huge change.”
But where traditional church architecture is most prevalent today, Anthony and Stroik said, is in the South and Southwest.
Traditional work there would include HDB/Cram & Ferguson’s Benedictine Syon Abbey in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. Designs for the Gothic church and monastic buildings were inspired by a study of ruined English monasteries. Completed in 2007, its features include a facade of Spanish limestone, arched windows, marble tile flooring and a massive, 80-foot-tall bell tower.
Other projects Anthony’s firm have completed include Houston’s Our Lady of Walsingham (completed in 2003), which replicates the carpentry and stonework of churches near the site of a shrine destroyed by Henry VIII. Gargoyles stand guard on the four corners of the Gothic church’s tower. In Farragut, Tenn., Anthony designed St. John Neumann Catholic Church (completed in 2008), inspired by Romanesque churches of France’s Burgundy region.
McCrery’s firm has been involved with more than a dozen liturgical projects across the United States, including significant works in the South. His Chapel of St. Cecilia in Nashville, built for Dominican nuns, was inspired by Roman basilicas. In Charlotte, N.C., McCrery’s St. Ann Catholic Church expanded on a church that for more than 50 years had celebrated Mass in the basement of a never-completed building. The new design was so popular that donors responded with enough funds to add mosaics, statues and inscriptions. A new bell tower is in design. In Linville, N.C., McCrery’s St. Bernadette Church added to a metal building with a major interior renovation featuring wood trusses and grooved wood ceilings in the nave.
Stroik’s firm has completed churches in Covington, Ky., (All Saints) and Bullhead City, Ariz., (St. Margaret Mary) and designed others, including St. Paul the Apostle in Spartanburg, S.C. Design of the latter, modeled on U.S. Catholic church and Lombard Romanesque architecture, “will incorporate forms and symbols that make it unmistakably a Catholic church.” His firm’s 16 church projects also include a “creative restoration” of St. Joseph Cathedral in Sioux Falls, S.D.
“We are committed to a restoration of the sacred and a new renaissance of church architecture,” said Stroik, who in March received a Palladio Award from Traditional Building and Period Homes magazines in recognition of outstanding work in traditional design.
Beautiful Gates
What’s behind such a trend to the traditional? There seems to be plenty of praise to go around.
Anthony, for one, credits Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who, in his 1986 book The Feast of Faith: Approaches to a Theology of the Liturgy, “tried to take the bitter edge off of a lot of the rhetoric” regarding church architecture post-Vatican II. Anthony recently wrote the final chapter exploring new Gothic and Romanesque architecture in North America in a forthcoming book of essays, Benedict XVI and Beauty in Sacred Art and Architecture: Proceedings of the Second Fota International Conference, 2009. Fota is a small island in Cork Harbour, Ireland.
McCrery also praised Pope Benedict and Pope John Paul II, saying both have “encouraged a re-inspiration, a rededication to the Church’s tradition in theology, in philosophy, in liturgy, in the arts and in architecture.”
Anthony also said the return to traditional church architecture was a grassroots movement, one influenced by laypeople who travel to Europe, see the great churches there, and then develop “a yearning for great architecture.”
No matter who’s to credit, Anthony said it’s important that beautiful churches be made.
“The primary starting point has to be that when you see the building or when you enter the space that you absolutely know exactly where you’re at every moment,” Anthony said. “That you are seized with emotion and with an emotion of wanting to enter and wanting to go pray and wanting to be closer to God, understanding that you’re in God’s space; you’re in God’s house. This is the gate of heaven.”
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Register correspondent Anthony Flott writes from Papillion, Nebraska.
Jennifer Fulwiler: One Example of How Beautiful Church Buildings Lead People to God
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This makes me so happy. There is nothing more awe inspiring that going to the churches of Europe, from small town to grand cathedrals, they inspire you towards God and prayer. They are nothing like the banal, ugly, and Protestantized churches built over the last 30 years. Sadly, in one town by me the most Catholic looking building is a United Methodist building. The Catholic Church looks like some Non-Dom Protestant building. Thankfully, we are getting back to our roots.
I am glad to see this. So many of the new Catholic churches are looking like Protestant. Also, I am saddened by the fact that the Tabernacle is being removed from the Sanctuary, and placed, in many cases, at the rear of a church. One church that I attended had it in the rear in a chapel. I sat in the chapel, and when the Mass was over, many people exited through the chapel, but not one genuflected to Our Lord.
Praise be Jesus Christ! A little beauty in architecture goes a very long way in liturgical reverence. How about including some links to the churches you mention above? Also, don’t forget Duncan Stroik’s work on the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Here’s the link: http://www.guadalupeshrine.org/About/Church.asp
YAY!!! I’m so happy! And I’ve seen newer renovations and churches that have been built that are old-school. A good example is St. Helena’s in Norristown, PA. Check out their church on their Flickr slideshow: http://www.flickr.com/photos/24710781@N03/sets/72157604123071388/show/
That altar is gorgeous! Well done, St. Helena’s!
Also, I am saddened by the fact that the Tabernacle is being removed from the Sanctuary, and placed, in many cases, at the rear of a church.
Lee H: ...WHAT??!?!!! Oh, good grief. I’ve heard of Tabernacles being placed off to the side of the sanctuary and not at the foot of the crucifix behind the altar, but not this. The one at my fiance’s parish used to be off to the side. Then Monsignor had it moved to the foot of the crucifix behind the altar. One woman said she cried for joy when she saw that.
I agree with the comments here…a departure from the post Vatican Council II protestant look and feel in everything Catholic, I see a new springtime in the Catholic Church, I think when young Catholics are attracted to the Latin Mass that should tell us something.
elcid
Finally the People of God are speaking!
Church architecture is more than just a building, it’s a prayer written using architecture; it is just like an icon which is a prayer written using symbolic art.
The traditional Churches engaged people to awe and reverence. They encouraged prayer and contemplation. The Holy of Holies sat in its right place, in the centre of the East wall, illuminating the souls of those who elected the priest to offer the Holy Sacrifice for the salvation of souls on their behalf. Both the priest and the people looking towards the East are illuminated by He who offered Himself for our salvation.
The Church buildings themselves wept when part of the prayer they represented was torn out of them from their East wall.
Let us pray that God grants wisdom, peace, and salvation to those in charge; in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen!
Hooray!!I am so pleased about this.The old and traditional architecture promotes reverence.It’s classical beauty coinsides with the timelessness of God.Let us be Catholic in churches that look Catholic.
AMEN! AMEN! AMEN!!!!! How thrilling to read this! It gives me hope! How I wish the church building I grew up in would be torn down tomorrow and rebuilt with the grandeur, reverence, and awe-inspiring style of ages past. Give me a church that looks and feels and sounds and smells LIKE A CHURCH! God bless this wonderful architect!
Examples of each of the architects work can be found here:
http://www.mccreryarchitects.com/portfolio
http://www.stroik.com/portfolio
http://www.cramandferguson.com/projects
I’m so happy about this. It’s about time!
DEO GRATIAS!!! Long overdue.
It’s so uplifting to read that traditional architecture is coming back in our churches. And not soon enough! It’s time to move the tabernacle out of the back corners and up front and center. It’s a special generation that gets to enjoy the responsibility of building a new church building, a new worship space for generations to come, a new place of prayer where God’s chosen will gather to commune with Him and each other. May the Holy Spirit guide those who are part of the process, and may our churches once again feel like holy places. Yes, architecture does generate feeling.
Unfortunately, our parish went several million dollars into debt a few years ago trying to “fix” a 1970 church—although the Tabernacle is in an Adoration Chapel behind the altar, some rather creepy Stations were molded into the walls. Beautiful wood was painted over, carpet removed, brick flooring installed turning the whole place into a sound-distorting echo chamber. The original 1950 church was almost torn down, but cooler heads prevailed and it was restored into a lovely traditional chapel. Interestingly, Adoration takes place there rather than in the wind tunnel behind the altar in the main church.
Why are we afraid of new things. At one time the “traditional” architecture was new to the world. Do we resist such things as central heating systems, electric lights, air conditioning, sound systems, elevators? Should we build churches with multiple flights of stairs, no bathrooms, leaky windows, no parkling lots? Let us join the 21st Century with the use of new building materials, innovative engineering techniques and an open mind to accepting progress.
Great article. Our church here in Oceanside, CA is one of the only ones to go old school / traditional. Check it out here:
http://www.oceanside4christ.com/cms_sm/
New (design,material) is not always better if it does not serve the the purpose of the setting in which it is used!
There is such beauty in the architecture of the Roman Catholic churches! While some say such a waste of money while the poor go hungry and they build these established monuments of glorification. But the truth is if you need a meeting place what better than a place and piece of functional art and lasting construction for all to use and glorify the images that are made to last! But most important is that beauty within beauty is achieved thoroughly for all to see!GBA
Please let’s not blame protestants for our own architectural disasters over the past 42 years. Most protestant churches I’ve visited online and in person have more color and feel as churches than most Catholic churches constructed since Vatican II. They’re also prepared to pay for a decent choir director, minister of music, and an organist.
They have choirs, with a few exceptions, we can only dream of having. Catholics should be so fortunate.
Like your article but not your math. The Carmelite order claims its birth goes back to Mt Carmel around the year 1000.
It is sad that the Church in the U.S. is embracing such post modern ideas. The Church has a long history of being the top organization in investing in the latest greatest building technologies and architecture. Gothic architecture was modern for its time. Flying buttresses were a structural technology that was the first of its time and allowed churches to be built to hights never before seen in masonry construction. In fact, the Church’s investments in these technologies as well as the arts was a shining light in the dark ages.
In the past most cities were represented by an iconic church but today most large cities are represented by office buildings. Two large cities I can think of who have a church building as their icon are Barcelona and Brasilia, both of which are churches born out of modernism. In fact, Gaudi, the early modern architect for Segrada Familia is being considered for beatification and his work on this great church was highly praised by the Pope just a few months ago. It is a shame to see the Holy Father’s writings words bent backwards in order to push a post modern agenda.
This article uses very vague words to argue against modernism in favor of post modernism by calling a style “ugly” and referring to “beauty” without explanation. If we are going to talk about the transcendental of beauty we should first look at what is beautiful. The truth is beautiful. Jesus even told us in today’s gospel, “and I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in the truth”. To build what this article refers to as “tradition” we would need to have surf masons and throw out the power tools. The traditions of Europe are of their time and place. Post modern “traditional” architecture is not and actually denies the building from both a past and a future. It is essentially a lie about its time, place and structure. Covering up a metal structure with a vener is not beauty, it is a lie and is thus a contradiction of the truth.
I can understand a complaint like the tabernacle being misplaced or the baptism fount but when we speak of placements of elements in a church we are no longer speaking of style but of typography. I would agree that we must keep a certain typography that goes best with the Liturgy and the Sacraments but their are very few modern style churches that break the typography just like there a few historic churches that break the typography. That is not to say that we should limit an architect from proposing an even more effective way of organizing a church to follow the Liturgy.
To accuse modern churches of being iconoclastic is ridicules. The two churches that I mentioned above have some of the most amazing works of modern icons. They have helped support the work of some of the most talented artist and architects in the world just like the church as always done, and especially in the middle-ages with Gothic architecture. Basic, simple and straightforward are being called ugly by those interviewed here. The truth is always simple and God is actually the most simple being, all things pointing to Him. Lies are always complex.
Many churches built in the 1960’s used some of the most beautiful techniques of concrete structure that today’s labor can no longer do just as today’s labor can no longer recreate a true Middle Aged Gothic cathedral. Many of these mid-century modern churches are now in need of updating and repair as they have not been well kept just like many 19th century churches were in need of repair in the middle of the 20th century. Unfortunately this atitude being cultivated will put many of these churches in danger of falling into disrepair. One last note, if we are going to talk of Romanesque churches as being traditionally Christian we are denying a fact of history. This style was created for Pagan worship but Christianity, as it always does, took it and created something even more beautiful.
The Church must remain the shining city on the hill, the new Jerusalem, the lamp on the stand. The only way it will do this through architecture is to be truthful about its time, place and structure. The basilicas in Brasilia and Barcelona are a testament to this fact.
I think a lot of people outside the design community respond favorably to “traditional” architecture because it is familiar and comfortable. But Jesus did not ask us to be comfortable in our faith, our worship or our actions. Some mid-century architects took Jesus’ message to heart and developed religious architecture that was radically different. Sometimes it was a change of typology. Sometimes it was just a change in style. Many times, the congregations and the architects forgot the essential human desire for delight in architecture and they ended up producing cold, institutional or corporate spaces. When a sanctuary successfully incorporates scale, proportions, the play of natural light, liturgical considerations, warmth and texture of materials, and possibly a sense of awe or wonderment, it is well-received regardless of the architectural style. Let us not confuse style with beauty. There are plenty of terrible “traditional” churches out there as well - ones with poor sightlines, bad acoustics, obsolete layouts, etc.
This entire article seems like a big ad for these “traditional” archetectural firms. If I want a replica of great European landmarks, I’d go to Vegas or Disneyland. While these churches may imitate the great churches of Europe, there is something missing as they are just copies and are not the work of the Holy Spirit.
I was just reading, and I found a quote by Evelyn Walsh that might explain the attraction many Americans have to just copying the great works of Europe, “America, in his view, was ‘Substitute Land’ - a place of second-hand experience, phony culture, ‘debased’ language, and ‘counterfit’ art.”
My favorite example of a terrible church architecture? St. Benedict’s in Ransom, PA, which has a toilet but no choir loft. Priorities, folks. St. Benedict’s would make a lovely dinner theater.
Take a look at some “extras” in this picture taken in Belchertown, MA’s St. Francis Parish new church during its, should I say, “Grand Opening” Mass. Wonder if they got their incense from one of the local pot shops in the nearby college towns. How trendy, just like the altar taken from Fred Flintstone’s quarry, no doubt.
One can only imagine what might’ve been flitting in the minds of some of the old tyme local Swamp Yankees who perhance dropped in to catch the new parish’s first Mass in its new digs.
“SEE, WE TOLD YOU!”
And the old timers in that parish must’ve been muttering, “Hope nobody catches me here dead or alive ... Now where’s that exit sign!”
The Segrada Familia has nothing in common with your average 1970’s concrete-block “worship center.” Though we may not be art historians or architectural experts, most of us know ugly “when we see it.” If you are overwhelmed with disappointment the minute you walk into a church because it has all the ambiance of a gulag,(but none of the pure northern light) you understand ugly. Ugly is what you get when architects would rather create cathedrals to commerce and artists would be willing to make Christian art only as long as it would involve bodily fluids. The world’s gone ugly since God got banned from art and design inc.. You can’t blame us for looking to the past. People have had to make do with cobbled-up Brady Bunch building design and felt/tacky glue artisanship. And let’s not forget, ugly is cheap, in fact, that is the real beauty of ugly. Sadly, you also feel cheap when you are sitting there looking at it. And embarrassed. And you think of the time King David felt embarrassed about living in a palace while God still lived in a little tent. And how God told David he was giving his son Solomon the “privilege” of building a spectacular, Wonder of the World type Temple. God didn’t say, “Well, don’t worry about it, temples are expensive. Just whip up a quick cinder-block box, make some felt tapestry, you know, keep it simple.” Not too long ago, I graduated with a BFA. Art school is expensive, you wouldn’t believe the cost of oil paint and gesso. You wouldn’t believe how happy I was to leave my cheap, grungy apartment and walk into a beautiful 1920’s Roman basilica style church, even though it had stairs and lacked air conditioning and adequate heat. Just looking up at the beautiful painted ceiling and the spectacular mosaic portraiture lifted my spirits. “We lift them up to the Lord.” I was so grateful to the people (long gone) who built that church for me and God.
“architecture is to be truthful about its time, place and structure. . . . “
I’ve often read this sort of statement as if it were self-evident. But what if the present time is messed up and hostile to religious values?
There was a reason why churches were designed a certain way for so many years - not because it was “comfortable” but because the designs had stood the test of time and were functional. Many features of modern churches simply don’t work very well.
“Let us not confuse style with beauty.”
Agreed. The Gothic style does not make a church well-designed or well-built. But a style is not a neutral thing either. The fact is much of modern architecture is foreign not just to religious feeling but to human scale and sensibilities. By putting function before form, it neglected the symbolic, typographical, and iconographical significance of church buildings, all of which by definition are rooted in tradition. It’s not simply a matter of putting a few works of art in the building, but has to do with the scale, materials, layout, etc. of the building itself.
It’s interesting that the defenders of modern architecture have only a few examples of successful churches to point to, while traditional architecture has a glorious patrimony of masterpieces from St. Peter’s to a local parish church. Why fix it if it ain’t broke?
Sadly, ugly is not always cheap in terms of price—as I mentioned in my first comment, it cost our parish several million dollars!
Miss H: I can totally agree with you! You wrote how I felt for years!
Banish the ugly and bring back the beauty ! Innovation and new design can be done with incorporating elements of the past -that is what great architecture has always done. If it is ugly and uninspiring then it is a failure as so many churches built from the 1960s are! Ugly, horrible places that I always want to leave and keep my eyes closed in.
The commentary here is as interesting as the article! One might look at Chicago’s cultural and historical landscape. It is textured with hundreds of churches, dozens of which were built by the hands of ‘old world’ immigrants and are still filled with the fragrance of generations of prayer. Though following inherited patterns, one cannot reduce them to ‘European replicas’ because of they truly are foundational worship spaces fitted tightly into the weave of Chicago’s life blood. The way the architecture is ordered in historic and modern Catholic Churches evidences the theological roots and the aspirations of her people. A practical, fun study can be made by joining or requesting a tour through CatholicChurchTours.com.
CCT is right. Chicago is known for innovative architectual achievements—some great,many good and a few poor. The Catholic churches of Chicago, late 19th century and early 20th century were built by the inbound immigrant populations from Germany,Italy, Poland, Ireland, Hungrary, etc. What were these churches modeled after—European churches. Many of which were built to impress the population at large with their particular ethnic heritage.
Go to Chicago and visit them. Many are in declining neighborhood. The children of the immigrants have moved on. At what cost are they maintained or lack of maintenance by the declining congregations of these parishes. How long do we have to hang on to them?
It is nice to see churches returning to traditional form. Instead of some of the haybarns constructed to be places of worship with their modern degenerate art ‘stations of the cross’ and stautues insulting to the Sacred. Hopefully the whole Church will return to its roots and we have the “reform of the reform”.
I am a traditional religious artist
http://www.ericarmusik.com/religious-paintings-oil.html
and I owe my passion and talent to my attending mass each week in a traditional Gothic cathedral as a child.
I lived in a small mining town in northeast Pennsylvania. We didn’t have art museums or access to art history. All we had in abundance were mountains of black culm, abandoned coal breakers and a depressing local economy. There was a bright spot though for me, something I hadn’t even reflected on until years later as an artist. I had an art lesson each and every week - I went to 9AM mass every Sunday at St. Leo’s. What I came to realize years later is that time I spent allowing my eyes to wander all over the beautifully painted walls and ceiling influenced me more that I realized.
I have to wonder with all the garbage we call “Catholic church architecture” the last 50+ years, who will they inspire? My wife and I have been saying it for years and it is such a blessing to see others feeling the same way in this article and via the comments.
I know my calling and I am ready to dedicate my life to bring the beauty back.
God bless.
The post Vatican II churches were designed by Masons which is why the altar railings were torn down as it reflects a meal table and not an altar which represents a sacrifice. There is a presider chair. Look at any picture of a masonic lodge and compare it to a Vatican II church and you will see. Rome will lost all faith and become the seat of the antichrist as spoken by Our Lady in 1846.
Incroyable!!! An article about beauty in, and worship-ordered, church architecture! Never thought I’d read something like this in 21st Century, hip, edgy, post-post-ironic America. Particularly in a Catholic paper.
Here in L.A. we have a cathedral that is the epitome of Big-White-Box church architecture. The disgraced and degenerate Cardinal at the time chose Moneo from Spain as the architect, ignoring local renowned architsect Frank Gehry. Whatever you may think of Gehry, his buildings work. What we Catholics got was/is a building that is a foreigner’s conception of a non-denom Evangelist congregation’s converted warehouse church (common in SoCal with a lot of growing congregations in need of large square footage free-span buildings that can be easily converted). Many church bureaucrats, both lay and clerical, have falsely equated devotional traditions in architecture, worship and decor as outmoded pietism. The result of the cultural purges (dare I say “cultural revolution”?) imposed from above has been to strip the old and replace it with the mediocre and evanescent and fleetingly relevant. Church architecture for the last 60 years in general has been crude, uninspiring and replaceable. Nice to see this article. Who’d a thunk that followers of Cram would be mentioned in a Catholic publication today>
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