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The Church Building as Sacramental Sign and Neighborhood Center A Lecture By: Philip Bess The architecture of the post-conciliar Catholic Church is noteworthy above all for the manner in which its forms typically have been shaped by the alleged demands of the post-conciliar Catholic liturgy, as interpreted by “liturgical consultants.” I here want to challenge this recent practice, not on the basis that the liturgy is unimportant---it clearly is important---but rather on the bases that there both has been historically and now ought to be more that goes into our thinking about church architecture than simply making forms suited to the liturgy. And for this I think it is necessary to turn briefly to the history both of architecture generally and church architecture in particular to examine both some natural and some historical foundations for thinking about church architecture. Catholics believe that Grace completes nature, after all; and that Grace manifests itself in specific historical contexts that are themselves being directed by Grace toward history’s telos in the City of God. So let’s give some thought to both nature and history. The diagram on the screen, again, is Leon Krier’s. Its intent is to illustrate both the relationship and the difference between building and architecture; and I show it to illustrate a premise. There is some debate about how self-conscious primitive human beings were about our first buildings; but there is really no debate that our oldest examples of architecture are of sacred architecture, buildings literally offered to the sacred; nor is there any doubt that, compared to vernacular building, these examples are, in a word, monumental. Broadly speaking, all sacred architecture exhibits some or all of the following six characteristics (though specifically Catholic church architecture is also characterized by a specifically Catholic iconography); these characteristics are:
Grace completes nature, we believe; so I want to begin by focusing upon two of these characteristics---verticality and unity---as naturally constituent elements of sacred architecture. [SLIDE 41] We often hear talk that associations of verticality with the sacred are a kind of carryover from the culture of Newtonian physics from which we post-Einsteinians would do best to free ourselves. But this represents both an abstracted and---more significantly---disembodied assessment of the category of the vertical and the symbolic meanings we attach to it. If we---consistent with both empirical observation and the teaching of the Church---think of the human person, the self, as both embodied and relational, then verticality and its significance may be best understood not in terms of the abstract relativity of up and down, but rather in terms of the relationship of the human body to a physical context of gravity in which up and down are in fact not abstract categories at all. The perceptual psychologist Rudolf Arnheim has described succinctly the elemental importance of verticality for human beings in his 1975 book The Dynamics of Architectural Form. Human beings, he writes, experience ourselves in the world asymmetrically. Among the infinitely many directions of three dimensional space along which [a human being] theoretically can move, one direction is distinguished by the pull of gravity: the vertical…. Geometrically there is no difference between going up and going down, but physically and perceptually the difference is fundamental. Anybody climbing a tree, a ladder, or a staircase, feels he is striving to overcome a counterforce, which he locates in his own body as weight. Thus the gratification in climbing consists in the conquering of one’s own inert heaviness for the purpose of attaining a high goal---an experience inevitably endowed with symbolic connotations. Climbing is a heroic liberating act; and height spontaneously symbolizes things of high value... To rise…from the earth is to approach the realm of light and overview…the achievement of enlightenment and an unobstructed outlook. Digging below the surface, on the other hand, means becoming involved with matter rather than relinquishing it…. To dig is to explore the foundation on which all life rests and from which it sprouts. Digging creates an entrance to the realm of darkness, and therefore it stands symbolically for deepening, i.e., for exploring beyond the superficial. Whereas rising is the means of becoming enlightened, digging makes the light shine in the darkness. In architectural circles, the formal and spatial representation of the intersection of the transcendent vertical with the imminent horizontal is called an axis mundi, the sacred axis of the world around which life and the world are organized. It is a minor but I think telling point that although the most recent bishops’ document on architecture “Built of Living Stones” speaks of both the transcendence and the imminence of God, the word "vertical" occurs nowhere in the text. Nor is there any suggestion in the document of symbolizing the transcendence of God in the height of the church building and its interior space. It is perhaps not surprising therefore that post-conciliar churches are noteworthy for their comparative absence of verticality. As Arnheim suggests, to downplay the significance of the vertical dimension may accord with our abstract knowledge of nature. It is however contrary to both our bodily experience and our symbolic instinct. Unity should be of interest to us as well, because of its intrinsic relationship to beauty. "Built of Living Stones" says that church buildings should be beautiful, but has relatively little to say about the nature of beauty itself. Now, beauty is an almost meaningless category in modernist art and architecture. Modernists will talk of function and modernists will talk of meaning and modernists will talk of things being of our time. But modernists will rarely talk of beauty; and when they do it usually requires some prior explanation of why some modernist thing is beautiful, because its appeal is not immediately apparent to the senses. If we look more closely at the Catholic intellectual tradition however, and specifically to Thomas Aquinas and to Leon Battista Alberti, we find some suggestive ideas that amount to uncommonly sophisticated characterizations of our ordinary common sense of beauty. St. Thomas says that something is beautiful when it is well made; when it exhibits unity and a harmonious relationship between the parts and the whole; and when it possesses the virtue of "clarity," i.e., when it reveals the essence of the kind of thing it is---in other words, not a lot of explanation needed. (That Thomas Aquinas: he was pretty good!) Alberti’s characterization of beauty is better known to architects, but is similar to Thomas’s. Beauty is "the harmonious relationship between the parts and the whole in whatsoever subject it occurs, such that nothing could be added, subtracted, or altered but for the worse." These two definitions may be inadequate for settling every dispute over aesthetics; but are sufficiently clear to at least help us to settle some. Grace reveals itself in history, we believe. If the foregoing considerations have suggested some general implications from nature for sacred architecture, the considerations that follow touch upon the history of Catholic church architecture in particular. I offer them to draw your attention to the formal logic of historic church form and its relationship to Christian liturgy. [SLIDE 42] There are two paradigmatic forms of Christian church: the centralized plan and the basilican plan, with several variations on each type. If I may speak in an abstract and diagrammatic way of the formal logic of these two paradigms I would say that while both of them can be characterized as possessing a formal unity, the unity of the centralized plan (owing to its omni-directional quality) is a unity of stasis and perfection; while the formal unity of the basilican plan (owing to its privileging of a particular direction) is a unity of dynamism and procession. [SLIDE 43] I spoke earlier of the idea of the axis mundi, the sacred vertical axis of the world around which life and the world are organized; and the diagram of the axis mundi in a centralized church plan is about as simple as can be, reflecting the unity, simplicity, and repose essential to the circle and the sphere. [SLIDE 44] Now, where the formal logic of the centralized plan is omni-directional from a single point and hence static, the formal logic of the basilican plan is linear and hence dynamic. It entails procession: the movement of the faithful along a path, at the end of which---in the sacrament of the Eucharist---we encounter God. Its axis mundi looks like this. In the prototypical basilican plan church [SLIDE 45], there is a high nave with side aisles, with the nave terminating on a typically semi-circular / hemispherical apse-cum-sanctuary framed by what is in effect a triumphal arch, beneath which is often a baldacchino or canopy that shelters the altar and creates what is in fact a kind of localized axis mundi [SLIDE 46]. This basic basilican plan was transformed in the middle ages first for pragmatic reasons into the cruciform plan [SLIDE 47], but which quickly became symbolic of the church as the body of Christ, in which the nave was crossed with a transept. To the east of the crossing of nave and transept (typically) was located the choir and sanctuary and, at the farthest end, the altar. Nevertheless, whether in its original basilican form or in its cruciform version, and with or without a dome, a critical feature of this plan form itself has always been its linearity. Consider now the relationship between church form and liturgy, and the logic of each; and that there is an observable and perennial (albeit perhaps unnecessary) "mis-fit" between the liturgy and the formal logic of both historic and contemporary church buildings. [SLIDE 48] Think, for example, of the centralized church plan and the implications of its formal order for the liturgy. Catholics believe that Christ is present in the worshipping community in a variety of modes---in the consecrated bread and wine upon the altar, in the Word preached from the ambo, in the person of the celebrant, in the assembly of the faithful, in the waters of baptism, and in the church building itself. Of these, the hierarchically most prominent element of the liturgical celebration is the altar, because the eucharistic celebration is "the source and the summit" of the Church’s shared life in Christ. So, given the formal logic of the centralized plan and its strong axis mundi, and giving pride of place to the positioning of the altar, where would we expect to find the main altar in a centralized church plan? I contend that both considerations would rightly lead us to look for the altar directly under the dome; at the center of the space; at the axis mundi. But in fact, we almost never see this. Why not? Why is the altar in a centralized church plan typically set to one side of the space, which by the abstract formal logic of the plan is entirely arbitrary? Well, one reason is the liturgical custom in the west of locating altars whenever possible to the east, toward the sun and toward Jerusalem. But there’s another reason, an anthropological reason. Although the space in a centralized church is omni-directional from its center point, we don’t see the altar at the center of the space because human beings are not omni-directional. We have a front and a back; and this makes the formal "fit" between the centralized church plan and the celebration of the Eucharist intrinsically problematic. [SLIDE 49] The fit between formal logic and the liturgy is only a little less problematic in historic basilican plans. The formal logic of the proto-typical basilican plan is a procession of the faithful to encounter Christ in the eucharist. The altar and sanctuary are located in the apse, the axis mundi that intersects with and guides us on our path through life to the Heavenly City, and the place from where we receive spiritual nourishment for the journey. The formal problem with the proto-typical basilican plan is that it locates the altar in an incomplete space, the hemispherical / semi-circular apse. The axis mundi is not as clearly symbolized under the "incomplete" form of the apse as it is under the complete form of the dome; [SLIDE 50] and this I suspect is one of the reasons for the appearance of the baldacchino over the altar, to better represent the axis mundi, the point of intersection between the sacred and the mundane. [SLIDE 51] The typical cruciform plan, on the other hand, presents us with another apparent mis-fit between the liturgy and the architectural form, both similar to and different from the tensions between church form and liturgy we found in the centralized plan. In the cruciform plan, the intersection of the nave and transept at the crossing creates the implicit axis mundi, a formally "complete" location that is also the destination of the procession of believers. [SLIDE 52] Nevertheless, this is not where one typically finds the main altar in pre-conciliar churches, which instead is again located in the sanctuary at the east end of the plan. Note in all these examples that I am not saying there are not legitimate reasons for the location of the altar; rather I am pointing to a certain tension between the formal logic of historical churches and the liturgical practices occurring therein. [SLIDE 53] This historic tension persists in contemporary church architecture. But where in the past the Church as architectural patron was able to live more or less happily with these tensions, our impulse today is different (if not relentlessly bureaucratic and inartistic). The very first principle of new or renovated church building, we are advised in Built of Living Stones, is that the church building "serves the needs of the liturgy." Let me here re-introduce the suggestion that church building indeed should serve the needs of the liturgy; but that this in fact should not be the first principal of church building. Because the implication of this is that the liturgy dictates the form of the building. But, as I have just tried to suggest, it has not done so historically; instead, we have a history of church architecture in which there has been a constant negotiation between architectural typology, the liturgy, and what I daresay is no less than the evangelizing mission, the witness, and even the identity of the church. And what happens when we focus too exclusively on the liturgy as the generator of form? The architecture, and consequently the evangelism, of the church suffer. [SLIDE 54] [Let me here offer visual relief from the previous slide, and as an aside say something about Catholic evangelism. I was raised a Baptist, so I know something about a certain style of evangelization; and I also know that evangelization is a word that makes most Catholics nervous. But Catholics do have a very definite evangelical style, whether we actually think of it that way or not. How does the Roman Catholic Church---how do Roman Catholics---evangelize? Catholics evangelize by modeling the corporate and individual Christian life in settings ranging from the parish to the family to the hospital to the university to the monastery. And here a pertinent thought from that alleged bane of theologians and American Catholics, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger:
Buildings, sacred or mundane, are not merely the result of interior activities and their influence; buildings have other roles to perform as well, public roles. So we might question the presupposition that church buildings should express first and foremost the liturgical activities they shelter. A thoughtful critique of this presupposition can be found in an essay by Father Timothy Vaverek in the Spring 2001 issue of Sacred Architecture, entitled "The Church Building and the Paschal Mystery: Assessing the NCCB Document Built of Living Stones." I can’t go deeply into Father Vaverek’s argument; but part of what makes it compelling is his reliance not on pre-conciliar or extra-conciliar assumptions about the church and the liturgy, but on the relevant Vatican II documents themselves. Father Vaverek argues that the first duty of the church building is not to represent the liturgical activity within. It is rather to be an image of the Church as a whole, of that communion of God and human beings across time wrought through the Paschal Mystery of Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension. The entire building, quoting Father Vaverek is therefore "sacramental" in that it visibly represents the Church, the kingdom of God present now in mystery… The church building is an icon of the Church herself and a witness to the kingdom. According to Vatican II, the Trinity has chosen to accomplish the saving work of Christ’s [Paschal Mystery] in and through the Church… The paschal work of the Church is shared in various ways by all her members, living or dead, under the headship of Christ as the basis for all Christian [witness] and ministry. It follows that daily life and [emphasis added] liturgy are equally real participations in Christ’s saving work… Therefore, it would be an egregious error to limit the realization of the Paschal Mystery, the spiritual life of Christians, or the activity of the Church to liturgical celebrations. There is more to the Church and Christianity than the liturgy. Now, Father Vaverek’s point here clearly is not to devalue the liturgy generally, or the Eucharist in particular, as "the source and summit" of Catholic faith and communal life. It is rather to say that the Paschal Mystery provides the context for Catholic liturgy and not vice versa; and not only for the liturgy, but for the life of individual prayer, for works of charity, for evangelization, for communion with Christians living and dead in the universal church, and—yes—even for church architecture. So if we consider the future of church architecture from the premise that the church building is properly conceived as an icon of the Church herself, then what form or forms should 21st century church buildings take in accordance with post-conciliar ecclesiology and sacramental theology? I have two answers to that question, one as a matter of what seems to be in accord with Catholic history and principle, and the other as a matter of prudential judgment suited to our own particular moment in history. As regards the former, it is evident on the one hand that there is no one form or style of church architecture that can be labeled as the correct form or style of church architecture. On the other hand, it does not follow that there are no proper formal criteria for church architecture. I have already suggested six characteristics common to sacred architecture generally that seem to me grounded in created nature and human nature, and suggested also that there is yet another set of iconographic criteria specific to Christian churches generally and Catholic churches in particular. So what I would like to do first is suggest a set of rationales for different church forms and styles that the Church herself has seen fit to adopt over the course of her earthly sojourn. (Just to clarify: I am speaking of course of the “forms and styles” the Catholic Church has adopted throughout her history, not necessarily her rationales for adopting them. Please note also that I am not suggesting my list of either forms or rationales is exhaustive.) Common to all of these rationales is an argument that the church building itself in some way reflects something of the nature of the Trinitarian God who has revealed Himself through created nature and in human history through Jesus Christ and various manifestations of the Holy Spirit. What I am suggesting about church architecture is analogous to the Catholic Church’s encouragement and recognition of religious orders. There are hundreds if not thousands of religious orders within the Catholic Church with a distinctive identity (or “charism”) who are recognized by the Church as having a specific vocation of service to or on behalf of the Universal Church. To take an obvious example: the Cistercians have a distinctive way of life and a distinctive vocation on behalf of the Church; but the Church does not require that all her children be Cistercians, nor are the Cistercians permitted to presume that only Cistercians are true Catholics. Similarly, I want to suggest that there are a variety of legitimate church forms and styles that may be suitable for certain forms of Catholic community, but not necessarily for all of them. So to begin my very loose taxonomy:
It is only in such terms that one can adequately understand the practical austerity of Cistercian church architecture, which was characterized by square east ends, the absence of crypts and towers, and which in effect banished all art and ornament that was not structural. I have quoted St. Bernard at length because I want to raise the question of the appropriateness of modern architecture for Catholic church buildings; because there is a superficial resemblance between Cistercian austerity and modernist abstraction and functionalism; and because I want to segue’ from a consideration of what legitimately may be permitted for Catholic church architecture to what I would recommend as prudential judgment to Catholic parishes and dioceses. There are of course many modernist Catholic churches, some of them quite notorious, and some of the most notorious even quite recent. But I hope it is easier to see now than it might have been a generation ago that most modernist Catholic churches have been a spiritual, aesthetic, and evangelical disaster, partly because they are often poorly built but primarily because Modernism refuses to recognize the validity of the idea of type: in this case, that “churches should look like churches.” At present, modernism is the default architectural embodiment of an Enlightenment cultural ethos, key aspects of which---e.g., positivist rationality, disembodied gnostic abstraction, suburbia as a cultural ideal---are both overtly anti-Catholic and have failed even by their own standards. The Catholic Church really needs to be a more savvy patron here. She need not limit herself to Catholic---or even Christian---architects; but little good purpose is served by hiring architects both ignorant of and hostile to Catholicism. In time, the Church in her catholicity may well grant the modernist aesthetic a proper place within the larger intellectual and aesthetic tradition of the Church---perhaps for pilgrimage churches like Ronchamp, or for latter-day spiritual athletes in the ascetic tradition of the medieval Cistercians. But I would argue: not for ordinary parish churches and cathedrals, and not now. This brings us to my second, more prudential, answer to the question “What form or forms should 21st century church buildings take in accordance with post-conciliar ecclesiology and sacramental theology?” My first thought is that in our hung-over-from-modernism condition, our best bet is going to be some form of self-imposed limitation. If the suggestions that follow seem remedial, it’s precisely because our church architecture needs healing. And while I have hope for our recovery, we must not deceive ourselves about the seriousness of our current disease. [SLIDE 63] Assuming the Church intends neither her ecclesiology nor her sacramental theology to be contrary to nature, to the best traditions of the church, and to the "rightful independence of earthly affairs," I suggest we look again at the cruciform church plan as the primary model for both parish churches and cathedrals. This is not a recommendation once for all time. But perhaps the cruciform church should be the preferred plan for ordinary churches until such time as architects demonstrate that we are able to achieve (say) 75% of the quality of what were regarded as recently as 75 years ago as ordinary Catholic churches. The cruciform plan as a favored typology offers the following advantages:
[SLIDES 64, 65] How might the interior arrangements of the cruciform plan church demonstrate that "fit" between the building, ecclesiology, sacramental theology, and liturgy? Well there’s lot’s of examples I could show, like Notre Dame de Paris, or Santa Maria dei Fiore in Florence, or Il Gesu and Sant’Ignazio in Rome (all of which you may note that I have shown, if you’re still with me); and all of these are old churches whose cruciform plans in certain ways are arguably better fitted to current liturgical practices even than to past liturgical practices. Thus we see how the main altar at Notre Dame is now located directly at the crossing---arguably, as it should be. [SLIDE 66] But here let me speak of the paradigmatic virtues of St. Peter’s basilica---not because it’s necessarily the best example I might have chosen, but rather because it is both a model of excellent architecture as well as an instructive diagram. And besides, I have some good pictures of it. What can we learn from St. Peter’s? First, the altar and sanctuary are located at the hottest architectural spot in the church: at the crossing, under the baldacchino under the dome, above the tomb of St. Peter, on the axis mundi connecting all three. The altar is slightly elevated for visual purposes. Communion is received at the level of the congregation. Second, the primary seating for the congregation is in the nave, with secondary seating in the transept. This is a reasonable seating arrangement for the form of the church, for the liturgical action, and for the directionality of the human person. [SLIDE 67] Third, the apse of St. Peter’s itself is now used for both the choir and as a chapel. In a church modeled on this form, this would also be a splendid location for the tabernacle of the Blessed Sacrament, at the end of the horizontal axis that connects the entrance, the nave, the altar, and possibly the presider’s chair (though there may be a good argument to be made for taking the presider’s chair off axis). Given this diagram for the location of all these elements, what else would I recommend for the interior elements of the church of the 21st century as an icon of the universal and particular church? Several things:
Of the major visual interior elements of the church, this leaves only the baptistery, I think; but I have yet to see anywhere either a baptistery or a baptismal font that can successfully carry all the symbolic weight associated with baptism as a rite of initiation and purification performed at mass, outside of mass, at the Easter vigil, by total immersion, by sprinkling, in the front of the church, at the entrance to the church, or historically even outside the church. There’s obviously no one preferred place for the baptistery; and I think any of you out there who can find a way to locate a baptistery so that it can do all these things without usurping the hierarchy of the other essential elements of the church building deserves at least a raise, and possibly beatification. Best I think to make the decision on the basis of either symbolism or pragmatism, and then just live with the downsides. All this leaves unanswered some big questions: What does the church of the 21st century look like? What style is it? I indicated some stylistic options earlier; but please note that here I have been speaking of church architecture primarily in terms of verticality, unity, beauty, and formal type; but not of style. There are two reasons for this. One is because the Church herself mandates no particular style of church architecture. The other is because verticality, unity, beauty, and type, though real as attributes of buildings, are by themselves abstractions. They are not not NOT a recipe for church architecture or any other kind of architecture. There is a huge gap between liturgists and architects on this issue, and much confusion among architects themselves. Architecture is the art of building. It is a craft learned by imitation and criticism, toward the immediate end of achieving competence and learning to make good judgments; and the final end of achieving and perhaps surpassing the craft’s historic standards of excellence. As "the art of building," all architecture shares a concern for what architects call "tectonics," the basic constructional principles of all building. "Styles," however, differ; and the church has always recognized this, implicitly if not explicitly. But styles---by which I mean no more and no less than a shared aesthetic sensibility embodied in buildings and extended over time---depend upon healthy traditions for their transmission and development; and there’s the rub… The dominant ideology of 20th century architecture was anti-traditional. It lacked in principle an intellectual justification for sustaining itself as anything other than an incessant search for novelty. It was also abstract, adversarial, utopian, messianic, and dis-interested in materiality; in its gnosticism simultaneously positivist and spiritual; and it emphasized discontinuity rather than continuity. Ideologically it was at best, like Marxism, a Christian heresy. Now, I’m not suggesting there are no good modernist buildings, or even good modernist churches. I simply note that they are rare; as well as the irony that the best ones were created by architects who were educated as traditionalists. A further irony is that the best modernists today understand themselves to work in an aesthetic tradition, which in itself represents a departure from the ideology that continues to dominate contemporary architectural culture. [SLIDE 71] It appears to me however that the qualitative trajectory of contemporary modern architecture is downward. There is a poignant passage at the end of "Built of Living Stones" about how good Church buildings proclaim her faith in visible signs and evangelize the neighborhood, the city, and the nation. Non-believers point to them as stunning examples of art as well as mysterious, public symbols of Christian piety. [SLIDE 72] Well, this is certainly true of traditional churches, even ordinary parish churches such as these in my own Chicago neighborhood, both built in the 20th century. It even may be true of a handful of early modernist churches. I’ve heard many non-Catholics express exactly these sentiments about historic sacred architecture; I felt them myself when I was not a Catholic. But I’ve been hanging around the culture of architecture for over 20 years, and have lots of non-Catholic friends (both architects and normal people); and it saddens me greatly to report that I have never heard a non-Catholic say a complimentary thing about the aesthetics of post-conciliar churches. They do frequently ask me however: What went wrong with Catholic church architecture?
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