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Church design can enhance worship experience By Michelle Martin What makes a church Catholic? Canonical requirements call for remarkably little: a table to serve as an altar, a tabernacle to reserve the Eucharist, a place for the word to be proclaimed and a place for the people to gather. The church also must have places for the sacraments of reconciliation and baptism, and guidelines suggest at least one cross, an image of Mary and an image of the church’s patron saint. But ask Catholics what they want their church to look like, and you get far more detailed—and often emotional—answers. Most expect pews and kneelers, at the very least, along with Stations of the Cross, statues and maybe stained glass. Many are more comfortable with churches that have a raised sanctuary in the front of the church. Many like churches that remind them, in style at least, of the grand cathedrals of the Middle Ages, albeit with central heating and air conditioning. Joe Kelsch, director of development at St. Anne Parish in Barrington, agreed that churches must honor the long-standing, rich Catholic tradition of worship. But they also must take into account changes in the liturgy since the Second Vatican Council closed in 1965, he said. St. Anne parishioners will dedicate their new church April 30, after nearly 20 years of holding most weekend Masses in the parish center gym. Some contemporary designs can enhance the quality of worship on a very practical level, he said. For example, some designs can help keep members of the congregation involved in the liturgy by making sure all of them can see and hear the Mass, he said. For some Catholics, though, the trend in church design over the last 40 or 50 years has moved too far from the traditions they revere. For them, a church must be more than a comfortable, functional place to worship. Churches should be elaborate, beautiful places that lift the mind and move the soul. But as Gothic cathedrals once were called “catechisms in stone,” modern churches also express the Catholic faith, said Father Philip Horrigan, director of art and environment for the archdiocese’s Office for Divine Worship. But without a doubt, many new or newly renovated churches express the faith in a different way, and make people think differently about their faith. “There’s not one style of house, there’s not one style of office, there’s not one style of public building. But the built forms always relate in some way to what we want to do in that space,” he said. “There’s a relationship between the ritual form and the ritual function. Worship is a human exercise, and it is shaped by the place where it happens.” The issue has taken a front seat in parishes over the past few decades, especially since the publication of a document called Environment and Art in Catholic Worship in 1978. The recommendations in that document, put out by a committee making recommendations to the National Council of Catholic Bishops, supported more simplicity in church design. The recommendations in that booklet might be significantly revised by “Domus Dei,” a document the bishops began reviewing at their November meeting. After the meeting, Cardinal George addressed the issue in his column in The Catholic New World. The draft of “Domus Dei” that the bishops reviewed contains much helpful material, the cardinal wrote, “but it became evident to me in working through it that we have not yet imagined how all the elements of the Church’s liturgy are to be united spatially. … What we need is a new architectural school and style.” Helen Hull Hitchcock edits the “Adoremus Bulletin,” a newsletter that has followed discussions of church architecture closely, particularly proposed church renovations that have stirred controversy among their parishioners. In January, she gave a speech to Catholic Citizens of Illinois titled, “Can We Still Build a Catholic Church?” in which she decried the destruction of the traditional interiors of many churches around the United States. In an interview, she said, church designers should respect the parishioners’ traditions, especially when they renovate a church in which some parishioners have worshipped for decades. “People grew up with these churches,” she said. “And to take a church that was built in one style and try to strip it down needs to be looked at very carefully. Horrigan, who consults with archdiocesan parishes, understands that people often feel more comfortable in a familiar environment. “We have comfort zones for where we pray or where we live,” Horrigan said. “But sometimes it’s good to challenge that comfort zone because there’s a reason to look at it differently. We still know that change often is not easy, even though we live in a constantly changing world.” But Catholic churches cannot be limited to one way of expressing their faith. Just as the neo-Gothic churches of the 19th and early 20th centuries stressed the importance of the paschal sacrifice with elaborate altars and artwork, an austere, even stark church can focus attention on the central act of the Mass. Hitchcock agrees that churches need not all look the same, but, she said, they also should not look like Protestant meeting houses, built to house a congregation rather than to house God in the form of the sacrament of the Eucharist. “It actually is ‘Domus Dei,’ the house of God. It is not a cult, it is not a myth. This is a reality for Catholics.”
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