reorganisation and destruction of irish catholic churches

@Praxiteles wrote:

I do not think that Mircea Eliade would quite go along with this and the Muslims might think twice about letting in the chaotic. I think that you will probably find that Islam is much more detailed and demanding in the observance of its religious code.

Perhaps thats why its the fastest growing religion in the world.

A few years ago I designed a hotel in an African country for an Irish company.
The first option, looking resplendent in the jungle with domed rooms a la Hagia Sophia [hubris I know] was rejected on the grounds that only muslim buildings would have them.
It wasn’t a matter of the building looking like a Mosque per se – just “like a Muslim building”.

Whatever about Muslims avoiding representations of living things, Christians seem keen to avoid buildings they commission looking like “Muslim buildings.”

I don’t know the truth at the bottom of the matter but we had to develop Option 2.
Obviously the client hadn’t seen St. Paul’s in London or the Duomo in Florence.
Or any number of vernacular domed buildings in the Mediterranean.

Faith becomes contaminated by superstition, habit and experience.
Forms adhere to their imagined associations in the mind.

Bring on the altar rails!

ONQ.

Obviously the client hadn’t seen St. Paul’s in London or the Duomo in Florence.
Or any number of vernacular domed buildings in the Mediterranean.

And this for an IRISH company?

The interior of Graignamana before 1914 and before the onslaught of the 1970s

From the Journal of Sacred Architecture:

Cardinal Rigali Speaks on Sacred Architecture
by Justin Cardinal Rigali

Watch the keynote address of His Eminence Justin Francis Rigali at the recent conference on sacred architecture at Catholic University of America “A Living Presence: Extending and Transforming the Tradition of Catholic Sacred Architecture 2010 Symposium”:

http://live.cua.edu/ACADEMICS/ARCH/architectureConference2010.cfm

Below is the full text of his April 30th address, “An Exalted Mission: a Unique and Irreplaceable Role”:

I am very grateful for the opportunity to participate in the 2010 symposium, “A Living Presence: Extending and Transforming the Tradition of Catholic Sacred Architecture,” sponsored by the Partnership for Catholic Sacred Architecture, which is an impressive collaborative effort between the Schools of Architecture of the Catholic University of America and the University of Notre Dame. I deeply appreciate the gracious invitation to explore with you the esteemed heritage and promising direction of Sacred Architecture.

How fitting that as we do so we gather here, at the distinguished School of Architecture and Planning on the campus of The Catholic University of America. I wish to thank the Very Reverend David O’Connell, C.M., President of The Catholic University of America, and Dean Randall Ott, the Dean of the School of Architecture, for their support and encouragement of these proceedings.

Introduction

The mystery which we gather to reflect upon today is at once timely and timeless. Timely, because as Aimé-Georges Martimort has noted, “In our day the faithful have greater difficulty in achieving prayerful recollection and a sense of God’s presence.” At the roots of this difficulty is a crisis, a contemporary crisis that surrounds the sacred.

Our topic is also timeless, because God never ceases to call man to Himself. As God intervenes in human history, He both conceals and reveals Himself. He veils and unveils the signs of his presence, that we might respond and offer pure worship to his greater glory.

In the revelation of the divine economy of salvation, God never neglects time and space. As the eternal, invisible and infinite God, whose dwelling place is in Heaven, reveals Himself, He allows and encourages mortal, visible and finite human beings to call upon His name. As He makes known the hidden purpose of His will , He summons us to a sacred space in an acceptable time.

There are three practical and grounded guiding principles I would like to reflect upon concerning the vocation and mission of the architect and artist in the life of the Church.

First, from the very beginning, Sacred Scripture testifies that architecture and art are linked to the very nature of the plan of God. We can therefore never reduce the service of architects and artists to a mere function. Their important work is not simply an added enhancement to our relationship with God, but it actually serves to express our response to God. From the opening pages of Sacred Scripture, the gift and skill of the architect and artist occupy a recurrent and climactic place in the plan of God.

Second, we are reminded by the Second Vatican Council and the teaching of Pope Benedict XVI that the work of architecture and art takes place in and through dialogue with the Church.

Third, the mission of the architect and artist, which is based in Sacred Scripture, and conducted in dialogue with the Church, authentically develops only along the path of true beauty.

First Principle: Sacred Scripture testifies that the role and mission of architects and artists arise from the very nature of the plan of God.

Let us consider the first principle before us: Sacred Scripture testifies that the role and mission of architects and artists arise from the very nature of the plan of God. From the very beginning, the talents of artists and architects have been formed, and we could even say forged, by a unique relation to the plan of God.

As we know from Sacred Scripture, God is the divine Architect. God’s first act after creating man was to establish a suitable place for man to dwell. The Book of Genesis tells us: “Then the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and he placed there the man whom he had formed.” God creates the sacred place where the inner state of man, his original innocence, is signified by his external surroundings, the Garden of Eden. St. Thomas Aquinas explains that the east is the right hand of heaven.

When man disobeyed and sinned against God, man lost Original Innocence and was driven from this beautiful place, this sacred location. God banishes man from the Garden, and settles him in a different place “east of the garden of Eden.” God places man in a penitential space outside of the garden.

The call of God always reflects his loving design. Under the effects of sin, in the penitential place outside of paradise, the impulse for shelter arises from the human being’s basic instinctive need for safety and refuge from the elements. More wonderfully still, however, the human person moves beyond the mere impulse of instinct to the light of intuition. And here we detect the tremendous value of the work of the artists and architects for the Church: Artists and architects open themselves to the light of sacred intuition, and they direct its beam upward to construct and refine the instincts of man so as to prepare a dwelling place that may become a fitting sanctuary.

Classical theology has always emphasized that reason makes the continuous and ongoing effort to grasp what is held by faith so that we might be led to intellectual admiration of the mystery of God and thus be more prepared to offer adoration to God. The light of faith inspires the intuition of affection for a sacred place. Thus, while the work of architects and artists is both a science and an art, it is first and foremost an exalted mission. In the mystery of God’s presence, man’s intuition is always to claim a sacred space, a sanctuary from which he worships God for the glory which God has revealed.

As the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, “Sacred art is true and beautiful when its form corresponds to its particular vocation: evoking and glorifying, in faith and adoration, the transcendent mystery of God―the surpassing invisible beauty of truth and love visible in Christ, who ‘reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature,’ in whom ‘the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.’” The learning, dedication, skill and work of the architect and the artist serve to direct us deeper still to the One in whom we find shelter, the One who is our refuge and who sanctifies us: the living and eternal God.

Throughout the Old Testament, God makes use of natural locations and events to signify His presence: God appears on the mountain top, in the cloud, and in the storm. He also sanctifies those places made by human hands, the hands of architects: the tent, the Ark of the Covenant, the tabernacle, the Temple, and the Holy of Holies. At these sacred locations, on the occasion of specific feasts, time and place enter a holy alliance to dispose the people of God to offer fitting worship and sacrifice.

Noah plans and constructs the ark in faithful obedience to the design and measure given by God Himself. Immediately on stepping forth from the ark, Noah sets forth on another building project: He constructs an altar. In fact, throughout salvation history, the people of God mark the central places of their relationship with God by the building of an altar.

Abraham builds an altar at Shechem and there he calls “the Lord by name.” After crossing the ford of the Jabbock, and remaining there alone, Jacob wrestles with a messenger of the Lord until daybreak. Having persevered in the struggle, Jacob purchases the ground and establishes a memorial stone on the sight. At Bethel, Jacob dreams of a stairway which reaches from earth to heaven, and encounters God who promises to give him the land on which he sleeps. Jacob awakens and exclaims, “Truly the Lord is in this spot although I did not know it!” In solemn wonder he cries out: ‘How awesome is this shrine! This is nothing else but an abode of God, and that is the gateway to heaven!” Jacob then consecrates the stone he was lying on as a memorial stone and he makes a vow of faithfulness to God.

All that is foretold and foreshadowed in the Old Covenant is fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word, whose first dwelling among us was the womb of the Virgin Mary. He who has no place to lay His head purified the Temple, declared that He would rebuild the Temple, and suffered, died and rose again for our salvation.

The Acts of the Apostles says of the early Christians in Jerusalem: “Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple area and to breaking bread in their homes.” The early Christians gathered frequently in house-churches to break bread, receive instruction and offer prayers. When St. Peter was in prison, “many people gathered in prayer” at the “house of Mary, the mother of John who is called Mark.” Upon their release from prison, we are told that St. Paul and Silas go to the house of Lydia to “encourage the brothers.” In Troas, St. Paul gathers in an “upstairs room” with the brethren “on the first day of the week … to break bread.” Again, we hear in the First Letter to the Corinthians that St. Paul writes of the Church that is in the house of Priscilla and Aquila.

When God created man he placed him in a sacred location. When God saves man, He again places man in a sacred location and provides the design by which salvation is accomplished and celebrated.

As we consider this first principle, we come upon a clear truth: The people whom God called, the patriarchs and prophets, the apostles and disciples, were also architects and artists. Not in addition to their call, but on account of their call. They established the places and built the early altars from which God received worship.

Second Principle: The Second Vatican Council and the teaching of Pope Benedict XVI affirm that the work of architecture and art takes place in and through dialogue with the Church

This leads us to the second principle before us: The Second Vatican Council and the teaching of Pope Benedict XVI affirm that the work of architecture and art takes place in and through dialogue with the Church. As the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, teaches, “[A]fter speaking in many and varied ways through the prophets, ‘now at last in these days God has spoken to us in His Son’ (Heb. 1:1-2).” And His Son speaks to us through His Church. The Church has long engaged in dialogue and sought specialized and strategic collaboration with artists and architects.

As the Second Vatican Council emphasized, “Very rightly the fine arts are considered to rank among the noblest activities of man’s genius, and this applies especially to religious art and to its highest achievement, which is sacred art.” The Council Fathers continue, “[The]Church has therefore always been the friend of the fine arts and has ever sought their noble help, with the special aim that all things set apart for use in divine worship should be truly worthy, becoming, and beautiful, signs and symbols of the supernatural world, and for this purpose she has trained artists.”

The Holy Father points out that this dialogue has taken place throughout the ages, and is found in the luminous beauty of the great works of art. He emphasizes that the Christian faith gave a beginning to masterpieces of theological literature, thought and faith, but also to inspired artistic creations, the most elevated of a whole civilization: the cathedrals which were a renewal, a rebirth of religious architecture, an upward surge and an invitation to prayer. In Pope Benedict XVI’s words, the Christian faith “inspired one of the loftiest expressions of universal civilization: the cathedral, the true glory of the Christian Middle Ages.” The Holy Father explains that, “All the great works of art, cathedrals – the Gothic cathedrals and the splendid Baroque churches – they are all a luminous sign of God and therefore truly a manifestation, an epiphany of God.” The Venerable Servant of God Pope John Paul II also spoke of this when he said, “The cathedrals, the humble country churches, the religious music, architecture, sculpture and painting all radiate the mystery of the verum Corpus, natum de Maria Virgine, towards which everything converges in a moment of wonder.”

The architect develops, coordinates and contours the natural elements of the visible physical world so that man may be directed to a fundamental awareness of the grace-filled action of God. The ultimate meaning and purpose of sacred architecture is to convey an experience of the mystery of grace and salvation in Jesus Christ.

The revelation of God’s mysterious and awe-inspiring presence always evokes a response from man. This response takes place in and through the Church. The Second Vatican Council teaches that “the sacred liturgy is above all things the worship of the divine Majesty.” The Council makes clear that in considering anything to do with the sacred liturgy, we must always return to this foundation: that within the sacred liturgy we offer worship to the divine Majesty. This is both the premise and the objective of the rich dialogue which continues to take place between the Church and artists.

Pope Benedict XVI emphasizes the two central characteristics of the Gothic architecture of the 12th and 13th centuries: “a soaring upward movement and luminosity.” He refers to this as “a synthesis of faith and art harmoniously expressed in the fascinating universal language of beauty which still elicits wonder today.” He continues, “By the introduction of vaults with pointed arches supported by robust pillars, it was possible to increase their height considerably. The upward thrust was intended as an invitation to prayer and at the same time was itself a prayer. Thus the Gothic cathedral intended to express in its architectural lines the soul’s longing for God.” The Holy Father is equally attentive to the furnishings of the sanctuary: “Certainly an important element of sacred art is church architecture, which should highlight the unity of the furnishings of the sanctuary, such as the altar, the crucifix, the tabernacle, the ambo and the celebrant’s chair. Here it is important to remember that the purpose of sacred architecture is to offer the Church a fitting space for the celebration of the mysteries of faith, especially the Eucharist.”

The teaching of the Holy Father leads us to understand that the mission of the architect and the vocation of the artist bear a direct relationship to authentic liturgical theology founded upon the classical Trinitarian, Christological, Pneumatological, Ecclesial and Sacramental themes. Formation, education and study for service in the architectural or artistic disciplines arise from and coalesce around a robust encounter with the authentic teaching of the Church. The Council highlighted the important role of bishops in the dialogue with artists and architects: “Bishops should have a special concern for artists, so as to imbue them with the spirit of sacred art and of the sacred liturgy.” The Second Vatican Council called for every diocese, as far as possible, to have a commission for sacred art, and to have dialogue and appeal to others who share this expertise. The Catechism of the Catholic Church reiterates, “For this reason bishops, personally or through delegates, should see to the promotion of sacred art, old and new, in all its forms and, with the same religious care, remove from the liturgy and from places of worship everything which is not in conformity with the truth of faith and the authentic beauty of sacred art.” Priests, as principal collaborators with the bishop, likewise have a special responsibility to have a vibrant awareness of the gifts which artists and architects bring to the Church. Pope Benedict XVI affirms that “it is essential that the education of seminarians and priests include the study of art history, with special reference to sacred buildings and the corresponding liturgical norms.”

Beauty, in its inextricable connection to the true and the good, is the center of gravity of all the liturgical sciences. And this is because the liturgy is foremost the work of the Most Holy Trinity, in which we participate. Beauty changes us. It disposes us to the transforming action of God and thus is one of the principal protagonists of advancing the universal call to holiness. Fascination with the sacred frees us from fixation on the secular. Expressions founded upon purely secularist influence do not refresh us. They exhaust us and fragment our perception. The static and abstract expression of merely functional facades simply does not capture or articulate the brilliant and resplendent mystery of God. Architectural form is never incidental or expendable. Utilitarian styles fail to inspire and so often leave a space barren and bland. We simply cannot tolerate indifference to the healthy traditions. The separation of artists and architects from dialogue with the Church leads to a fragmentation and subsequent breakdown of authentic liturgical renewal. Our starting point in advancing the liturgical renewal is always dialogue, not polemics.

All effective dialogue in the Church continues in the spirit of what Pope Benedict referred to in his Christmas Address to the Roman Curia in 2005 as, “the ‘hermeneutic of reform’, of renewal in the continuity of the one subject-Church which the Lord has given to us.” The Holy Father continues, “[The Church] is a subject which increases in time and develops, yet always remaining the same, the one subject of the journeying People of God.”

Two architectural experts recently gave an example of fruitful and effective dialogue with the Church. The Italian architect Paolo Portoghesi, in an article which appeared in L’Osservatore Romano, emphasized that “legitimate progress” must always flow from and not be indifferent to the “sound tradition” of the Church. Professor Portoghesi maintains correctly that we must assess the design and model of Church buildings so as to preserve and restore architecture which is based on the authentic tradition of the Church so that the sacred liturgy is celebrated in a fitting manner. The authentic tradition is our guide when we are faced with diverse interpretations of legitimate progress associated with liturgical renewal.

Professor Portoghesi emphasizes, “In recent years the fashion of so-called minimalism has revived a kind of iconoclasm, to exclude the cross and sacred images and to strip the image, outside of any residual analogy with the traditional churches.” A style that lacks consistency with the central mysteries of the faith necessarily puzzles us and drains us of our expectancy.

Maria Antonietta Crippa, Professor of History of Architecture at the Politecnico of Milan, has noted that, because of the significant cultural changes in the years since the Second Vatican Council, society “has seen fluctuations between outcomes of radical secularism and the recovery of lively religious sense.”

Authentic dialogue is guided by reflection on the third and final principle before us today: The mission of the architect and artist, which is based in Sacred Scripture and conducted in dialogue with the Church, authentically develops only along the path of true beauty.

Third Principle: The mission of the architect and artist which is based in Sacred Scripture, and conducted in dialogue with the Church authentically develops only along the path of true beauty.

Beauty is not simply one path among others. Pope Benedict XVI teaches, “Everything related to the Eucharist should be marked by beauty.”

The Holy Father spoke of a “via pulchritudinis, a path of beauty which is at the same time an artistic and aesthetic journey, a journey of faith, of theological enquiry.” During the celebration of the 500th Anniversary of the Vatican Museums, Pope Benedict pointed out that the artistic treasures of the Church “stand as a perennial witness to the Church’s unchanging faith in the triune God who, in the memorable phrase of St. Augustine, is himself ‘Beauty ever ancient, ever new.’”

In his Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis, Pope Benedict XVI emphasized that, “The profound connection between beauty and the liturgy should make us attentive to every work of art placed at the service of the celebration.”

Those whose senses are trained for the via pulchritudinis can discern a stirring within the continuous sacred stream of history, an unceasing movement of sublime splendor arising from ancient foundations and inherited in the detail of noble themes down through the ages.

In his Address to Artists last fall, the Holy Father stated, “Indeed, an essential function of genuine beauty, as emphasized by Plato, is that it gives man a healthy ‘shock’, it draws him 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, carrying him aloft.”

The Holy Father continued, “Authentic beauty … unlocks the yearning of the human heart, the profound desire to know, to love, to go towards the Other, to reach for the Beyond. If we acknowledge that beauty touches us intimately, that it wounds us, that it opens our eyes, then we rediscover the joy of seeing, of being able to grasp the profound meaning of our existence, the Mystery of which we are part; from this Mystery we can draw fullness, happiness, the passion to engage with it every day.”

Contemporary society believes at times that beauty can come from a product one buys in a store, or can be won in a contest. Authentic beauty is immune to age, it is always young, and it can never be contained by a mere title. Beauty attracts us as it charismatically aligns itself in symmetry and proportion, congruent with its primary characteristics of authentic truth and goodness. The durability and permanence of the structures which mark our solemn celebrations draw the eye to hope and lead the heart to reflection. In 2004, then-Monsignor Bruno Forte, Professor of Systematic Theology at the Pontifical Theological Faculty of Naples, Italy, and consultant to the Pontifical Council for Culture was called upon by Pope John Paul II to offer the annual retreat and spiritual exercises to him and members of the Curia. In the midst of his reflections, Monsignor Forte noted, “The God of Jesus Christ … is anything but a God of total and tactless manifestation.” In his most recent published work, now-Archbishop Bruno Forte notes, “[T]hrough beauty’s brightness … the splendor of the Whole bursts forth in the fragment, and lays hold of the believer.” As great depictions express the mysteries of the faith, they inspire and sustain devotion within the depths of our hearts. In such a setting, the believer is led to gather impressions through a unity of perception and to grasp more fully an experience of the totality of the divine mysteries. As Pope Benedict noted less than one year ago in his homily for the Reopening of the Pauline Chapel, “The paintings and decorations adorning this chapel, particularly the two large frescoes [which depict the conversion of St. Paul and the crucifixion of St. Peter] by Michelanglo Buonarotti, which were the last works of his long life, are especially effective in encouraging meditation and prayer.”

The revelation of the splendor of God is never ambiguous. It changes hearts and renews lives. The many styles and forms from specific periods and regions are all part of the rich heritage of sacred art and architecture. As Duncan Stroik has noted, “Art from the past is a window onto the faith and practice of a specific time, but it can also speak to all ages. To reject periods, other than our favorites, as either primitive or decadent is to miss out on the rich tapestry of art and architecture that the Church has fostered.” Beauty has an immediate and direct relation to culture. As the Council explained, “The Church has not adopted any particular style of art as her very own; she has admitted styles from every period according to the natural talents and circumstances of peoples, and the needs of the various rites. Thus, in the course of the centuries, she has brought into being a treasury of art which must be very carefully preserved.”

The creative intelligence of artists continually seeks to draw forth vibrant forms from the material structures which surround us. Prayerful reflection, study of classical motifs, knowledge of the various schools of design, meditative architectural planning, extensive and specific development of a systematic understanding of the importance and role of architecture nourishes faith. The thoughtful design and strategic placement of sculpture, painting, decoration along structural elements of the body of the interior façade and exterior face are meant to evoke prayerfulness, foster meditation and aid reflection. The use of natural light, historic styles and noble design are meant to point us deeper into the mystery of Jesus so that we contemplate the words of St. John with renewed awareness: “And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”

Conclusion

In preparation for the Great Jubilee Year 2000, Pope John Paul II wrote a Letter to Artists. Ten years later, Pope Benedict XVI met with artists in the solemn setting of the Sistine Chapel on November 21, 2009. The Holy Father took that opportunity “to express and renew the Church’s friendship with the world of art,” noting that “Christianity from its earliest days has recognized the value of the arts and has made wise use of their varied language to express her unvarying message of salvation.” Today we fulfill in some measure the Holy Father’s invitation to “friendship, dialogue and cooperation” between the Church and artists. Our conversation today serves, in the words of Pope Paul VI, to render “accessible and comprehensible to the minds and hearts of our people the things of the spirit, the invisible, the ineffable, the things of God himself. And in this activity, you are masters. It is your task, your mission; and your art consists in grasping treasures from the heavenly realm of the spirit and clothing them in words, colors, forms – making them accessible.” Together we seek to cultivate a sense of wonder and anticipation and to pursue a strategy of recovery and renewal.

Artists and architects are composers who play a unique and irreplaceable role as the narrative of salvation history unfolds. Their talents usher the senses into an experience of the mystery of God. Through maximizing extraordinary gifts of their God-given genius, artists and architects are called to construct and restore an avenue into the luminous depth of God’s revelation and convey the continuing presence of the sacred in buildings meant for worship. The Church values deeply your specialized education gained from the periods of apprenticeship and the long years of professional service in the expertise of your various disciplines.

We come together today from our various vocations and specialties of skill for fruitful and effective dialogue: architects, theologians, faculty of the various schools, artists, liturgical consultants, engineers, students―clergy, religious and laity. As we gather to consider the role and mission of those who serve the formation of sacred architecture, we ask the same question that St. Peter and St. John asked the Lord Jesus in the Gospel of St. Luke, “Where do you want us to make the preparations?” And we gather to listen to the answer of Jesus: “When you go into the city, a man will meet you carrying a jar of water. Follow him into the house that he enters and say to the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says to you, “Where is the guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?”’ He will show you a large upper room that is furnished. Make the preparations there.”

Jesus sends us in the same life-giving direction, to the place that is furnished by the Holy Spirit and prepared by the Church to receive the Word made flesh who dwells among us. Not only do the beautiful creations of artists and architects lead us to contemplate the mysteries of the faith, but the very manner in which these men and women pursue their most practical and sublime science of architecture and art casts a more distinctive radiance on our path―the path of the Church, and leads us to the One who has emptied himself for our salvation and has gone ahead of us to prepare a place for us. St. Paul tells us in the First Letter to the Corinthians, “Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for the temple of God, which you are, is holy.” St. Paul also tells us, “So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone. Through him the whole structure is held together and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord; in him you are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.”

As we await and prepare for that eternal moment in which the divine Architect will invite us to meet Him, may we, in the words of St. Peter, become “like living stones…[and] be built into a spiritual house to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”

Thank you.

@Praxiteles wrote:

From the Journal of Sacred Architecture: Cardinal Rigali Speaks on Sacred Architecture

. . . . . The Holy Father explains that, “All the great works of art, cathedrals – the Gothic cathedrals and the splendid Baroque churches – they are all a luminous sign of God and therefore truly a manifestation, an epiphany of God.”

Again, that is a scandalously selective presentation of facts.

Consider the Residenz in Wurzburg:

a glimpse of the ‘Kaisersaal’ which is the centrepiece of the garden front and a sketch of one of the flanking wings.

The Residenz is a vast, opulent, baroque palace built by the corpulent Schonborn brothers, sussessively Prince-Bishops of Wurzburg, between about 1720 and 1745.

The architect was the same Balthasar Neumann, who created the masterpieces of rococco church architecture at Vierzehnheiligen, Neresheim and elsewhere, and here he did . . . . much the same thing . . . . but this time the only religious connection is the titled position [and vast resources] of his patrons.

Unquestionably the Residenz is another ”great work of art”, but is it ”a luminous sign of God and therefore truly a manifestation, an epiphany of God” ?

I suspect that the rosy cheeks of the Schonborns would blush even brighter at that notion.

Johann Philipp Franz von Schönborn (Würzburg, 15 February 1673 – Bad Mergentheim, 18 August 1724) Prince Bishop of Würzburg.

From the Journal of Sacred Architecture:

Depicting the Whole Christ: Hans Urs von Balthasar and Sacred Architecture
by Philip Nielsen, appearing in Volume 16

The theological work of twentieth-century theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar has only recently begun to take its proper place in Catholic theology. In his lifetime he certainly took a back seat to contemporaries such as Karl Rahner, Yves Congar, and those men who were known as the theological architects of Vatican II. Balthasar never attended Vatican II, unlike so many of his fellow theologians and friends. This absence, combined with the difficulty inherent in classifying such a diverse corpus as his, has slowed his acceptance as a theological authority in the Church. But for the past thirty years—since the election of John Paul II to the Holy See—Balthasar’s star has risen as one of the great theologians after Trent, a status that the election of Balthasar’s close personal friend and theological sympathizer Joseph Ratzinger to the Chair of Saint Peter seemingly stamped with an imprimatur of the highest rank. At Balthasar’s funeral, Henri Cardinal de Lubac described him as “probably the most cultured man in the Western world.” Indeed, when one looks at the cultural topics that Balthasar treated, Cardinal de Lubac’s statement becomes hard to refute: Balthasar wrote his doctoral dissertation on German literature; his first major work was on music; he was one of the foremost patristic scholars of his time; and, thanks to his father’s practice of church architecture in Switzerland, he loved the visual arts and architecture.

Portrait of Hans Urs von Balthasar

It is due to his expansive cultural awareness that Hans Urs von Balthasar’s corpus does not describe a program or system for sacred art; for a system would too greatly limit both the workings of the Spirit and the creative freedom of the artist. Rather, Balthasar persistently meditates upon the first principles of the drama of prayer, and only out of these principles can his understanding of sacred art and architecture be gleaned. Above all, his understanding of prayer begins by placing silent contemplation at the core. Only through this silent contemplation can we hear God’s Word to us and enter into union with his Word. This study of Balthasar’s view of architecture suggests an approach to sacred architecture in the modern world based upon how the drama of prayer inhabits the form of sacred art and architecture.

The natural place to begin a study of Balthasar’s understanding of contemplation is the same place he believes all theology must begin, namely, with the creatureliness of man. Balthasar repeatedly quotes the famous passage of the Fourth Lateran Council that states: “As great as may be the similarity, so much greater must the dissimilarity between creator and creature be preserved.” The distance between God and his creatures should not be brushed aside or taken for granted, because it is the first key to understanding the glory of God. Not surprisingly, Balthasar emphasizes the principle of creatureliness in the writings of the Fathers of the Church. In Presence and Thought, his groundbreaking work on Saint Gregory of Nyssa, Balthasar begins by describing the saint’s habit of beginning his theological works with “spacing,” that is, with an emphasis on the dissimilarity between God and man: “Every time he undertakes a development of the fundamentals of his metaphysics, Gregory begins from the irreducible opposition between God and creature.” Balthasar’s description of his model Saint Gregory could justly be applied to Balthasar himself. Opposition, however, is not something that keeps man from communion with God; rather, it is only through an understanding of God as incomprehensible that the drama can begin to unfold. As Balthasar explains: “‘Incomprehensibility’ does not mean a negative determination of what one does not know, but rather a positive and almost ‘seen’ and understood property of him whom one knows. The more a great work of art is known and grasped, the more concretely are we dazzled by its “ungraspable’ genius.”

The Franciscan Church in Lucerne, Switzerland, was the church Hans Urs von Balthasar attended when he was a child.

The distance between God and his creatures properly silences the worshipping participant. Awe-inspired silence becomes the starting point of the liturgy: “prayer, we can now see, is communication, in which God’s word has the initiative and we, at first, are simply listeners.” Neither is this task of silence too difficult for man. On the contrary, it is that for which he was created: “Since God himself has made us such that, to be truly ourselves, we have to listen to his word, he must, for that reason, have endowed us with the ability to do so.” The danger at the initial stage of the liturgy is all too clear: that the participants may drown out the Word with their chatter, with their opinions, with their noise—with a one-sided conversation originating and ending in man. Not even communal liturgy can substitute for personal silent prayer. Balthasar exclaims:

As if a break of two minutes after the sermon or after communion could satisfy man’s elementary need of silence in God, of communion from heart with him! And who can, as he swallows the Host, “realize” what Holy Communion means? Does he not need for that the unfunctional, silent “adoration of the holy of holies”? Or silent, personal meditation on the Holy Scriptures?

God speaks to man in his silence, and then man is caught up into the heavenly conversation of the Trinity:

In John, Jesus summarizes his whole mission in the “high-priestly prayer” (ch. 17) in which he commends all his work, from his going forth from the Father to his return to him, into his Father’s hands. Even in his dying words he is still in dialogue with God. Christians of all ages, including now are drawn into this prayer. There is no excuse; no evasion will be permitted. Nor may refuge be sought in mere action, nor simply in the liturgy.

God does not simply speak down to man, leaving him in his earthly state; through Christ, he catches the contemplator up with him into heaven. Balthasar’s anatomy of prayer consists, therefore, in three parts: first, the participant is silent; second, God speaks the Word to man in his silence; third, God catches man up into the divine conversation. The liturgy does not replace the personal prayer of the Church, but rather it flows out of it. For Balthasar, action and liturgy ground and manifest the fruits of personal prayer, but they never replace it.

The Word God speaks to man is the Logos of Scripture—Jesus Christ himself. As the Word spoken by God to Man, Christ is the perfect “image” of God because he is God, the visible mediator of the invisible Creator. For this reason, when Balthasar asks the question whether contemplation should be “Image-filled” or “image-less” he is able to answer simply: “In this much—discussed matter all depends on whether the contemplator is a Christian or not. If he is not a Christian, he will from the beginning strive for imageless contemplation. … For the Christian all is different.” He goes on to explain that that, in this sense, Christianity is unique in the world, in that it is based upon Christ who is the “Son, radiance, reflection, Word, Image.” Not only is Christ the Image of the Father, he surrounds himself with images of himself in the form of parables. Christ, in his parables describes common things, rocks, wheat, sheep, and his use of them causes “even the rocks to cry out.” These stories provide a key part of the Image of the Father that Christ presents. The Church too, as the body of Christ, acts as an image of Christ. Parables, Christian art, even the lives of the saints, are thus, images of the Image Christ.

Saint Joseph with the Infant by Guido Reni, 1635.

For Balthasar, a Church totally devoid of images is not something that could concentrate the eyes of the congregation purely on Christ (as many Protestant and even some Catholic thinkers would assert), but is rather much more akin to a Gospel in which half the parables of Christ were removed. It is against the justification of iconoclasm that Balthasar writes: “If a people were to be incapable of creating genuine religious images or statues for the churches, it should not say that empty walls concentrate the spirit more effectively upon what is essential. If we have become a small people we should not seek to reduce the mystery we celebrate to our dimensions.” We should make no mistake, however; the incapacity of “creating genuine religious art” would be a huge loss in Balthasar’s mind. The Church would lose in art one of the fundamental images of Christ. And yet, if the image were to become ugly, then they would no longer be a truthful image of Christ. Guido Reni’s Saint Joseph with the Infant, for example, illustrates the image of Christ in a way that adds depth to the story alone. A blank canvas represents a loss for the Church, but an ugly painting would have conflicted with the image of Christ and been worse than a blank canvas. Christ is the Word, and sacred architecture, Sacred Scripture, and the liturgy reveal the Image of Christ in their unique ways, so that they must all work in unison to provide a fuller image.

In the wake of Balthasar’s expression of the principals of prayer, especially distance, silence, dialogue, and image, the direction that sacred architecture should take becomes clearer and its pitfalls less hidden. First, sacred art and architecture should avoid taking on merely human dimensions, seeking rather to preserve the “dissimilarity” between God and his creatures. Sacred architecture’s first duty is to create a sense of “spacing” between God and man. The church, but especially its sanctuary, must clearly depict a distance between God and his creatures. A church that looks like a living room makes an awareness of the difference between Creator and creature more difficult to perceive—it makes it an act of near heroic virtue. “Spacing” can be achieved first and foremost by scale, ornamentation, art, and architectural cues such as rails, screens, stairs, or curtains. All of these elements, insofar as they make the glory of God more clear to the participant, express true beauty. This beauty must lead to God, however, not simply to an aesthetic experience. “The awareness of inherent glory,” writes Balthasar, “gave inspiration to works of incomparable earthly beauty in the great tradition of the Church. But these works become suitable for today’s liturgy only if, in and beyond their beauty, those who take part are not merely moved to aesthetic sentiments but are able to encounter that glory of God.” Architecture, just like sacred music or art, must fulfill its highest calling, aiding the participant in seeing the glory of God.

Saint Giles Catholic Church rood screen in Cheadle, Staffordshire, designed by August Welby Pugin in 1841.

An architecture that is ordered to fulfill only its human, or even liturgical use, fails its higher purpose: “For good reason the people of the Middle Ages built cathedrals larger than a liturgy could fill. Only in an age when one gives up personal prayer in order to be simply a communal animal in the church can one design churches which are determined purely functionally by the services of the congregation.” Balthasar’s “good reason” is twofold: the medieval cathedrals were built on a grand scale to glorify God and preserve distance—but they were also built to accommodate personal devotions, reverence of relics, and personal prayer beyond the scope of the public liturgies. God brings himself near to man through these encounters even as distance creates awe. Sacred architecture must accommodate these personal devotions if it is to fulfill Balthasar’s expectations. The danger of an architecture that does not accommodate personal prayer and devotion, or Eucharistic adoration, is not, within Balthasar’s drama of prayer, one that fails in merely a “secondary” purpose. For, though Balthasar would certainly not deny the centrality of the Mass, the spiritual benefits for the person attending Mass depend upon one’s own personal devotion. To deepen the public prayer of the Church, architecture must accommodate personal devotions as well.

For a Balthasarian Church to witness both to the distance between God and man, and accommodate the personal devotions of the participants, its guiding principle must be the silence and rest that are the beginning of prayer. A double danger exists here: first the architect might create a space that is silent, not with a living silence, but with the silence of the tomb where there is nothing to inspire awe, longing, or the understanding that the repose should lead to prayer. Secondly, the architect might create a loud architecture that wars with contemplation. The architect might create the necessary “spacing” between God and man through a wholly unique and even strange church without accompanying this distance with the necessary repose. This “spacing” without repose might, for example, occur in a poorly executed baroque church, a non-tectonic church, an anti-symmetrical church, or any sacred architecture that disregards the principles that allow the architecture to rest.

A war on silence could include either agitated architecture designed only to excite or unsettle, a merely communal architecture that does not allow for any places in which personal devotions may be practiced in solitude, or an architecture that is constantly in flux with renovation and fuss. On this final point Balthasar acknowledges that renewal may sometimes be necessary, but that it can fall into change for the sake of change: “What a welcome alibi it provides for a new clerical dirigisme, for a busy clerical activity which never stop moving the altar around, fumigating churches, buying new vestments for the servers and a thousand other oddments, while all the time it is putting the emphases in the wrong place.”

If bustle and noise are the wrong place, what is the right place? An ideal Balthasarian church building has shown the distance between God and his creatures. It has awed and silenced the faithful. It has enfolded them in its side chapels to await the Word from God, the Logos. But where in the architecture is the image of Christ to be found? Balthasar answers—everywhere— every image of the life of Christ, every station of the cross, every statue of a saint, every stained-glass window works as an image of Christ. The architecture must orchestrate as much imagery as it can without destroying the “repose” of the building. These images are the image of Christ who bridges that “spacing” or gap that first brought the faithful into awareness of their need for God. The rood screen separates man from God, but it is called a rood screen because it is surmounted by an image of Christ on the “rood,” or cross. The altar rail divides men from God, but that is exactly where Christ meets them in his own Body and Blood. When iconoclasts destroyed the images and whitewashed the cathedrals (whether the Protestant iconoclasts of the sixteenth century or the modernist iconoclasts of the twentieth), they preserved the question in the stones and mortar, but hid the answer that existed in the images. When the crucifix is removed the rood screen does become simply a barrier. When the icons are removed, the iconostasis becomes a wall.

Salisbury Cathedral, consecrated in 1258, is an example of a church stripped of its images in an attempt to focus the congregation upon God.

The nature of these images must, ultimately, depict the “whole” Christ, not simply a part of him. Thus, sacred art and architecture must not reflect only a few sides of Christ’s nature and mission. Balthasar writes, “Every element calls for the other, and the more penetrating the gaze of the beholder, the more he will discover harmony on all sides. If one essential element should be broken off … all the proportions will be distorted and falsified.” Christ must be depicted in a vision that is as whole and multisided as possible, and a church that makes reference to only a part of Christ necessarily presents a distorted view of Christ: “The eschatological theme, taken on its own, is incomprehensible without the cadence of Christ’s suffering. The vertical form of the Son of God who descends from the Father and goes back to him illegible without the horizontal form of historical fulfillment and the mission entrusted to the apostles.” The goal of an art or architecture that strives to depict the “whole of Christ” summarizes Balthasar’s understanding of appropriate forms of sacred architecture.

No architectural form or program can depict the “whole” of Christ. Clearly some sacred buildings do not live up to Balthasar’s expectations of a church, but not even the best church can perfectly fulfill the mission of sacred architecture. Some churches are more silent than others (many Cistercian monasteries for example), and some churches inspire more awe (Saint Peter’s and Chartres), but no single church perfectly expresses the glory of Christ. A program for perfect architecture is always attractive: some have claimed that decorating the sanctuary with the scenes of the Wedding Feast of the Lamb constitutes the proper backdrop to the mysteries being celebrated; or that the saints should never find their way into the images of the sanctuary; others have suggested that every church should be built in a Gothic, classical, or Romanesque manner. But as John Henry Cardinal Newman, a particular hero of Balthasar, put it, “There is no one aspect deep enough to exhaust the contents of a real idea, no one term or proposition which will serve to define it; though of course one representation of it is more just and exact than another.” Balthasar opposed “systematic” studies of either theology or art—not because these fields are not full of truth, or because this truth is unintelligible, but because systems tend to reduce that which they study to their dimensions.

The University of Basel, where Von Balthasar served as chaplain.

In Truth is Symphonic: Aspects of Christian Pluralism, Balthasar returns to Newman’s concept of the many-sided nature of an idea. Balthasar develops the idea of a symphony as an analogy for Christian doctrine: “The difference between the instruments must be as striking as possible. Each one keeps its utterly distinctive timbre, and the composer must write for each part in a way that this timbre achieves its fullest effect.” This analogy can be applied to architectural styles with ease: Byzantine Church architecture, in order to achieve its full effect, must become even more distinct from other styles, not less. When John Paul II spoke of the Western Church needing to “breathe with both lungs” as regards the East, for example, he did not mean that the West should somehow become quasi-Eastern, but that both should work in concert with a distinctive timbre, expressing the oneness of God’s truth through their unique traditions. Architecture, like creation, is a facet of the doctrine of plenitude: the distance between God and his creation, of the goodness of his creation, and even more of His goodness in coming to his creation through Christ, the Image of the Father: “In the Symphony … all the instruments are integrated into one sound.” The breadth of sacred architecture constantly grows, just as theology grows; but art and architecture cannot lose contact with the reality of silence, creatureliness, beauty—or the Word.

Philip Nielsen has studied both theology and architecture at the graduate level at the University of Notre Dame. He has written on aesthetics for various journals, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and Ignatius Press.

Gunter!

Brief outline on von Baltasar here:

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Urs_von_Balthasar

(The French article is more geared towards an intellectual biography of von Baltazar)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Urs_von_Balthasar

and here:

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Urs_von_Balthasar

There is some useful introductory material on von Baltasar here:

http://hansursvonbalthasar.blogspot.com/

Praxiteles,

You keep trying to educate me, Will you stop, I can’t absorb any more information.

I believe in simple things, like the more elaborate the theory, the more unlikely it is to be true.

Pro Cathedral Dublin shorwing Tornielli’s High Altar