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by Jim Holman.
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No Glazed Doughnuts, No Lunar Landing Pods

New Book on Catholic Architectural Tradition

BY CHRISTOPHER ZEHNDER

One should not, I suppose, test his reactions to the avante garde in the company of the intolerant. But my first experience of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles was in just such company — my then-15-year-old son and a friend of marked traditionalist taste. Their reaction to the place was decidedly negative, to put it mildly. And mine? Perhaps it was my companions' cold-blanket effect, but I was left cold. I felt no repulsion. No stomach-twisting disgust. In the presence of the cathedral I experienced what I have experienced in '60s era government buildings — a clammy indifference.

Yes, the cathedral is big, very big. That was impressive, I suppose. It has nice materials, too. Yet, except for the baroque Spanish reredos kept on historical display, I could perceive nothing very Catholic about the place. It was like the new J. Paul Getty without the beautiful art.

What was lacking? A new book, just out in December, answers the question better than I could have. In Tiers of Glory, The Organic Development of Catholic Architecture Through the Ages, is the latest offering of author Michael S. Rose, best known for his examination of the sorry state of American seminaries in Goodbye, Good Men. But before that bestseller, Rose wrote works on architecture and church art — Renovation Manipulation and Ugly as Sin. And, besides being an investigative journalist, Rose holds a bachelor's degree in architecture from the University of Cincinnati and a Masters in Fine Arts from Brown University. In In Tiers of Glory, Rose returns to a beloved topic.

Unlike his previous works on church art and architecture, Rose's latest work does not so much show what is wrong with modern churches as what is right about traditional church architecture. In a pleasing picture-book format and with a layman-friendly text, Rose shows how Catholic church architecture has, until last century, followed an organic development. Beginning with the temple in Jerusalem and enriched by the Roman basilica plan, church architectural styles throughout the ages have blossomed from what has gone before: the romanesque flowered into the gothic; the baroque and renaissance drew from these previous epics. The book also discusses 19th century revivalist movements, their weaknesses and strengths, and then moves into the modernist era, which, Rose argues, represents a break with the organic tradition. In connection with modernism, Rose speaks to Californians by featuring the original design for the proposed Oakland cathedral and that fait accompli, Los Angeles' own Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. Rose's final chapter speaks of contemporary attempts to restore Catholic church architecture, giving an approving nod to the design of the chapel for Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula.

Rose told me last November that writing this book was something of a relief after his more controversial works. "It's something to be immersed in beauty eight hours a day rather than [scandal]," Rose said. "This book focuses primarily on the beauty of Catholic churches throughout the ages, rather than Ugly as Sin or Renovation Manipulation, which focus primarily on what is wrong with modern church architecture and renovation." The book's positive spin, though, might make it a harder sell because "it is not so readily identifiable with some sort of scandal," Rose said. "I wrote a book called Priest, profiles of ten good men serving the Church, as a follow-up to Goodbye, Good Men — and, of course, all the critics of Goodbye, Good Men didn't even review the book."

But whether a hot topic or not, the theme of In Tiers of Glory — architectural style — is important. "Christ didn't deliver architectural styles to the apostles," Rose said, "but at the same time, Christ was made incarnate, so He is an embodiment of God in a way that is unprecedented and unique and, above all, true. With Catholic church architecture, there's the same embodiment of the Faith; you're trying manifest the Faith. It's true that Mass can be celebrated in prison, on a cot, but is that the best way to celebrate Mass? Is that the best environment in which to celebrate Mass? You want to shoot as high as possible. We have the luxury of looking back at 2,000 years of church architecture to see how that was accomplished. The outward manifestation [of a church building] should complement what goes on inside; not just the Mass, but also devotions. The church building should also teach and catechize and be a prelude of the liturgy."

According to Rose, traditional Catholic church architecture did and does complement what goes on inside (or should be going on inside.) Though devotees of modern church architecture such as that seen in the Los Angeles cathedral, the Millenium Church of the Jubilee in Rome, or Sao Sabastiao cathedral in Río de Janeiro, sometimes defend it as an expression of the post-Vatican II liturgy, Rose says they are misguided. "I think that's a misinterpretation of Catholic church teaching, even up to the post-conciliar documents — and I cite those in Renovation Manipulation," Rose said. "But if you go back to Sacrosanctum Concilium in the Vatican Council and look at what it says, there's nothing to support that. It's a misrepresentation at the highest level. There's nothing that supports that except the whims of man."

And since modern architecture is finally an expression of individual caprice, it can not adequately express the mystery of Christ's Church. "Modernism is predicated on the whole notion that you cannot use history or tradition to inform the works of today because that is showing that you have a lack of creativity, that you lack an understanding of the modern world — that you have a lack of understanding of what is needed in today's society," Rose said. "Richard Meier's Millenium Church of the Jubilee church design was the most conservative of the designs invited to that competition; there were six architects, several of them were from Los Angeles, including Frank Geary, who designs buildings that he believes will probably be knocked down in 20 years. You can't apply that to Catholic church architecture, because a building is consecrated as a church forever — at least that's the intent, and so one should be designing for eternity, so to speak. But the modernists really want to do something for their time only."

For modernist architects like the Swiss Le Corbusier, the kind of building being designed (office, church, concert hall) is not important, but "the sculptural properties evaluated as sculpture," said Rose. "In my critique of the Los Angeles cathedral, I mentioned it was evaluated not as a Catholic church but as a piece of architecture by itself. It could be a museum, it could be this, it could be that, as far as its form is concerned. But I think it needs to be evaluated as a Catholic church, primarily because that's what it is."

In contrast to the Catholic religion, which is objective, modern architecture "in most cases," said Rose, "is purely subjective. Say, it's 1955, and you have someone who is so enamored of science fiction drawings of what lunar landing pods are going to look like when we can send men to the moon; he starts designing churches to look like those forms because he likes them. That's pretty subjective. That's exactly what happened, and in the book I have a picture of one of those churches that was built on the idea of lunar landing pods and other imagined forms of space travel."

Rose said modern church designs are quickly dated, and "if you can tell what date a thing was built, it's not a very successful Catholic church building; there's not the sense of historical continuity and permanence. It's ephemeral."

But are not historical church designs also dated? Are not the gothic, the romanesque decidedly medieval? And isn't the renaissance clearly and unmistakably, well, renaissance? The difference, said Rose, is that these older designs, unlike modernism, rose out of and continued a tradition. Renaissance design, he said, "could be criticized as just a return to a previous time, a pagan time, even. But in the pagan times they understood proportion; they used the geometry, and there is an objective beauty. The baroque rose of its own time, but much of it was based in previous times, including the renaissance, and its reference to centuries before that. The gothic rose out of its own time, but it also played upon the elements of the romanesque, and the romanesque was based on the early Christian basilica before it. If we come to the drawing board in the 21st century, the question shouldn't be, how can we express the modern age. The question should be, do we want to express the modern age? And the answer would be, no, because it's at a cultural nadir in many ways." And it has been severed from tradition.

What, however, is the alternative to modern architecture? In Tiers of Glory, Rose dedicates a chapter to 19th century revivalist movements in church architecture, such as the neo-classical and the neo-gothic. Of these movements, Rose writes, "the willingness to look to historical 'styles' of the past, although commendable to a point, had its drawbacks. An indiscriminate ecclecticism, borrowing architectural elements from various styles, resulted in churches that were easily criticized for their lack of harmony; 'inauthentic' use of materials, inappropriately placed statuary and ornamentation, and ill-proportioned architectural elements betrayed a lack of artistic skill and historical understanding.

"Ultimately, the architects of this period often failed to look to the past in order to inform their own work. Rather, they looked to the past in order to duplicate a certain 'look' or 'feel,' but lacked both the technical skill and artistic flair to properly recreate the masterworks of past ages." [Emphasis in original.]

In the final chapter of In Tiers of Glory, Rose treats of current attempts at a "restoration" of Catholic church architecture, such as those being carried out by American architects Thomas Gordon Smith and Duncan Stroik, both of Notre Dame, Indiana. Among the projects featured in this chapter is the proposed chapel for Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula. Why, I asked Rose, could not the criticism of 19th century revivalism be leveled also at modern restorationism? Are not both merely imitative of the past, duplicating "a certain 'look' or 'feel'"?

"I don't think so," Rose said. "Let's take the Thomas Aquinas College chapel, for instance; on the facing page there is All Saints Church in Kentucky. Both of those are by Duncan Stroik; and if you look at Stroik's work, if you listen to him talk, he obviously has a profound understanding of the history and tradition of Catholic architecture. And he uses the elements; he does not mix and match styles or just do something in a style just for style's sake — which is rather subjective as well. He's able to use and draw on the canons of historical church architecture in order render something that is permanent.

"Maybe some of the comments that I made in the revivalist movements chapter may be misunderstood," Rose continued, "but I think if you look at a lot of the churches that were built across the country in the last century, before the modernist era, the architects didn't understand simple concepts such as proportion. I'm not saying there are not a lot of beautiful churches as well, but a lot of times it was just a box put up with a lot of candy kind of decorations. In a sense, many modernists are reacting to some of that bad architecture. I've been in churches where you look at the statuary and it looks like a glazed doughnut; it's gaudy. People say, 'don't you love our church?' And you say, 'it's better than a lunar landing pod, but something is just not quite right...."

Rose said he does not dismiss the possibility that a modern architecture could be developed that is both within the tradition and uniquely of our own time. The 19th century Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi and his Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona, he said, is an example how something like that can be done. "Gaudi was an architect who tried to design something for our own times with his own touch, so to speak, but also was very much grounded in tradition. He was known as a traditionalist, and he was laughed at by the socialists and the revolutionaries. He was a former Mason, he converted to become a hard-core Catholic, and he was trying to complete his magnum opus when he was run down by a streetcar on his way to the Sagrada Familia, where he lived. I used him as an example of someone who is trying to create that mix. Some people hate and some people love it. A lot of his work is his interpretation of art nouveau. Imagine French churches designed in the art nouveau — that would have been an expression of its own time and could have been expressed in a way that was grounded in tradition and organic in its growth."

The same could be done today, but with much care. Craig Hartman, the designer of Oakland diocese's proposed Christ the Light Cathedral, was partly right, said Rose, when he said, "the tradition of the Catholic Church has historically been to apply the most advanced architectural thinking to create works of architecture that illuminate, inspire and ennoble the human spirit." But then again, good church architecture that is both traditional and modern is not simply a matter of bending steal and glass into gothic or romanesque forms. "This whole idea of using modern materials, like steel and glass with traditional forms that we reinterpret for our own time — it's almost too much of an emphasis on style rather than the canons of architecture," Rose said. "It's even worse than faux gothic. It's experimental faux gothic. Even the faux gothic buildings, where you have a wood panel painted to look like stone — well, there's something rather faux about that. But a reinterpretation in an experimental way can even be worse."

An additional problem with Hartman's statement, said Rose, is that, "today, architecture as a profession is at a low point. The best things in our culture are not exhibited in architecture anymore."

Those who have visited Our Lady of the Angels cathedral might readily concur.

Michael Rose's book, In Tiers of Glory, may be purchased for $29.95 at www.dellachiesa.com. This website, hosted by Rose, also offers other interesting resources on the subject of Catholic church architecture.

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