New Vatican commission cracks down on church architecture

A team has been set up, to put a stop to garage style churches, boldly shaped structures that risk denaturing modern places for Catholic worship. Its task is also to promote singing that really helps the celebration of mass. The “Liturgical art and sacred music commission” will be established by the Congregation for Divine Worship over the coming weeks. This will not be just any office, but a true and proper team, whose task will be to collaborate with the commissions in charge of evaluating construction projects for churches of various dioceses. The team will also be responsible for the further study of music and singing that accompany the celebration of mass.

Cardinal Antonio Cañizares Llovera, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and Benedict XVI, consider this work as “very urgent”. The reality is staring everyone in the eyes: in recent decades, churches have been substituted by buildings that resemble multi purpose halls. Too often, architects, even the more famous ones, do not use the Catholic liturgy as a starting point and thus end up producing avant-garde constructions that look like anything but a church. These buildings composed of cement cubes, glass boxes, crazy shapes and confused spaces, remind people of anything but the mystery and sacredness of a church. Tabernacles are semi hidden, leading faithful on a real treasure hunt and sacred images are almost inexistent. The new commission’s regulations will be written up over the next few days and will give precise instructions to dioceses. It will only be responsible for liturgical art, not for sacred art in general; and this also goes for liturgical music and singing too. The judicial powers of the Congregation for Divine Worship will have the power to act.

As is known, last 27 September, Benedict XVI transferred jurisdiction of two areas, from the Congregation for the Divine Worship to the Rota Romana (the Holy See’s Court of Appeal), under the motu proprio Quaerit simper. The first of these areas is the nullity of priestly ordination, which similarly to marriage, can be annulled due to defect of form, consensus and intention, by both the ordaining bishop and the priest who is ordained. The second area is the special licence for marriages that have been contracted but not consummated. These are practices that occupied a lot of Cañizares’ time as head of the dicastery.

In his motu proprio, the Pope explained: “Under the current circumstances, it seemed convenient for the Congregation for Divine Worship and the discipline of the sacraments to be mainly devoted to giving fresh impetus to the promotion of the Church’s sacred liturgy, according to the renewal required by the Second Vatican Council since the establishment of the Sacrosanctum Concilium.” The dicastery must therefore devote itself to “giving fresh impulse” to the promotion of the liturgy, giving it the focus insisted upon by Benedict XVI, including and above all by showing an example. In this aspect, in contract to the initial plans, the idea of a liturgical “reform of the reform” (an expression used by Ratzinger himself when he was a cardinal), seems to be eclipsed by a large-scale project favouring the ars celebrandi and a loyalty to the dictates and instructions of the new missal. It does so without proposing any modifications to the mass.

It is worth remembering, in fact, that the abuse of the liturgy that has gone on in recent decades, becoming common practice, is committed against the laws established by Paul VI’s liturgical reform. It is not therefore the reform that needs to be amended; rather, further study into the sense of the liturgy and its proper celebration is needed and must be salvaged in some cases. It is for this reason that the Congregation for Divine Worship intends to promote the training of priests, clerics and catechists, starting from the bare basics. By following the example and teaching of Benedict XVI, the Congregation aims to revive a sense of the sacredness and mystery of the liturgy.

Some liturgical texts need to be reviewed, because they are dated, as is the case of the penitence ritual, published in 1974. Indeed, in the years that followed, an apostolic teaching, a motu proprio, a new Code of Canon Law and a new Catechism were published. In this and in some other cases, updates will be needed. The idea Cardinal Cañizares is working on, is that of reaffirming the primacy of grace in human actions, of the need to give space to God’s action in the liturgy as opposed to actions which are left up to human creativity. There will be many opportunities to reflect on these topics. The year 2012 will mark the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council and the year after that will mark the 50th anniversary of the first approved conciliar text, the constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium on the sacred liturgy.

Oh yeah and I agree with the music. Please, no more “Sunrise, Sunset”.

On the Top Ten of liturgical songs [sic] that should be banned, is the following:

Lyrics, if you can stomach it:
I danced in the morning
When the world was begun,
And I danced in the moon
And the stars and the sun,
And I came down from heaven
And I danced on the earth,
At Bethlehem
I had my birth.

Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,
And I'll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I'll lead you all in the Dance, said he.

I danced for the scribe
And the pharisee,
But they would not dance
And they wouldn't follow me.
I danced for the fishermen,
For James and John -
They came with me
And the Dance went on.

Chorus

I danced on the Sabbath
And I cured the lame;
The holy people
Said it was a shame.
They whipped and they stripped
And they hung me on high,
And they left me there
On a Cross to die.

Chorus

I danced on a Friday
When the sky turned black -
It's hard to dance
With the devil on your back.
They buried my body
And they thought I'd gone,
But I am the Dance,
And I still go on.

Chorus

They cut me down
And I leapt up high;
I am the life
That'll never, never die;
I'll live in you
If you'll live in me -
I am the Lord
Of the Dance, said he.

In defense of Sydney Carter, who was an interesting character, he never intended for that song to be used in church. He was a folk-singer type and not particularly religious - to the extent he was, he was a Quaker.

And "Lord of the Dance" was not intended to stand alone -- it is supposed to be paired with this song:

The Carpenter/Friday Morning

It was on a Friday morning that they took me from the cell
and I saw they had a carpenter to crucify as well
You can blame it on to Pilate
You can blame it on the Jews
You can blame it on the Devil
It's God I accuse
It's God they ought to crucify instead of you and me
I said to the carpenter, a-hanging on the tree

You can blame it on to Adam
You can blame it on to Eve
You can blame it on the apple,
but that I can’t believe
It was God that made the Devil
And the woman and the man
And there wouldn’t be an apple
If it wasn’t in the plan
It's God they ought to crucify instead of you and me
I said to the carpenter, a-hanging on the tree

Now Barabbas was a killer
And they let Barabbas go
But you are being crucified
For nothing that I know
And your God is up in Heaven
and He doesn’t do a thing
With a million angels watching
and they never move a wing
It's God they ought to crucify instead of you and me
I said to the carpenter, a-hanging on the tree

To hell with Jehova
To the carpenter I said
I wish that a carpenter
had made the world instead
Goodbye and good luck to you
our ways will soon divide
Remember me tomorrow
The man you hung beside
It's God they ought to crucify instead of you and me
I said to the carpenter, a-hanging on the tree

Here's what I call ugly. No real sacredness.

amphitheatres & Akron plans http://njchurchscape.com/Index-Nov05.html

A couple months ago I reviewed a book (Kilde, When Church Became Theatre) that explained how a new relationship between preacher and congregation in the nineteenth century demanded a new architecture—an auditorium rather than a temple. The traditional rectangular seating arrangement with a focus on the altar was displaced in a number of mainstream Protestant denominations (not Episcopal and not Catholic, of course) by an amphitheatre design, with pews in a semi-circle facing an elevated stage, pulpit and often a centrally-arranged choir. This month I want to expand on that development a bit by highlighting a church that ties together several of the themes I've explored over the last five years here, and also to call attention (again) to an exceptionally creative New Jersey architect who is still little known or appreciated— Oscar Teale, of Plainfield.
     Our story begins in Hackettstown (Warren County) about 1832 when a Methodist congregation (Trinity) organized and erected a standard meetinghouse-style church. We can find similar examples all over the western and southern part of the state. These two-story reinforced frame buildings included a gallery around three sides (usually) and separate entrances for men and women. The buildings didn't differ much in the exterior and the basic construction from a barn, and could be scaled up or down a bit to fit the congregation's size, pocketbook and aspirations. No architect was needed because the men of the congregation were fairly familiar with this sort of building and could handle most of the construction tasks themselves. When the congregation outgrew the building, it was often auctioned off, torn down, moved to a nearby location and reassembled as a barn, blacksmith shop, multi-family residence, or even a church for another congregation. Our history is replete with such tales. The Hackettstown congregation did not sell the building; intending to use it as a Sunday School, they moved it a few hundred feet back so they could erect a new church in a fashionable style on the prominent location they had built on earlier (what is now Route 46) . Both the original Methodist and Presbyterian buildings in town still exist, although the condition of the Methodist church seems hardly fitting for one of the oldest churches in the county. A wooden building that has survived one hundred and seventy-five years old deserves a decent respect (but that is a different issue, and one I won't expand upon now).
     I have seen photographs of the second Trinity church—a Wren-Gibbs style building erected in 1858; it served the congregation until 1888, when it, too, was inadequate to seat the growing congregation. That building did not survive, however. Oscar Teale, an architect who specialized in churches, was engaged by the congregation. To the best of my knowledge, this is only the second church in the state designed by Teale; two years earlier he had completed the First German Reformed church in North Plainfield (which has fairly recently been designated as eligible for the National Register of Historic Places). I have not seen the interior of that building, but from the outside it is a well-crafted if traditional plan. The significance of Trinity is that it appears to be Teale's initial Akron Plan church. He designed at least four more in the region in that manner by 1898, but this was the first.
     There is often a confusion between the amphitheatre plan, which dates to the 1840s and was very widely adopted, and the Akron Plan, which was first employed in 1866-1870 by a church in Ohio. The essence of the Akron Plan is a large open space encircled by two tiers of small classrooms arranged around a stage or speaker's platform. The altar was essentially eliminated. Sliding or folding doors or partitions shuttered the classrooms from the main auditorium, but they could be opened at appropriate times. Teale used that plan in several of his subsequent designs: the Seventh Day Baptist church in Plainfield (1890), an addition to the Second Presbyterian church in Elizabeth (1890s), and for a Sunday School on Staten Island (1898). Anyone walking into the “rotunda” of Trinity will be stuck immediately by the similarity to those other buildings, right down to the half-timbering, the clerestory windows, and panelling of the folding doors.
     Although the rise of evangelical denominations in the mid-nineteenth century was probably a factor in the widespread adoption of the amphitheatre plan—and Trinity's main auditorium is certainly a fine example of that plan—I believe we should never underestimate the power of fashion—a building that could affirm the taste and financial resources of a congregation was as potent an argument in its favor, in my reading and interpretation of the mid-to-late nineteenth century architecture, as liturgical considerations. We are not likely to know what motivated the congregation in 1888 to seek out a relatively unknown architect to design their new church, but we should be grateful for whatever it was for we have an exceptional building in exceptional condition. And that was apparently recognized at the time, for less than a dozen years later, Teale was asked to design the showpiece building for Centenary College, a Methodist institution a few blocks west of the church.

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