Posted on 02/13/2016 3:51:33 PM PST by NYer
Church architecture reflects the faith of the people who build churches.
These days many of the modern Catholic churches I have seen look more like municipal airport buildings than structures to house the most sacred thing humans can undertake, the place where heaven and earth meet.
I was recently sent a link to a site about a new church in Moscow. The church was recently completed and consecrated by Patriarch Kirill in December 2015.
A Miracle of Liturgical Art: The Church of the Protection of the Mother of God at Yasenevo
[…]
But most astonishing by far was the project to decorate the interior of the main church. It is ornamented in the style of the Sicilian Cathedrals of the 12th century - without doubt the most sumptuous and refined style that ever emerged in the Byzantine-influenced world. Virtually the entire inside of the Yasenevo church is mosaic iconography in glittering glass and gold. There have been but a handful of churches decorated like this in all of history, and this church ranks fifth among them in area of mosaics. The lower walls of the church are revetted in white marble and the floor is finished in splendid Cosmatesque marble and mosaic interlace. The church is lit with a great brass choros and a constellation of glittering chandeliers. The marble iconostasis bears jewel-like icons with a powerful Romanesque gravity. It is a vision of medieval splendor the likes of which have never before been seen in Russia, and only rarely in all the world.
The true miracle of the Yasenevo church, though, lies not in its richness, but its poverty. Astonishingly, this church, constructed in just seven years, had no major individual donors. There was no great oligarch or wealthy institution footing the bill. Rather, the money came in small donations from ordinary people and pious organizations - 80,000 donors in total.
[…]
Go there… really, go… to see the rest, astonishing pictures.
Catholic ping!
Gasp!
Simply stunning!
By the way, ask a regular Russian why the Catholics, according to him, are heretics, and he won’t go into any theological depths. He’ll simply say: — Well, look what their churches look like.
Stunning. Isn’t Putin Catholic or at least christian?
I am not surprised at the traditional style. The desecration/destruction of the churches by the communists, left a deep scar on the faithful. the building of new churches is thus a restoration of faith but also recreating traditional church architecture.
The truth is that it's the attitudes that are different. The aesthetics, the habits, the customs are what separates us. This church building is a good illustration.
This is the Catholic cathedral in Seattle:
Church buildings that reflect the Divine presence exist in the Western Church. But they are not the norm, and they should be.
Glory to God in the Highest!
He deserves this splendor.
So beautiful! Glory to God! Thank you for sharing your wonderful find.
What a waste of money. How many hungry and poor and needy people could have been helped? Whenter the good Lord asks us what have we done, our answer should never be that we built a really fancy building in His name.
I’m disgusted but I am pretty protestant too.
“He’ll simply say: — Well, look what their churches look like.”
Oh, please. We have churches that blow this latest one away. And, yes, we also have “prayer barns”. One set reflects the faith, the other reflects the faithlessness of many of the modern “faithful”. If a Russian confuses the two, he’s a moron.
My only problem with Russian Orthodox churches is that if you’ve seen the interior of one really good one, you’ve seen almost all of them. There’s nothing wrong with duplicating a certain kind of perfection, but I like the variety of beauty you find in Western medieval and Renaissance and Baroque churches.
I agree with you; I am reporting the conversations I had, some on this forum, some face to face.
“What a waste of money.”
Building a beautiful place for the Divine Liturgy is NOT a waste of money.
“How many hungry and poor and needy people could have been helped?”
None. The money that built this church was donated for the building of this church.
“Whenter the good Lord asks us what have we done, our answer should never be that we built a really fancy building in His name.”
Why not since at that “fancy building” there will be prayer, sacrifice, fasting, and charity - for the same poor people and their benefit FOREVER.
“I’m disgusted but I am pretty protestant too.”
Right, and Protestants have a problem with beauty in general:
No less a Protestant authority than the Protestant Ralph Adams Cram once wrote:
“From the outbreak of the Protestant revolution, the old kinship between beauty and religion was deprecated and often forgotten. Not only was there, amongst the reformers and their adherents, a definite hatred of beauty and a determination to destroy it when found; there was also a conscientious elimination of everything of the sort from the formularies, services, and structures that applied to their new religion. This unprecedented break between religion and beauty had a good deal to do with that waning interest in religion itself. Protestantism, with its derivative materialistic rationalism, divested religion of its essential elements of mystery and wonder, and worship of its equally essential elements of beauty. Under this powerful combination of destructive influences, it is not to be wondered at that, of the once faithful, many have fallen away. Man is, by instinct, not only a lover of beauty, he is also by nature a ‘ritualist,’ that is to say, he does, when left alone, desire form and ceremony, if significant. If this instinctive craving for ceremonial is denied to man in religion, where it preeminently belongs, he takes it on for himself in secular fields; elaborates ritual in secret societies, in the fashion of his dress, in the details of social custom. He also, in desperation, invents new religions and curious sects working up for them strange rituals . . . extravagant and vulgar devices that are now the sardonic delight of the ungodly. ... If once more beauty can be restored to the offices of religion, many who are now self-excommunicated from their Church will thankfully find their way back to the House they have abandoned. The whole Catholic Faith is shot through and through with this vital and essential quality of beauty. It is this beauty implicit in the Christian revelation and its operative system that was explicit in the material and visible Churches and their art. We must contend against the strongest imaginable combination of prejudices and superstitions. These are of two sorts. There is first, the heritage of ignorance and fear from the dark ages of the sixteenth century. I am speaking of non-Catholic Christianity. Ignorance of authentic history, instigated by protagonists of propaganda; fear of beauty, because all that we now have in Christian art was engendered and formulated by and through Catholicism; fear that the acceptance of beauty means that awful thing—’surrender to superstition.’ It is fear that lies at the root of the matter, as it does in so many other fields of mental activity.†(Radio Replies, vol. 2: 1052)
If you feel called by Christ to aid the poor, then do it. These people are - by building beautiful churches so the poor have somewhere to go and pray and where they can be helped. They’ll accomplish more for the poor than you will I bet.
The parish church I attend looks like a public school.
“The parish church I attend looks like a public school.”
Yeah, the diocese I recently moved to runs the gamut from beautiful old churches to modern ones that are bland others that have good (albeit modern) exteriors but with disappointing interiors.
A parish I attended years ago (I attended there because it had the Latin Mass) reminded me of a dentist’s waiting room. (sigh)
I’ve attended mass in quonset huts & dilapidated catholic school classrooms (after the church boiler went out on a routine annual basis)...maybe it’s just me, but I still felt blessed
I would draw a distinction. There are churches that are old and in disrepair; there are churches clearly built on a limited budget. Yet often they look and feel like a church because they were architected with worship in mind. Then there are those that indeed look like municipal buildings or airplane hangars. It is not the opulence but reverence that makes the difference.
Oh glory!
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