Church Architecture Study Day with Dr Denis McNamara, Saturday, April 14, Chicago

A reader asked me to publicize a one-day event coming up this Saturday, which looks like a great opportunity for Catholics, especially clergy, who wish to learn more about beautiful church design and how it relates to the nature and needs of the liturgy. The event is co-sponsored by the Catholic Art Guild and the Liturgical Institute. To register, visit here. Wednesday evening (4/11) is the cut-off for registrations.

Church Architecture Study Day: From the Sacrament to the Mysteries 

Join Dr. Denis McNamara for a one day immersion of church architecture from a Catholic perspective.

9:30  Registration, Coffee, etc
10:00  Session I: Biblical Foundations of Church Architecture: The Temple, the Synagogue and the Mystical Body
11:00  Break
11:15  Session II: Classical Architecture: The Sacramental Meaning of Ornament, Decoration and the Column
12:15  Break and Questions
12:45  Lunch (included in the cost of the program)
1:45  Session III: The Objective View of Beauty: Learning from Thomas Aquinas
2:45  Break
3:00  Session IV: What the Church Intended: The Twentieth Century to Today
4:00  Questions
4:15  Adjourn

The cost of the program includes a lunch buffet of sandwiches, salad, coffee and dessert. Clergy and seminarians attend for free. Lunch orders will take place 48 hours prior to the event.

Please email info@CatholicArtGuild.org with any questions; visit here to register.

Sacred Arts Conference in Chicago

This October 29th, the Catholic Art Guild, a Chicago-based community of artists, will host a landmark conference bringing together leading philosophers and artists to rediscover the power of Beauty in the modern world.

The conference, entitled “Beauty and the Restoration of the Sacred”, will feature English philosopher Sir Roger Scruton, well-known for his BBC documentary “Why Beauty Matters,” as well as architect Duncan Stroik, classical artist Anthony Visco, and art historian and educator Denis McNamara.

The ground-breaking conference opens with a Solemn High Mass featuring Renaissance choral music in the baroque splendor of Chicago’s historic St. John Cantius Church, a parish well known for bringing beauty into Christian worship.

Conference presentations and discussions will take place at the The Drake Hotel, followed by an elegant banquet, wine service, culminating in a stimulating panel discussion.

“Beauty has been so denigrated in today’s culture as a result of prevalent utilitarian thinking. This unfortunately relegates those with artistic gifts to the periphery or worse, tells them their gifts are useless,” says organizer and guild President Kathleen Carr, “We hope this conference will shine a light on the necessity of Beauty in today’s world.”

All visual artists, designers, architects, art educators, and art lovers are welcome to attend. Tickets and more information can be found at www.CatholicArtGuild.org

Denis McNamara to Talk in New York City This Saturday

The Catholic Artists’ Society series of talks entitled The Art of the Beautiful continues this Saturday in New York City, with a presentation from architectural historian Denis McNamara entitled Incarnation and Transfiguration: Rediscovering the Iconic Nature of Church Buildings.

Anyone who has attended one of Denis’ lectures or seen the series of talks produced by the Liturgical Institute in Mundelein, where he works, will know that this promises to be a stimulating and enjoyable evening. As usual with the CAS events the talk is followed by a reception and Compline. 

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Just in case you can’t make out the detail on the poster above, the talk is at the Catholic Center, NYU, 238 Thompson Street.

Denis McNamara on Sacred Architecture, Part 10: The Documents of Vatican II

This is the tenth and concluding video of the series. Throughout, Prof. McNamara has been referring to the documents of the Second Vatican Council, but in this he recaps and spells out the directives more clearly. He refers to the desirability of a “pious skepticism” towards innovation, an attitude that is open to change, but generally skeptical of it, and respectful of tradition. I think that this is the frame of mind which produces the “hermeneutic of continuity” that Benedict XVI referred to. Put simply, it says, don’t change anything unless there is a compelling reason to do so.

He then goes on to highlight what the Council did ask for in regard to art and architecture, which on the whole reinforces the principles of the desirability of noble and resplendent beauty. Then, in his understated and polite way, he concludes by saying that nobody should ever think that Vatican II ever meant anything other than what it actually said, just because it came at a time that was “unfriendly,” as he put it, to ornament, image and traditional architecture.

Denis McNamara is on the faculty of the Liturgical Institute, Mundelein; his book is Catholic Church Architecture and the Spirit of the Liturgy.

Denis McNamara on Church Architecture, Part 9: An Image of the New Jerusalem

In the previous two discussions about the nature of sacred images appropriate for a church, Prof. McNamara spoke of how liturgical art should portray those aspects of the liturgy that are present but invisible to us. This concerns predominantly the saints and angels in heaven participating in the heavenly liturgy. Here, he turns his attention to the church building as a manifestation of the Heavenly City, the New Jerusalem as described in the Book of Revelation. He connects this future ideal with the temple of Solomon as described in the Old Testament; we, the people of the church, are the living stones that constitute the Church, transformed symbolically into the 12 gemstones that are at the gates of the Heavenly City.

Denis McNamara is on the faculty of the Liturgical Institute, Mundelein; his book is Catholic Church Architecture and the Spirit of the Liturgy.

Denis McNamara on the Church, Part 8 - A Hierarchy of Sacred Images.

Here is the eighth in the series of short videos by Denis McNamara, Professor on the faculty of the Liturgical Institute, Mundelein; his book is Catholic Church Architecture and the Spirit of the Liturgy.

This is the second video within the series that focuses on sacred images; in it he argues for a restoration of sacred images in churches which respects a hierarchy of imagery. Describing first the reasons for the iconoclasm of the period after Vatican II, (with more charity towards those responsible than I could muster), he then indicates some principles by which we can restore imagery in such a way as to not simply repeat the problems that existed before the Council. This means giving the altar greatest prominence, followed by authentically liturgical art, art that depicts the heavenly liturgy in a form that is appropriate to its high purpose. He acknowledges that there is a place for devotional images in church, provided they do not distract from the liturgical function.

Denis McNamara on Church Architecture, part 7 - Sacred Images

Here is the seventh in the series of short videos by Prof. Denis McNamara, a member of the faculty of the Liturgical Institute, Mundelein; his book is Catholic Church Architecture and the Spirit of the Liturgy. As usual, it is an excellent presentation.

In this one he focuses on sacred images. He describes how sacred images are a necessary part of the environment for the worship of God because they manifest those aspects of the liturgy that are present but not ordinarily visible. They are there to remind us that the angels and saints in heaven participate with us in the heavenly liturgy. 

In this video, the stylistic features of art that he describes are those of the iconographic tradition, which portrays man fully redeemed. One point that he doesn’t address in this short presentation is how the other authentic liturgical traditions, the Gothic and the Baroque, fulfill this function. I would argue that they do exactly what the iconographic style does, but in a subtly different way. They are stylistically different and do not reveal man fully redeemed, but rather justified and at various stages on the path to heaven. By revealing the path they direct our attention, via the imagination, to the destination at the end of that path, which is our heavenly destiny. (If you are interested in a fuller discussion of this last point, I direct you to section three of my book, the Way of Beauty.) 

Denis McNamara on Sacred Architecture, Part 6 - Columns

Here is the sixth in the series of short videos by Denis McNamara, Professor on the faculty of the Liturgical Institute, Mundelein; his book is Catholic Church Architecture and the Spirit of the Liturgy.

I found this one particularly fascinating; he describes here how columns are a vital part of the design of the church building, which is meant to be the sacramental image of the Church, the mystical body of Christ. Historically, the building was so clearly identified as an image of the Church that it came to be called a “church” itself.

The columns represent important people within the Church who, metaphorically, support it, chief among them the Twelve Apostles. Before the Christian era, in Jewish architecture the columns represented the 12 tribes of Israel. Even within the classical, pre-Christian tradition, columns were identified with people, and different designs were ascribed to men, women and young girls. Building on both the Jewish and classical traditions that preceded them, we can see why it made great sense for the early Christians to incorporate the same symbolism into the design of their churches.

Because they are symbolic images of people, columns have particular aspects of design, again, incorporated into the tradition, and should not be just straight vertical lines that are pure structural support, as a modern architect might wish to do. This does not mean that every column should per force correspond precisely to the Doric, Corinthian and Ionic orders of classical architecture, but it does indicate the importance of columns of as symbolic images of people, and as decoration that visibly performs a structural purpose.

The question one might have after considering this is: even if we acknowledge that properly formed columns are right for a church building, do we need to have them in secular buildings as well, such as libraries, town halls, houses, theaters, and so on?

I would say that the church should be the symbolic heart of the community. Therefore, just as all human activity is formed by and leads us to the worship of God, so the design of all buildings, whatever their purpose, should be derived from and point to what should be the focal point within a town plan, the church, and so we ought to see columns in secular buildings too. All of this should be modified so that each building is appropriate to its particular purpose: a government building would have a design that corresponds more directly to that of a church, I would suggest, than the design of a cow shed or a public convenience.

Decoration and Ornament - Denis McNamara on Architecture, Part 5

Why both are necessary for the beauty of the building

Here is the fifth in the series of short videos by Denis McNamara, of the faculty of the Liturgical Institute, Mundelein; his book is Catholic Church Architecture and the Spirit of the Liturgy. (Scroll to the bottom if you want to go straight to the video!)

Here he distinguishes between two similar but crucially different ways in which the building is made beautiful: “decoration” and “ornament.” The two words are interchangeable in common parlance; he is using them here as technical terms that architects have developed in order to be able to describe two complementary aspects of a building that are necessary for its beauty.

As Denis describes them, decoration is “poetic,” that is, beautifully applied adornment that reveals the structural elements of the building. This is to be distinguished from the modern architect’s desire to show the structural elements literally, almost brutally, without regard for beauty. The columns used in neo-classical architecture, for example are designed to reveal beautifully their load bearing function.

The church above is a Neoclassical design in Poland, while the building below is an 18th century civic building in York, England, that clearly points to and is derived from church architecture.

As we will see, one would not be surprised to see similar decoration on the two buildings, but we would expect to see different ornament. That is because ornament is an enrichment that tells you the purpose of the building, such as a cross on a steeple, an ornament which reveals the building’s theological purpose. The cross of St George (the patron saint of England) on the York building tells Englishmen that this is a civic building, although ironically, this is also the Resurrection flag. (Even though I am an Englishman myself, I didn’t know this until I converted!)

Decoration and ornament are both necessary for a beautiful building, because they contribute to the form in such a way that they tell us what this building is. Beauty, remember, is the radiance of being: a property of something that communicates to the observer what he is looking at.

In the flying buttresses of Gothic architecture, it occurs to me, this distinction between decorative and literal in structural elements almost seems to disappear. Architects, please feel free to contradict me if I am mistaken; these are fully structural and literal in that sense, but they are also built in harmonious proportion. Might this represent the highest ideal for the architecture?

Here is Prof. McNamara’s talk.

Denis McNamara on Architecture, Part 4: the Importance of the Classical Tradition

And no, this does not mean that every building has to look like a Roman temple.

Here is the fourth in the series of short videos by Denis McNamara, Professor on the faculty of the Liturgical Institute, Mundelein; his book is Catholic Church Architecture and the Spirit of the Liturgy.

Before I sat in on some of his lectures this summer, I had been aware of Denis’ emphasis on the classical tradition in architecture. I have to admit, I did have half a suspicion that his ideal was a world of faux Roman temples - all domes and Doric columns.

As I found out, and as you can see in the video, he does not mean this at all - although it does include what most of us think of as classical style. He describes classical architecture as any style that is created out of a respect for tradition and which participates in the order of nature that “reveals the mind of God.”  This includes, for example, Gothic architecture.

Furthermore, he says that a respect for tradition does not mean that we look backwards. Rather, it provides a set of principles that will guide us as we go forward, employing forms that might echo the past closely, or creating styles previously unimagined. The potential range of styles is limitless.

Rather than painting a picture of people walking backwards, or walking reluctantly into the future while wishing they could head for the past, he is giving us one which is closer to the crew of a beautiful sloop that looks forward in optimism as it sails into the rising sun in the East, with tradition firmly at the tiller.

His reference to the mind of God is reminiscent of language used by Pope Benedict XVI in the Spirit of the Liturgy, in which he describes how the numerical description of the patterns of the cosmos give us a glimpse into the mind of the Creator. Even the beauty of this world as it is now does not reveal the divine beauty fully, for it is a fallen world. The question the good architect asks himself when designing a building is not so much, “How can I reflect the beauty of the cosmos as it is?”, but rather, “How can I reflect the beauty of the cosmos as it is meant to be?” For me, a critical point is that if we want beauty, we cannot escape this question, for there is no order outside the divine order, only disorder and ugliness. This is true of any building, or for that matter any aspect of the culture, that does not look forward to the heavenly ideal 

Onwards and Eastwards!

Denis McNamara on the Jewish Roots of Church Architecture

In this, the third of a series of ten videos, Denis McNamara discusses how church architecture reflects the roots of a church’s function in those of the Temple and the synagogue.

Prof. McNamara is on the faculty of the Liturgical Institute, Mundelein; and his book is Catholic Church Architecture and the Spirit of the Liturgy.

Drawing on St Gregory the Great and Pope Benedict, he refers to three eras in time: the pre-Christian time of the Jewish faith, the “time of shadow”; the heavenly period to which we all look and which is called the “time of reality”; and the time in-between, which we occupy, the “time of image”. The liturgy of the time of image both recalls the sacrificial aspects of the previous age, and anticipates and gives us a foretaste of our heavenly end. Having described time in this way, Denis then goes on to explain how good church architecture reflects this.

As I was listening to this, I was reminded of how in art, again according to Pope Benedict, there are three authentic liturgical traditions. The baroque “at its best” reveals historical man, that is man after the Fall, but with a potential for sanctity as yet unrealized. It occurred to me that this might seen also as the art of the time of shadow; it is after all characterized visually by deep shadows contrasted with the light of hope.

The art of eschatological man - man fully redeemed in heaven - is the icon. This is the art of the “time of reality,” and visually there are never any deep cast shadows in this form. Every figure is a source of light.

The art of the in-between time is the Gothic, which I always called the art of our earthly pilgrimage. Like the spire of the Gothic church, it spans the divide between heaven and earth. Its form reflects the partial divinization of man which characterizes the Christian who participates in the liturgy. This might then be called the art of the “time of image”. As before, anyone who is curious to know more about this analysis can find a deeper explanation in the book the Way of Beauty.

In contrast to the artistic forms, in which the form of each tradition focuses on one age, the form of the church building, regardless of style, must reveal all three ages simultaneously.

Denis McNamara on the Meaning of Beauty and its Importance in Church Architecture

In the short video below, Denis McNamara talks about the nature of beauty, particular in the context of sacred architecture (scroll to the bottom if you want to go straight to it and avoid my comments!) This is the second in the series of 10 which I will be featuring in coming weeks. Prof. McNamara is on the faculty of the Liturgical Institute, Mundelein; his book is Catholic Church Architecture and the Spirit of the Liturgy was published in 2009.

In this video, he points out that beauty is not simply “in the eye of the beholder,” but is a property of the object itself, the thing that we are judging to be beautiful. He is asserting the principle of objective beauty - beauty that it is in the object percieved; and objecting (if you’ll forgive the pun) to the opposite principle, the idea of subjective beauty, that beauty is simply a matter of the personal taste of the subject who sees the object.

He defines beauty as a property of something that “reveals its ontological being.” Another way of putting this was given to me by Dr Caroline Farey of the School of the Annunciation in Devon, England. She defined beauty as the “splendor of being.” Both definitions are telling us that beauty is a property of something that reveals to us what  it is. So, in the context of this talk, to be beautiful, a church must look like church. It must appeal to our sense of what a church is.

As a bit of supporting anecdotal evidence for the definition that Denis gives: when I was a high school physics teacher in England many years ago, at the end of term I used to present the class with a piece of mechanical equipment made in Victorian times. It had cogs and moving parts exquisitely machined in polished brass. No one in the building knew what it was for, and we couldn’t tell from looking at it what its purpose was (I never found out). Nevertheless, the precision and harmony of the motion of its parts when turned were such that all assumed that it must have one. I would bring this into the classroom and without comment place it down on the table in front of them, letting them look at it for a few moments. Then I would ask the question, “Do you think this is beautiful?” Every time, the response of the students was the same; they didn’t answer Yes or No, but they always asked, “What is it?” These were 17 and 18 year-olds who had never studied aesthetics, at a school in London with no particular Catholic or even Christian connections. Yet these students knew instinctively that they could not answer the question “Is it beautiful?” without knowing what the object was.

As I see it, this establishment of principles of beauty should not be interpreted as a way of proving (or disproving) that something is beautiful. Any attempts to create “rules of beauty” to that end will always fall flat. That is not to say that there are no guiding principles, but these are better thought of in the same way as the rules of harmony and counterpoint in music. All beautiful music makes good use of them, but not all music that obeys the rules of harmony and counterpoint is beautiful. There is always an intuitive element that relates to how they are employed that cannot be accounted for definitively when creating beauty; this is what distinguishes a good composer from one who just has technical understanding.

In the appreciation of beauty, there is always a subjective element present. This does not compromise the principle of objective beauty, however: some people are able to recognize beauty and some are not. Ultimately, we don’t know for certain who has this ability and who doesn’t. This lack of an ultimate and perfect authority to whom we can appeal in stating definitively means that in the end we rely on the best we have, tradition. Tradition in this context can be thought of as a consensus of the opinions of many people over generations as to what is beautiful and what is not. It is not a perfect guide, and clearly is less reliable the more recent the work of art we are judging, but it is the best we have.

Denis McNamara on the Theology of Sacred Architecture

Here is the first of a series of 10 short videos (about six minutes each) presented by the architectural historian Denis McNamara of the Liturgical Institute in Mundelein. I had the pleasure of meeting him recently and sitting in on one or two of his excellent classes.

These talks introduce succinctly and well, I feel, some of the themes that I heard him talk about in his classes. He is a good and entertaining teacher and speaker, and this comes across in the videos. You can find more detail of the subject matter in his book Catholic Church Architecture and the Spirit of the Liturgy.

What was of great interest to me was to see how he tackled issues for which there are parallel problems in sacred art. For example, how do you reconnect with tradition without falling in the error of historicism? Historicism is an undiscerning respect for the past that says, in simple terms: “Old is always good; new is always bad.”

The corrollary of this has to be considered too: to what degree should we use aspects of contemporary architecture? How can we ensure that the form we are using connects with people today, while ensuring that we don’t compromise the timeless principles that are essential to make it appropriate for its sacred purpose? You might say that what we want is to be able to innovate if necessary while avoiding the errors of modernism (“new always good; old always bad”) or post- modernism (“anything is good if I think it is.”)

When I was considering these very questions in art, the only way I could respond was to try to look for a theology of form that connected the material form to the truths that the artist was trying to convey. If we understood this, I thought, then it would give us the freedom to innovate without stepping outside the authentic traditions of liturgical art. (A large part of my book, the Way of Beauty is devoted to consideration of this.)

It seems to me that this is just the conclusion that Denis has drawn too. In this video he introduces the idea of the theology of form for architecture by which the church building becomes a symbol of the mystical body of Christ. You might say the church manifests the Church in material form and in microcosm, He refers to this as a “sacramental theology” of architecture.

In the nine videos that follow (which I will be posting weekly, each with a short introduction,) he unpacks some important parts of this theology for us. If you are impatient to see them, you’ll find them on YouTube!