Edifice and Image: Reform of the Roman Catholic Worship Environment

Abstract

What considerations ought to guide the work of artists and others in the creation of the physical environment in which the Christian assembly worships? In this essay the author reviews the recent history of creating the spaces in which we gather as Church. He then draws from this history some norms which help us understand recent disputes about the design of ecclesial space. S eldom do we hear of the faithful learning about the visual properties of Christian spirituality or how, as a religious people living in the contemporary world, church buildings and their art help to mediate Christian vocation. Religious educators infrequently are shown how the edifice and the image catechize us about God, Christ, the Church, and its liturgy. We are not given the tools to “read” the visual resources of the local ecclesia. Instead, too often we are trained simply to ignore them. There are complex reasons why the Christian churches in modern western, north Atlantic societies have devalued the role that environment and art play as essential monuments of the faith and why modern Christianity often has been characterized by religious iconoclasm. This is further exacerbated by cultural factors in the late-modern world in which the high visual stimulation of the tube generates an increased insensitivity to visual metaphor and why the contemporary telephonic culture is conditioned to ignore the tremendous impact of certain ocular resources (Belting, Eco, Postman).