Architecture in Communion

·      Author: Steven J. Scholoeder

·      Pages: 243 pages + Bibliography, Glossary and Index

·      Publisher:  Ignasius Press, San Francisco (1998)

·      Language: English

About the Author

Steven Joseph Schloeder received the bachelor of architecture cum laude from Arizona State University in 1984. Schloeder is a licensed architect (Arizona, California), practicing nationally in the United States in all aspects of Roman Catholic sacred architecture, through his firm Liturgical Environs, PC.

Structure

Introduction

Part I

Chapter One             An architectural Response to Vatican II

Chapter Two             Art, Architecture, and Theology

Chapter Three           An Architecture for the Mass

Chapter Four             Furnishing the Sanctuary

Chapter Five             Designing for the Other Sacraments and Rites

Chapter Six                Domus Ecclesiae: The Parish Community

Chapter Seven          Sacred Images in the Church

Chapter Eight            Domus Dei: The Church as Icon

Chapter Nine            Catholic Architecture in the third millennium

Index

Scope

“Architecture in Communion” book emerges from Schloeder's apprehension when he found many modern Catholic churches to be banal, uninspiring, and frequently even liturgically bizarre. Especially since the Second Vatican Council, he saw that Western Catholicism has been moving even farther away from the centuries-old tradition of great ecclesiastical architecture. There are many reasons ascribed for this phenomenon: a disordered desire to “keep with the times” (up to date), clericalism, the insignificance of the Church in the modern world, and the intellectual poverty of modern architecture are but a few common explanations. However, He believes that the actual problem and also the solution lies elsewhere.

The heart and purpose of this book are to find appropriate arrangements and considerations for church buildings that are infused with a genuine spirit of the Second Vatican Council. The goal is to enliven the parish community (which is the true Church built of living stones in Christ) with a material church building designed to serve and further the primary vocation to become a community of love, which must mean a people of sacrifice and redemption. More than a mere monument to God, the church building finds its true purpose as a means to the sanctification of his people. It is worth to note also that Schloeder was not seeking a return to any previous style of building like another traditionalist because he also believes that there is no single “Catholic style of architecture.”

 

THESIS

Schloeder wants to underline three core functions of the Christian architecture especially of the church that become the vision of the Vatican Council, as follows:

- the sanctification of believers,

- the building of communities of love and service,

- moreover, the true humanizing of the individual and society

For pursuing this goal, he organized his book simply:

• The first three chapters place the modern Catholic church building in it’s proper theological, sociological, historical, and liturgical settings. These chapters provide a common understanding of the agenda of the Second Vatican Council, the relationship of the Church to the arts and her artists and architects, and a discussion of the nature and dynamics of the Eucharistic Sacrifice.
• The next three chapters examine the specific architectural requirements of the church building.
• Chapter 4 examines the sanctuary furnishings regarding their liturgical, canonical, and symbolic components.
• Chapter 5 looks at the architectural needs of the other sacraments and rites;
• Chapter 6 considers the social and communal aspects of the parish buildings.
• The last three chapters are ordered to help the architect and the community regain a monographic understanding of the church building
• Chapter 7 discusses the idea of sacred images: the history and theology of the icon, as well as the place of the sacred image in the church today, are considered.
• Chapter 8, the building as a whole is considered in its symbolic aspects, from both liturgical and historical perspectives.
• Finally, Chapter 9 examines the questions about the form of the church building. Here the relationships between architectural massing, function, location, detail, and symbol are explored, with positive suggestions for regaining an iconic (a sacramental) appreciation of the church building.

Schloeder did not give many concrete solutions to the problems. Instead, he prefers to call attention to passages from the Church’s documents so that the reader may consider them carefully. He is not interested in suggesting that any one particular form was somehow the “ideal” or the “right way” to do the Christian architecture. His concern for design is not only about the result but the process.

Therefore, in this book he has given the Church’s guidelines so the architect and the community together may carefully consider them to find their inspiration. He believes that the Church used the similar way in guiding all creative activity, whether by artists, liturgists, or theologians. By setting limits, the Church protects not only her mission and the deposit of faith entrusted to her but the work of the individual. The Church gives the individual these limits or guidelines not as rules to be blindly obeyed. Rather, they are safeguards. He likes to use G. IC. Chesterton’s analogy, the Church builds a “corral of orthodoxy” in which the believer is safe to run freely. One venture outside the corral at one’s risk. Church architecture is very much “built theology,” and so the forms of the building must strive to “speak” the truths they represent. The risk for the theologian leaving the corral is heresy. The risk for the artist or architect is, at best, idiosyncratic isolation from the continuum of sacred art and architecture or, at worst, meaninglessness.

SOME CRITICS

Schloeder is guided by his presuppositions to interpret facts in a certain way. For instance, from a few examples of liturgical distortions, he generalizes to the confusion of all modern liturgy. Some of his claims are simply not true. For example, he asserts that modern liturgists have adopted the notion of the People of God to the exclusion of that of the Body of Christ. He finds such a dichotomy unwarranted. In fact, Schloeder introduces his own dichotomy when he says that the liturgy is primarily about the worship of God and not about the gathering of the people. Schloeder 's tone is condescending at times, as when he remarks that the barrenness of contemporary church buildings reflects the barrenness of contemporary theology. He sees his task to be that of rediscovering the true message about church buildings found in Vatican II, a message allegedly distorted by modern liturgists.

Schloeder 's final chapter gives in broad outline what he conceives to be the requirements for Catholic architecture in the third millennium. The church building cannot look like the other buildings around it because it is an icon of the house of God and the Body of Christ. He means by this that a church must work as a place for liturgy, must look like a church, and must express its interior arrangement in its external structure. He gives some examples of what he means; they are buildings that most liturgists would find acceptable. However, Schloeder excludes other possible designs because of his ideological stance, which demands that the building "look like a church." In this, he opts for some transcultural form which, while open to some variation throughout the ages, remains, in fact, the same. This form looks suspiciously like the Romanesque, medieval, and Renaissance churches of the past.

REFLECTION

Living in Rome made me become a witness of the richness of the Christian faith manifest in the Christian architectures. I used to read (and also, I read once again in this book) that the basic architectural requirement of the Church is that places of worship be “truly worthy and beautiful, signs and symbols of heavenly realities.”. When I lived in Indonesia, I cannot understand this idea very well because the church is very similar each other. However, here, in Rome, it is just like another world of the Christian architecture for me. There are many abundance manifestations of the richness of the Christian faith in almost all church that I have visited until now. Reading this book for me is like giving a subtitle to all Christian architecture that I saw so that I can understand better. Schloeder’s educates me to open my eyes to the richness of our faith. His sensitivity to all aspects of his subject makes this book an invaluable reference guide for all students, and professionals, of ecclesiastical architecture.

Now I understand that to build a church, the Church requires “the general plan of the sacred building be such that it reflects in some way the whole assembly.”. There is a danger when constructing a church by stressing communality over the centuries-old liturgical emphasis on the awesome mystery of the Lord’s sacrifice and eschewing traditional architectural symbolism, and by doing that many churches have become merely functional gathering places. The architect must work to create a sense of place for the community, to augment the individual’s awareness that it is God who has called the Church together to be present among them. Too often we have settled for easy solutions, e.g., ‘liturgy in the round, dining room or lounge, as if Christ’s gathered faithful were a [theatrical] audience!”