At Crisis there is a good piece by Joseph Pearce (who has written about Shakespeare and Tolkien and Literary Converts is a must read) about “The Resurrection of Beauty”, specifically in sacred liturgical worship and in the architecture, etc., that holds it. He waxes eloquent about St. Joseph’s in Detroit, which is marvelous, in an Archdiocese which has felt the pastoral jackboot of traditional suppression.
There are two bits I’ll share, and then you can read the rest there.
First, note what he says G.K. Chesterton said about Gothic architecture. Very clever.
However, Pearce opens his essay with a quote from Joseph Ratzinger…
If the Church is to continue to transform and humanize the world, how can she dispense with beauty in her liturgies, that beauty which is so closely linked with love and with the radiance of the Resurrection?
—Cardinal Ratzinger
This question, asked by the future Pope Benedict XVI, is purely rhetorical. The answer is that the Church cannot continue to transform and humanize the world if she dispenses with the beauty of the liturgy. “Without this,” Cardinal Ratzinger continued, “the world will become the first circle of hell.” Restoring the beauty of the liturgy is, therefore, saving the world from Hell itself.
[…]
How many times have written on this blog…
Save The Liturgy, Save The World
Interesting article in Crisis. So much in “modern” church architecture is unremarkable and ordinary; if the liturgy celebrated there is a “meal” as many moderns maintain, why would you hold it in breakfast nook with Jesus present? Would you not hold it in the formal dining room with its fine furniture since the King of kings is with you?
Since the Mass is so much more than just a communal meal, everything, including architecture and artwork, the entirety of it all should direct our attention and thoughts to God.
Thank you for saying it all these years.
Just attended the heavenly liturgy at St. Joseph today. Such a privilige and a grace!!
Nobody complains about the ornateness of the church building when the priest is bombing the homily. Nobody complains about the beauty of the liturgy when the congregants are all sinners.
[Can someone explain what this means? Anyone?]
A beautiful and reverent Mass is otherworldly. I never tire of it.
To elaborate on my last comment, I am agreeing that beauty is important to have. On a practical level, the beauty of traditional church architecture has kept me engaged in the liturgy even when other parts of the liturgy (heretical homilies, lack of prayerful reverence during the Consecration, etc) tempt me to check out. As well, beautiful liturgies are especially important for sinners to experience because it gives them (us) something worth replacing sin with. Certainly not going to give up all that fun for a phoned-in, hippie Mass.
Sorry to all if my previous comment come off poorly/the meaning wasn’t clear.
If the building is beautiful and the homily is not, the building itself also is preaching, and should not be penalized for doing so well.
And if the building is full of sinners going to church, maybe they will learn something and amend their lives.
@nex001
1) I do. A bad homily in an ugly church is even worse. As a matter of fact, I’m really good at tuning out nonsense, but especially so when lovely things are around to provide promptings for meditation.
2) Many of us are sinners and likely to remain so (I can’t speak for everyone. Maybe it’s just me. I have too many things going on to know what everyone else is up to.). I’ve never been to an ugly liturgy full of sinless saints (not that I’d know), but I prefer to repent with my fellow sinners in solemnity and beauty.
Thank you for this – a heartening history! The “St. Joseph Oratory” Wikipedia article has lots more photos via its Wikimedia Commons link – but only the more detailed German Wikipedia article has a link to a separate article on the architect, Franz Alexander Aloysius Georg Himpler (though the English one links an “External” pdf about him – how safe to click I do not know, and have not clicked). An article by Dale Ahlquist at The Society of G.K. Chesterton website quickly led me to the whole of his essay, “An Architecture of Spears” in A Miscellany of Men (1912), various copies of which are scanned in the Internet Archive.
jhogan,
Your comment reminds me of a poem I’ve enjoyed for years, set by Thomas Ford when court musician to Charles I and his Catholic Queen, Henrietta Maria, beginning “Yet if his majesty our sovereign lord” – of which the text is variously transcribed online and recited in at least two YouTube videos, and set in part as “Two Kings” by Joseph Waddell Clokey (with several recordings on YouTube) – though I have not found any upload of Ford’s setting!
My blushes: “The Architect of Spears” (which I somehow managed to garble in the brief time of flipping from GKC’s book to the combox!).
In other words, when you wish you didn’t have to bear listening,
thank God, you’ve got the beautiful environment to lift you up.
When you look around and see people you know have done wrongful things that bring you down, God through the beautiful liturgy will lift you up and give you hope.