LINK

There are segments of the Catholic Blogosphere that spend a good deal of time decrying the terrible “modern worship space” architecture in new or renovated Catholic churches. In some cases, rightly so. When a space is “opened up” to make it feel more like everyone’s up close, you often lose some focus…with everyone facing the front, everyone’s facing the altar, and therefore everyone’s facing the Eucharist, presumably undistracted. When people can see each other’s faces, there’s the possibility of distraction, etc. Also sickening is the way that many Catholic churches are stripped of iconography and statuary, and end up with a “flying Jesus” instead of a Crucifix. For examples of such, check out the website of Mr. Richard Vosko. By the way, he is a priest, but he doesn’t make that too obvious.

Well, our Archdiocesan weekly, the Georgia Bulletin, had a story last week on Our Lady of the Assumption parish in the Atlanta area. They began a building project a few years back, only to have the work halted by a resident of the neighborhood who questioned whether the outcome would be in harmony with other local historical architecture. In fact the parish had to change plans in order to be able to continue with their project.

At a reception in Moylan Hall following the pastor’s installation, Javadi recalled how the neighbor’s dispute with the designs forced them to redesign, shifting from a very modern to the Gothic style. “It changed, and out of all these hassles came this beautiful facility with a Gothic look nobody ever dreamed of.”

So, there we go – if the parish is going in too modern a direction with her architecture, let the community step in to make the design faithful to something – anything – that is more traditional. Read the whole article – it sounds to me like they ended up with a really beautiful parish.