The Contiued Decline of Western Europe

Photos: Closed Cafeteria

So the trend in recent awful European church architecture continues with the dedication of the new Church of the Most Holy Trinity in Fatima. I had the opportunity to make a pilgrimage there two years ago, and wanted to cry when I saw the new church going up. Little did I know what the final result would be like...

I'm not sure what I want to say when I see it. It kind of looks like a large, modernist symphony hall. But then there's the weird crucified stick man outside--pilgrims' money probably contributed to paying for something that I could have drawn on my MacDraw program in 1989, when I first started using a computer, and when I thought it was really cool that I could actually draw stuff on a computer. It was mostly stick figures and circles---clearly the architect of this new church must have learned his comuter design on the same program I did. But never got much farther...

No honestly, though--I don't understand what the deal is with modern Catholic church architecture. I've seen many nicer things built by Protestants that are so much better! This church has no iconography (besides the "crucified AOL man," as Fr. Erik Richsteig called him), no verticality (it looks like a pancake), and no transcendence. It is cold, horizontal, and ugly. I'd rather sit and have Mass in my living room--at least I have some religious images.

Perhaps modern Church architecture in Europe reflects the general sentiments of the continent. Europe has grown cold--with perhaps the exception of Poland and parts of the former Eastern bloc. Portugal, as was recently seen in the debates in the EU, is slowly going the way of the modern secular humanism that has created a dictatorship over the lives of the common citizens. Apparently the Portuguese can no longer build any more churches to express their fervent and fiery devotion to Our Lady, who chose their country in a special way to bear the good news of God's love, mercy, and justice to the world.

Europe is cold--materialism plagues the lives of the young, the old have become increasingly shut off into their homes, left to lament and resent the past. This church is evidence of the fact that elements of the Church seek only to dialogue with the modern world by adopting the (ugly and empty) language of the culture. The Church is not called to adopt the language of the world, but rather to function as a leaven within the world. It is called to radically stand in the world, and yet not be of the world--to rather present a liberating message of the warmth and love of Christ. Christ came into the world to bring the world into Himself--to enter into the cold, dark, and dreary culture that men lived in, in order to bring reveal the passionate and fiery love of God the Father. The Incarnation--God becomign Man, changes our perspective on everything. Our faith, lived out and expressed in the Sacred Liturgy, the mingling of the sacred and the mundane, the human and the Divine, occurs in a church. The domus Dei, the porta caeli, calls us to enter into the reality that lies behind this earthly reality.

Does this church call us to enter into the heaven on earth, and reflect upon the Sacred Mystery of the Incarnation, which has kindled the love of God in the faithful for centuries--or does it say, "Christians, you are no different than the world. You need to adapt your ways to the modern culture, and fit in." Because I can tell you that Jesus didn't "fit in." He was crucified. And he was not an AOL guy.