Customer Reviews

Catholic Church Architecture and the Spirit of the Liturgy

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Denis McNamara has delivered a framework for church architects and building projects that has been needed for many years. Denis takes from theory and spiritual concepts to deliver brick and stone examples. This book is full of photos and methodologies of how churches are built, explaining the traditions, theology, and techniques used to in representing heaven on earth, via a built structure.

The book is accessible to laymen, builders, and clergy. It is also informative from a historical perspective as to what theories have led us to the way churches look over time. The audience need not be a specialist to enjoy this, but a specialist can certainly use this as a tool in building projects.

Our parish is in the midst of evaluating the worship space we have now. The unspoken pain of many of our parishioners in the current architecture has been given a voice through this process and this book has been a powerful starting point for study. It eloquently expresses what so many Catholics know from their interior but have a hard time expressing - that "my church doesn't look like a church".

I believe this book will serve as a starting place for the emerging discussion on what went wrong with architecture following the Second Vatican Council. While the book is scholarly, it is approachable to the interested lay person. Difficult terms are bolded and defined on the page that they appear. Vivid and clear examples are given in pictures and photos in each chapter, and the reader comes away with a strong sense of "what went wrong" and where to go from here.

The reader will first be taught that beauty is not 'in the eye of the beholder" and therefore Catholics are not lost to the whims of modern liturgists and architects. "An object is beautiful when it most clearly and fully reveals its ontological reality, the very reality of its being as understood in the mind of God." A church that looks like a meeting house or factory is not beautiful for this reason - it doesn't look like a church.

The text then moves to the scriptural foundations of architecture laying a path for "theological architecture" beginning in ancient Israel (shadow) to the New Testament (living stones) to today, the Church as a vision of heaven (does your Church look like a vision of heaven or chaos or emptiness?).

Part III covers the classical tradition in decoration, ornament, and columns - their meaning, and their use to express an elevation to a heavenly reality.

Part IV covers iconography and the eschatological reality and nature of the church building. The author masterfully discusses the ability of the artist to bring into physical form a 'flash' of the reality of heaven and what went wrong in modern architecture.

Part V is a study of the 20th century, the history of architecture and the liturgical movement, Mediator Dei, the Second Vatican Council (and what it actually said as opposed to the "Spirit" of the council), the hermeneutics of discontinuity employed for modern ugly church architecture, and finally, where we can go from here.

I highly recommend this book for anyone confused to why so many churches are "ugly as sin" (the title of another great book), and want to speak intelligently to their pastors, bishops, building committees, and worship commissions. It should be required reading for all students of theology, religious education, and required reading in seminaries.

This is the only book on Catholic Church architecture I would give a full 5 stars. It is well worth the price.

Building churches is a touchy topic. McNamara brings in historical and theological background without overwhelming the casual reader with technical terms or unhelpful details. His approach is very balanced, neither conservative nor progressive, firmly rooted in Vatican II and the traditions of the Church (and of architecture).

I have long searched for a book that would teach me "How to Read a Church." This book does that, and much more.

I'm not writing this for artists, architects, pastors, seminary students, designers, liturgists, contractors, or professors. "Catholic Church Architecture and the Spirit of the Liturgy," should simply be their required reading for its expertise, theology and inspiration.
The author, architectural historian Denis McNamara, is assistant director and faculty member at the Liturgical Institute of the University of St. Mary of the
Lake/Mundelein Seminary near Chicago.
This review is for today's voiceless parishioners who, without the kind of information in this book, have no constructive opinion as to what their church building's interior renovation or new construction will ultimately look like.
North, South, East and West from Holy Name Cathedral in the Archdiocese of Chicago, there are some of the most awesome churches in Christendom. Most were built in a different era, when, as author McNamara says, the church building was "a sacrament of the city of heaven." If one of these is your house of worship, thank God, and read this book to better appreciate what you have. (In fact, McNamara's first book, "Heavenly City," showcased Chicago's outstanding houses of God.)
If your Sunday Eucharist is offered in a "Disneyland gothic," or glorified gymnasium, read this book to be better informed on what you're missing.
Granted, no matter how mundane the parish place of worship may be, it is filled with happy and sentimental memories. It is filled with loving neighbors, as well as the ghosts of those who went before -- those who cooked the chicken dinners that built those walls in our founding pastor's price range.
"Catholic Church Architecture and the Spirit of the Liturgy," is a book to curl up IN. You'll savor its 225 pages and 425 stunning photographs if you're into the topic. It expresses a school of thought and a consolation, that the "something" missing in so much of our world is Beauty, Truth and Goodness, which is God himself. The author hopes through this book (I call it a "course") to help readers "rediscover the meaning of Beauty."
He addresses the competing themes at work in church buildings today and strives, in charity, to find middle ground between conflicting theories of liturgical architecture. There are 16 frequently asked questions included from his parish presentations and from the classroom, that helped inspire him to write the book. His answers are straightforward.
Summing up the role of liturgical art and architecture joined to the liturgy, McNamara writes: "...it reveals to us our heavenly destination by showing us where we are, where we have been, and where we are going. ... It welcomes us to the Heavenly Banqueting Feast ... It shows to our eyes the glory of heaven and absorbs all good that has come before; from pagan, Jew, and Christian. ... In it we swim in the warm, effortless delight of the Sabbath, in the vision of freedom where all is from God, to God, and about God."