BEFORE AND AFTER CHURCH RENOVATIONS, I REPORT YOU DECIDE BUT I THINK WE ARE RECOVERING FROM PAST MISTAKES WITH THESE, BUT MAYBE NOT ENTIRELY
Before and after:
Before:
After:
Before
After
Before and After:
Before:
After:
Only After, no before, but you get the picture:
10 comments:
I like the pool hall one.
Unfortunately, the majority of churches in the diocese of Savannah look more like "before" than after. Maybe with our new bishop we can stop perpetuating the postmodern design rule and renovate towards traditional church architecture in some of our unattractive parish churches.
We won't be fully recovered until we get rid of those hedious Cranmer Tables which teaches the notion of a Protestant "Lord's Supper" and not a "Sacrifice at the Foot of the Cross".
Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi
That green ray-gun thing is pretty bizarre....
and the last one is what? populum vs. populum?
Besides so many other instances when he should have, Pope Paul VI should have ordered halted, with immediate ferocity, the destruction of Altars that was reminiscent of the Reformation in Henry VIII's England. If new Churches were to have some alternate arrangement, and that will be debated forever until the GIRM is straightened out, then so be it. But the existing Churches were to be preserved. They smashed many people's Faith by doing what they did. It continues to hurt. Rupture indeed.
Some of our (Savannah Diocese)parish churches need so much redesign and change to get to a passable "after" stage that it would take a capital campaign to raise the funds to do these much needed renovations.
In my parish, for instance, the minimum would be to move the organ pipes to the back wall of the unused choir loft (rather than in a boxlike structure on the front railing of the loft, as they are now) and move the organ and choir seating up to the loft. Then the sanctuary would be all freed up to get a new treatment with more stone tile, a communion rail, and, perhaps, a new (or old reclaimed) marble altar to replace the fake wood one.
Father, must all renovations like this have prior episcopal clearance? Also, would a parish capital campaign for such a purpose also require such prior approval? Does it change anything, as far as episcopal approval is concerned if a parish is fortunate enough to get large donation(s) or bequest(s) to pay for such renovations?
At least under the Ancien Regime in the Diocese of Savannah, NO significant changes to the sanctuary were allowed without approval from the Most Rev'd Bishop.
Anon said: "At least under the Ancien Regime in the Diocese of Savannah, NO significant changes to the sanctuary were allowed without approval from the Most Rev'd Bishop."
And that worked out so well? Not!! The Most Reverend Bishop held up "Theater in the Round" Churches as the "design preference" for new Churches. He was a Most Holy Man, and I am glad he is retired now.
Please pray for the Archdiocese of Detroit. Archbishop Vigneron, in the "Together In Faith" project, is about to announce the closing and selling, clustering, and merging of many parishes. The scary part is, many parishes similar to your "before" examples (plain, generic, multi-purpose "worship spaces") are the ones that are going to be spared. Many beautiful and inspirational buildings (not just historic parishes in the city of Detroit, but many post-Vatican II suburban parishes that are more architectually inpirational and/or unique)are the ones target to be cosed and sold. We in the archdiocese desperately need the new Vatican congregation for Sacred Architecture to intervene to insure it is only the plain, generic buildings that are done away with!
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