St. Mary Parish, Manchester at 210 West Main Street, Manchester, MI 48158 US - The Loss of the Transcendent, pt. 3

This series of three articles has in no way exhausted what can be said about the influences of the Enlightenment upon western culture and the Church; it has just touched the tip of the iceberg. In this concluding article I would like to look at how the loss of the transcendent, which has entered the Church, can be seen in Church architecture and the Sacred Liturgy.

The influences of the Enlightenment, which were being held at bay for centuries due to defensive posture of the Church toward the world, began to find their way into the Church after the Second Vatican Council. This influence can be seen in the vast majority of church buildings that have been constructed since the end of the Second Vatican Council until the present day.

The first observation is that modern Catholic church buildings are more horizontal than they are vertical. In other words the majority of modern churches do not point the congregation to that which is beyond its understanding; they do not point to the mystery of the divine, to heaven, and to God.

The modern day vertical and squatty church buildings keep the faithful ‘grounded,’ and I do not mean rooted in something good. The horizontal nature of the structure keeps the individual focused purely on the worldly.

The modern church building is no longer called the sacred temple of God or the sacred dwelling of God on earth but rather the ‘worship space.’ When a parish builds a new church they are told by the diocesan worship office that the main focus of the building is to be the community and on functionality. There is no longer any focus placed on a church structure being built in order to glorify God. The trickle down effect is that if it does not make sense to us in a worldly sense then it doesn’t have a place in the ‘worship space.’

The ‘community’ and ‘functionality’ have become the deity of the modern liturgists, replacing the honor and glory of God. As a result of this influence most modern day church buildings are void of anything beautiful and spiritually uplifting.

Many of these modernist churches, built after the Second Vatican Council, are fashioned in the round or partial round, thus placing the focus on man and not on God. In many modern churches the tabernacle has been removed from the main body of the church and the center of the sanctuary to a room no larger than a small bedroom or good size utility closet. The underlying message being given, intended or not, is that the Blessed Sacrament is not important.

This ‘new church architecture’ does not reflect the teachings of the Second Vatican Council but rather the erroneous teachings of the ‘secular’ liturgists who have railroaded the Council document on the Sacred Liturgy and are pushing their radical agendas to reshape ecclesiology and to “sing a new church into being.” I might add this ‘new church’ they desire has nothing to do with pointing people to the eternal but rather with keeping the focus on the temporal and on the horizontal.

The modernist church building, or ‘worship space’ as they refer to it, inspires nothing but a quick departure, and with the Blessed Sacrament no longer present, it is an empty ‘space,’ devoid of the mystical and Real Presence of Christ in His church. No one is drawn to an empty church building to encounter the divine.

When Catholics are placed in surroundings that lack the sacred and which are often placed on a par with the local shopping mall or gymnasium, then what is fostered in them is just that: a secular approach to the Sacred Liturgy. With the loss of the transcendent in the Sacred Liturgy and the focus placed heavily on the community and on functionality, the congregation has become trapped in the world. The Sacred Liturgy has become immanent and incapable of lifting Catholic people out of themselves.

The modernist liturgists have informed the People of God that the liturgy is the work of the people. Catholics have been indoctrinated to believe that the purpose the Mass is to get as many people as possible involved and doing something…working. This is another distortion of the Second Vatican Council regarding active participation. The Sacred Liturgy is the work of God, saving us from sin and death, contained mysteriously in the Most Holy Eucharist. The Sacred Liturgy, the Mass, is about what God has and is doing for us in Christ; this is the work of the liturgy.

I do not have time to address music in the Sacred Liturgy. It, too, has become very secular, banal, trite, and lacking the ability to point to the divine. The majority of music composed since the Second Vatican Council reflects a horizontal focus keeping the congregants trapped in the worldly.

How do we bring regain the transcendent in our lives and in the Church? It begins with understanding that we have a spark of the divine within us and that we have been created in God’s image and likeness. We are His creatures, and our existence is a pure act of love on God’s part. Our lives are meant to be lived in relationship to God always pointed toward Him.

We have to intentionally cultivate an awareness of the transcendent and frequently to do things that are solely for God and for His glory. The more that we can do this the more that the transcendent will return to western culture and to the Church.