How to Restore Beauty to Your Church
- Ethan A. Hayes
- Jun 20
- 6 min read
From the 40's till approximately the mid 90's churches clearly went from bad to worse, often 'renovated' only in the worst possible ways. This was done for reasons to stripe the buildings of their antiquated meanings and usage and install new meanings and usages often foreign or at least novel to the church. The church was sick throughout the 20th century, and it did what sick things do. In some ways the errors have been predictable, merely repeating and magnifying the problematic trends and practice of the last 600 years, but the vehicles of change have not been.
In Michael S. Rose's book Ugly as Sin, he outlined how this was done practically, unearthing many of the devious mechanisms involved in making such dramatic changes. However, the book has begun to show its age with a lack of any real practicum. And further, the situation of the Church has progressed significantly. The future of sacred art is much more optimistic today, but the crisis of the Church has unfolded cataclysmically with now only 17% of adult Catholics in the US attending Mass weekly according to a 2022 Georgetown survey.
When working with clients to restore their churches, several problems always present themselves immediately. Everyone wants good things for their church, but they feel absolutely helpless in how to actually enact such hopes. The church's finances are always too meager. The politics of the parish are always haplessly deadlocked. And the church building itself is always so ruined by layers of wrongheaded renovations that a proper fix seems in fact physically impossible. This is the real situation for the majority of parishes, whether they hope for a return to beauty or not.
Many parishes in the US unfortunately have never even had a beautiful building. Many were built in the prosperous economic boom from the late 40's to early 70's when church art was quite actively somersaulting down hill. Now however, we finally have the tools to right the ship again. Let us briefly lay out real practicum on how this is done.
1. The parish ought to take on one small, overwhelmingly positive and politically neutral project. This is to inspire all toward the good of such changes. This ought not be a huge divisive project like the erection of an altar rail when there never was one within living memory, but more like the repair of the fingers of the long broken statue of their titular saint. No one would oppose such a work, and this can then transpire perhaps into large plans to making an actual altar or shrine to their saint.
2. In addition to having a very positive first project, one ought to also perhaps avoid projects involving changes particularly to the sanctuary right away. Changes to sanctuaries are often more closely governed by diocesean review. By successfully enacting a peripheral project first, you can win the heart of the people toward these positive changes before having to add the stress of diocesan commitees. Further, by already possessing a history of good will, the diocese may be be more likely to consider such a major project favorably themselves
3. Try to recruit a single large donor for your desired project. If you are a parishioner, approach the priest with a project you think is desirable and tell him that you will pay for everything. This usually get a parish's attention and significantly greases the wheels. Often this money would be tithed by the donor to the parish anyway, but handling the funds in this way is much easier despite perhaps being a bit of a shell game. Even through there might only be 3-4 donors interested enough in the project to open their pocket books in the beginning, it will seem like the project has immediate grassroots support. Seeing other's generosity always encourages additional donors for your future projects.
4. Avoid commitees. Act in wisdom like a decisive father, only delegating to a small trusted group for practical purposes only. The parish might need someone to oversee the billing or fundraising, or perhaps the priest himself is color blind (not uncommon) and cannot work with the designer to pick colors, but every extra person involved makes the project more stressful, political, and difficult. The priest should be the only person aside from the designer having imput over the theological content and themes of the project. Father knows best, and this is where he is expertly qualified to shepherd his parish. Parish buy-in with parish leaders may help the politics of the project, but this is strictly speaking an abdication of the pastors duties to delegate the theology of the work to a staff member with only a Bachelors degree in Theology or less and minimal real pastoral experience. When it comes time for diocesean renovation approval boards, it will be difficult enough without committees of dozens within the parish arguing over ever decision. Death by committee is real; the studio has seen it.
5. Future proof all of your projects and renovations. If you are managing to put in an altar rail or a high altar, make it very, very difficult to remove later. Insist on heavy lagbolts in inconvenient locations fastening everything to the floor and walls. Glue everything down with masonary adhesive and threadlock what you can. Make it so that if another pastor or a rogue parish council dares to dismantle the good work you have done, they will have a very bad day and know in their hearts that they are making a very bad, wrongheaded decision. If instead one day a good pastor wishes to upgrade your work with something better, they will laud your diligence, remarking that 'they don't make them like they used to'.
Further, plan all your changes so that future positive changes are not made too inconvenient. It is no good to build a high altar first before first attending to the floor beneath it. No one ought to repaint a ceiling when the roof needs to be replaced. If a parish needs a half decent baptismal font to replace a trashy one, but wishes to one day build a full seperate baptistry, don't spend thousands of dollars on merely a half decent font only to replace it again in five years. A good plan is laid out in stages, idealy paid for ahead of time with earmarked funds, so that if a pastor is moved, the project continues as intended.
6. Carefull avoid any conceit, or disdain over the ugliness of the past. It is not helpful. We often marvel when conducting demolition of how ill-renovated churches always have been. However, this is highly toxic to the unbridled joy of new changes in the parish. This can infect both workcrews and commitees making them blind to their own potential mistakes and shoddy decisions. Instead the pastor should personally relish and encourage the joy of the project. This should be ensured by communal prayers, liturgies, and processions of images as the project progresses.
7. Manage your funding confidently. If you make a good, beautiful, confident plan, the money will always appear and God will reward your trust. This is seen time and time again. You must establish a budget that you want to work by, and afterward try to avoid penny pinching. Once you establish that the money will achieve the quality you desire, spend it and do not worship it. Remember that the beauty of a church is a gift to God as much as it is a gift to the people. All studios are capable of enacting extremely economical opitions for a church, but you do not want those results. We personally refuse to do such work. This Judas-like spirit is exactly the justification the 'wreckovators' of the past used to produce the inhumanly austere churches which are now being re-renovated. It is impossible to get something good, fast, and cheap without compromise. - - - To head off any potential accusations of conflicted interest in this advice, know that the studio generally makes relatively less money for more elaborate works.
8. Educate the parish continually in an incremental way. This should be done in a slow, steady, and undaunted manner. Renovation projects are just like any other controversal issue in a parish. One third of the parish will hate any change regardless of what the pastor does, even if the pastor does nothing. Such noise should be noted but not argued with. If any critique at all of a work would be enough to cancel it, nothing would be done, and people would still complain that nothing is done and that parish leadership is weak. Instead use trusted inner counsel, ideallly with imput from other priests, to determine what is the best course of action and ignore broad, unqualified criticisms. Aim rather at convincing the indifferent of the parish of the beautiful love of God. It may be possible to save their souls and the rest of the parish with them. That is the whole reason for a renovation.
Sources:
Dr. Mark M. Gray, PhD, 'Eucharist Beliefs: A National Survey of Adult Catholics', September 2023, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/629c7d00b33f845b6435b6ab/t/6513358329f868492a786ea6/1695757700925/EucharistPollSeptember23.pdf
Rev. Stephen M. Koeth, CSC, 'Postwar Building Boom', Sacred Architecture Journal, Volume 34, Fall 2018, https://www.sacredarchitecture.org/articles/postwar_building_boom
Michael S. Rose, 'Ugly as Sin: Why They Changed Churches from Sacred Places to Meeting Spaces-And How We Can Change Them Back Again', January 1st 2001
留言