The Catholic Church over several generations has suffered a grievous impoverishment. It has lost its sense of the scope and expression of the sacramental in its sacred architecture and so lost sight of the multitude of functions that architecture serves.
The picturesque city of Marietta, “the oldest town in Ohio,” was founded in 1788. It was the first permanent settlement of a newly created Northwest Territory and a possession of the French government. It was named to honor Queen Marie Antoinette in appreciation for aid that came from France during the American Revolution.
One of those mistaken notions, the consequences of which many of us have felt vividly ever since, is the idea that, in the early Church, worship took place primarily in “house churches.”
Theologians and artists belong together. Saint Thomas Aquinas supplies one reason for the happy companionship that theologians and artists should enjoy. In one of his minor works, Aquinas writes: “God is the fount of all beauty; every kind of beauty is his.”
What is the most famous chapel in the world? Many would say the Sistine Chapel in Rome. When pilgrims and tourists visit the chapel, the focus is not so much on its architecture but on its art, and rightly so.