The grammar of worship
Photo: Sketch of St. Dunstan’s Basilica, Charlottetown, PEI by Heinz Klassen.
Ever read an email that made you wince? I don’t mean because of off-colour jokes but because of grammar—such as when you see, “Its going to be a long meeting” (did they forget the apostrophe or do they not know better?) or when a colleague complains, “There proposal was ridiculous!” You wince, you reel, you wonder if civilization will survive.
In a healthy language grammar is living. Still, the masters of the English tongue—the Shakespeares, the Newmans, the Richard Wilburs—were first servants. Like all true craftsmen they submitted themselves to a long apprenticeship, a long study of the rules, before they thought of extending them. Architecture, too, has its own language. Its forms are regulated by a set of rules. These rules are the fruit of centuries of hard-won experience. When it comes to the design of churches, this “organic logic” is governed by what we might call the grammar of worship. It is a grammar inspired by revelation and watered by tradition. With sharp relief, we see in these two recent West-coast churches what happens when that grammar is grasped or ignored.
Thomas Aquinas College’s chapel (2009) is a graceful articulation of a house of Catholic worship. With balanced classical elements (e.g. the tower and dome), elegant symmetry (note the spacing between the arches), and those baroque details which situate the structure in the history of America’s Spanish missions, it is a monument to living tradition.
What of the cathedral? It is the creation of super-star Spanish architect Rafael Moneo. Whatever else it is, at $250 million, Los Angeles’ Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral (2002) [pictured above] went way over budget. Like a spam email, LA’s Cathedral is painful to look at even while it’s difficult to ignore. Unlike the chapel, the Cathedral’s monolithic face, irregular floor plan, and protruding angles, manifests a shape more like a Soviet Mausoleum than a house of prayer. Perhaps architectural geniuses dont [sic] need grammar; we at least wish they could learn how to spell.
Saint Kateri , Canada’s Protectress
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Remembering Father Alphonse de Valk
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My Name is Bernadette
April 16th is a propitious day, for besides the anniversary of Father de Valk’s death, who founded Catholic Insight in its print form decades ago, and the commemoration of the ‘two Benedicts’, mentioned in accompanying posts, today we also recall Saint Bernadette Soubirous, the young visionary to whom the Virgin Mary appeared numerous times at[…]Continue reading→
Canonizing Sister Faustina and Divine Mercy
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Divine Mercy Sunday – An Echo of Every Mass
Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe’… ‘My Lord and my God!’ (Jn. 20:18)). Today is Divine Mercy Sunday, and as we celebrate the end of the Easter Octave, we contemplate the wounded side of our Saviour, the Church’s source of life. On Good Friday in the[…]Continue reading→
First Holy Communion: Sermon from May 16, 1943
Here is a sermon from the good old days by +Rev. Msgr. Vincent Nicholas Foy (August 14, 1915 – March 13, 2017), from 1943. Readers may recall that Pope Saint Pius X, by the decree Quam Singulari in 1910, lowered the customary age of reception of Holy Communion – after the rigours of the plague[…]Continue reading→
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Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory (Col. 3:3-4). The Resurrection of Our Lord and Saviour[…]Continue reading→
An Ancient Homily for Holy Saturday
The time between Good Friday and Easter Sunday is one of waiting, in silence, as the world wonders – anticipates – what will happen, after the death of Christ. We re-live this time each year in the anamnesis of our liturgy, and in turn look forward to the glorious re-creation of all things at the[…]Continue reading→
Europe’s Long Descent
(As we meditate on this day on Christ’s burial, and His descent into hell, it is fitting to ponder here with contributor Peter Marcus how the world seems to be heading there as well. The difference is that, although God cannot ‘redeem’ hell, nor those therein, He can and did redeem the world. There is[…]Continue reading→
Pope Saint John Paul II’s First Good Friday Homily
ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS JOHN PAUL II AT THE CONCLUSION OF THE STATIONS OF THE CROSS AT THE COLOSSEUM Good Friday, 13 April 1979 When we make the Way of the Cross from one station to the next, in spirit we are always at the spot wherethis journey had its “historical” place: where it[…]Continue reading→