By Margaret I. Hughes
ABSTRACT: The fire in Notre Dame Cathedral and the subsequent debate about its reconstruction give rise to a consideration of what makes a cathedral, or any church, beautiful. This paper suggests that a church is beautiful primarily because within the church, man encounters God such that he may hope for his final and complete happiness. The paper first considers man’s “interior” and the proper understanding of reason as receptive of reality that allows for man’s interiority. That receptivity means that man’s interior can be completed and satisfied only by God, who is the cause of all that is. The satisfaction of the intellect comes through knowing what is true and seeing it as good, which is also the perception of beauty. A church is beautiful, then, when it manifests both the delightful and terrible truth that man is destined for union with God, but that he depends entirely on God for that union and for his complete happiness.
IN THE YEAR FOLLOWING the dramatic fire in Notre Dame Cathedral, the debates about the reconstruction of the cathedral bring to mind a quote from the playwright-directorRichard Foreman: “I come from a tradition of Western culture, in which the ideal…was the complex, dense, and ‘cathedral-like’structure of the highly educated and articulate personality.” But, he continues, we are becoming “pancake people – spread wide and thin.” 1
The suggestions forthe reconstruction of Notre Dame Cathedral demonstrate sharply Foreman’s assertion that we are becoming a “pancake people” and have lost any sense of the “cathedral-like” structure of the human person. This article, occasioned by the burning of Notre Dame, will suggest that in order to consider the architecture of any cathedral, indeed of any church, including that of Notre Dame, and what makes it beautiful, it is necessary first to understand the cathedral-like structure of the human person. Whereas Foreman explains the human person in terms of the cathedral, this only makes sense if we first understand the cathedral in terms of the human person. As some of the proposals for the rebuilding of Notre Dame make clear, we cannot presume agreement – as Foreman does – that a cathedral should be a dense and complex, that is, a beautiful, structure. But, I will suggest, if we see the complexity and beauty of the human interior, it will become clearer why a church is beautiful and why it should manifest that beauty visibly.
This approach has its justification, not just in Foreman’s remark but, as he observes, in the Western tradition, and even in the Mass itself. The Mass for the dedication of a church is the Missa Terribilis Est, named after the introit of the Mass, which calls the church “terrible,” or fearful, but also beloved or delightful. Both are terms that refer to our interior response to a church. If we understand the interior of the human being, we may then come to a deeper understanding of what makes a church beautiful.
I would like to suggest that a church is beautiful because of what it is built to house: our interior stretching out toward God, a stretching out so intense that it flows over to our bodily expression, and his coming to meet us on the altar, so that we may eventually be fully united with him. In a church, we come face to face with the reality that we are in this life only as wayfarers on the arduous way to our much longed-for true home. This is at once terrible and delightful; we can face that reality only with hope. A cathedral’s visible beauty is an outward expression of our interior hope that our relentless longing for happiness may finally reach its fulfillment in union with God.
This article is not about how a church should be designed – that is a question for an architect, not a philosopher. Instead of considering architecture directly, this article will lay what seems to me the groundwork for talking about beautiful church architecture. First, I will consider what it means to talk about a human interior, which will lead to considering what beauty is. Only then will we be in a position to think about the beauty of a church, but, again, this section will be a consideration of what a church is and in what its beauty consists, and this, I will suggest, does not depend on its design. When finally we do arrive at considering the design of a church, I will suggest why it is deeply important for expressing the beauty of a church, but will not make any attempt to say how it should do this.
Interior Cathedrals
In Evelyn Waugh’s novel Brideshead Revisited, one of the characters observes that, without the Blessed Sacrament present, the chapel in the house is “just an oddly decorated room.” 2 This is a striking claim because it seems true, not just of a house chapel but of any church. A church, no matter how big or small, simple or complex, is really just a room. And so, the first requirement for a church to be a church is that it have walls that separate the space within the church from everything outside of it, and yet have doors so that what is outside may enter it in a way that is appropriate for a church.
A human being is like a church in this way – he too, is a “room,” with an exterior and an interior. Christian spirituality is rife with instances of references to man’s interior: Augustine describes turning into his “inner citadel.” 3 Teresa of Avila calls this room an “interior castle.” 4 Catherine of Siena recommends developing one’s “inner cell.” 5 Ignatius of Loyola advises making “room” for inspirations and opening the “gates of our minds and hearts.” 6 Frances de Sales calls attention to “interior lights.” 7 But these expressions, while they seem to point to something true about human beings, do not make clear what it means to refer to man’s “interior” or to call that interior a “room.” But, I think, unpacking the definition of man – that he is a rational animal – reveals that human beings, like churches, have an interior that is separated from what is outside of him, and yet lets what is outside of him in.
It is strange to call man’s interior a “space” or a “room,” because, of course, it is not a place in the way the space of a church is. It does not take up or set aside geographical space. Rather, it is a space in the sense that, as with a room, something can enter it, and enter it completely and as it really is, and yet both – the room and the thing in it – maintain their separate identities. Likewise, when a man knows, what he knows enters him truly and completely, yet it and he remain distinct. A brief examination of what it is that we know when we know shows this
As an animal, man is a living body capable of sensation. Simply having a body establishes boundaries to the man, such that he has an exterior in the way that a church building has an exterior. The outermost bounds of his body are a boundary, a wall, where he ends, and everything else that is not him begins. But his interior, his inner room, is not simply his internal organs – his stomach, liver, lungs, and so on. When things enter him in a bodily way, they either lose their identity and become incorporated into his body – as does food – or they do violence to his body, as, say, a knife entering it. And so, the human body, considered just as a body, is not a room, since it does not have space to house what is not it. It cannot admit things into it without either it or the thing entering it losing its identity.
Nor does sensation on its own constitute man’s inwardness. When any other animal senses, what is sensed does not become a part of the animal. The animal has a response only on the level of a feeling. The thing has not entered him – it has only stirred a sense response.
But man is not just an animal, he is a rational animal. Man’s interiority is rooted in his rationality. Reason, as Josef Pieper says in his usual understated yet profound way, “is nothing but the ‘passage’ to reality.” 8 Man’s rational capacity is both his door to the world outside of him, and the space within him into which that world can enter.
When we know a thing, we know its form. The form of a thing is the cause of its being the kind of thing that it is. The form causes the structure of that thing and so gives it its identity as that kind of thing. The reason a chair is a chair, not a table or a bookcase or a pile of wood, is that it has the form of a chair. A cat is a cat, not a dog or a mouse, because it has the form of a cat. The form of a thing, in causing it to be that kind of thing, also causes it to be intelligible. We can know what it is because it is something. To know a thing is to know its form. Of course, we first encounter formed things as particular, material things through our senses. But immediately the intellect abstracts the form from our sense experience, such that we know what it is. Through abstracting from sensation, we receive the form of the thing into the intellect. While the form exists in a different mode in the intellect than it does in the matter, it is the identical form in each. The form of the chair – what it is – is really in the chair and really in the one knowing the chair. Man, when he knows, receives beings into himself in such a way that they take up no literal space, but also in a way that is total, such that what the thing is is really in him. It makes sense, then, to refer to man’s “interior.” He has the capacity, as does a room, for receiving things into him that are not him, and yet they and he maintain their separate identities. When he knows, he receives what is real into him and knows what is true.
In order for a room to receive things into it, it must have doors. When the doors to the room are open, they indicate a welcome to those who pass through them. Someone has opened them, which conveys that someone, whether that person is known or not, wants other people there. And, ultimately, we want what is good. Open doors convey to the person who walks through them that someone sees their presence in that room as wanted, and so as good.
Just as the entry of someone into a room requires the invitation of an open door, so too does the entry of reality into the interior man. This invitation comes from the will. That is, while the intellect is oriented toward receiving reality, and so to knowing what is true, this happens fully only when man allows himself to be open to reality by willing that openness. That is, man must assent to the natural orientation of his interior life toward receiving reality as it really is: he must will himself to see things as they are, rather than as he wishes them to be.
Since the orientation of his inner life is to know reality, and he desires that knowledge, his desire will be fully satisfied only when he knows all of reality. His inner room can be fulfilled only by knowing all that is. But, to know something fully, we must know its causes. This means that his interior will be fulfilled and completed only when he sees the Cause whose knowledge is the cause of all things. That is, man will know fully only when he knows the one whose knowledge is not receptive of reality but rather causative of reality. His interior room will be filled and completed only when he sees God.
At least in this life, our inner room is like a room with a ceiling that is beyond our view. In this life, man’s interior room is never yet full; his desire to know is never fully satisfied. As Thomas asserts, “the exertions of all the philosophers combined have not yet been sufficient to track down the essence of even a single mosquito.” 9 Beings, even mosquitos, are mysteries to us because we do not see their cause, God, completely and fully. In this life, we are always faced with the mystery of reality, because no matter how much we know, we also see that there is more to know. And this is what a mystery is. Something is mysterious not because it is unknowable, but because it is knowable but we do not yet know it. Since, in this life, we do not yet know fully the cause of all that is, we do not yet know fully all of reality. In this life, there is always more for man to welcome into his interior room.
Modern and Post-Modern “Rooms”
In stark contrast to the Thomistic conception of man’s interior as one that is always yet open to reality is the modern conception of man’s interior. Descartes, in some ways the first “modern” philosopher, turns inward, just as Augustine, and Catherine of Siena, and Teresa of Avila, and many others, do. Descartes’s inward turn, however, does not move upward. He turns to examine his ideas, which he claims are there in him already, irrespective of any contact with reality. He has ideas – not things themselves – in his inner room. His reason is not a passageway to reality but rather a container and organizer of his ideas.
For the modern philosopher, reason is capable of coming to knowledge simply through its own efforts and through looking at itself. This makes for two important differences from the inner room that we have just laid out: man turns inward toward himself, not upward toward God, and his room is already full; he does not live his life in pursuit of his fullness. That is, because he knows only his ideas, he is not receiving anything into himself when he knows. And, because his knowledge is only of his ideas, he can reach its limit. His room has a ceiling well within his view. He does not need to stretch out beyond himself.
Postmodernism, perhaps especially deconstructionism, reacts violently to this obviously false conception of reason. Reason fails too regularly and spectacularly for the modern overconfidence in it to be justified. Postmodernism sees and rejects modernity’s presumption. Its response, however, is one of despair. Instead of being overconfident in reason’s ability to fulfill itself, it rejects any confidence in reason. Ultimately, a deconstructionist, in deconstructing meaning, deconstructs his own inner room. If there is no meaning, there is nothing that he can know, nothing within him to which he may turn, and nothing to which he may stretch beyond himself.
Modernity and postmodernity, both of which have had impacts on church architecture, as evidenced by many of the proposals for the reconstruction of Notre Dame, reject mystery; the former, because of an overconfidence in reason, such that it presumes that reason can, through its own efforts, know fully; and the latter because of a lack of confidence in reason, such that even the possibility of there being a knowable reality is rejected. The rejection of mystery, which is the result of flattened notions of reason, leads also to the flattening of man’s inner room, such that he becomes like Richard Foreman’s “pancake people.”
Beauty in the Room
This flattening out of our understanding of reason has had profound influences on many things, not least of which is our conception of what beauty is. I will consider these very briefly, and then turn to Thomas’s well-known account of beautiful things as “that which pleases when seen,” to examine how the deeper understanding of man’s interior that we have laid out helps us to understand this claim about beauty.
For the deconstructionist, there is no beauty. To be able to say thatsomething is beautiful, the word “beauty” must have a meaning. But, in deconstructing words, each word means both what it is and what it is not. “Beauty,” then, has no meaning. There isn’t beauty.
In modern philosophy, on the other hand, there is at least a limited view of beauty, the limitation of which follows from the limitation of man’s inner room and the segmentation of his inner life from the rest of reality. For the modern philosopher, the beauty of a thing is not judged by a direct encounter with the thing – that is impossible – but rather by looking at our ideas, which include our sensations, of the thing. Since ideas are the only means by which we know anything, when we consider something’s beauty, it can be only by our ideas that we perceive it as beautiful. We do not receive what is beautiful into us, since we do not receive reality into us, but rather judge our ideas as beautiful or not.
It may seem that this modern way of considering beauty is also Thomas’s, given his well-known assertion that “beautiful things are those which please when seen.” 10 Because we are children of modernity and deeply imbued in the modern conception of man, it is very easy to misread Thomas’s statement. Certainly, it sounds as though he is limiting beauty to objects of sense perception – what is seen – and judging them as beautiful based on the perceiver’s “idea” – that is, his pleasure.
But, if we make that mistake, it is because we are placing his assertion in the inner room of the modern philosopher, and not in that of the medieval thinker, who understands knowing not as knowing ideas but as seeing through ideas to what is real. Just as the eyes really see what is visible and not just an image of the visible, so too the intellect really knows what is intelligible and not just an idea of the thing. Sight is, in part, an intellectual activity, while the activity of the intellect is a kind of spiritual “sight.”
Beauty is seeing – not only what is sensible but also and primarily what is intelligible – what pleases. Pleasure is our response to receiving what we desire. We desire what is good. When we receive what is good, and recognize it as good, we respond with pleasure. The most complete way in which we receive something, because we receive it completely into ourselves, is in knowing it. Thus, when we see the good, and know that it is good, we receive it completely. And this is what beautiful things are: things that are good and are seen as good, simply. We respond with pleasure because we possess what we desire, which is the good of knowing reality.
And so, when Thomas says that beautiful things are those that please when seen, he is talking about not just what is happening in man’s interior, divorced from reality, but the way in which the reality of the beautiful thing enters into man. What is beautiful enters into man through his intellect – he grasps what is true – under the aspect of the good, and this possession of the true recognized as good elicits a response of pleasure or delight.
But, strangely, while beauty delights, it also pains. The beauty perceived in created things is always incomplete because created things are incomplete goods. As good as they are, as much joy as they cause, they always fall short. There is always more beauty to see, more for which to yearn. In the perception of beauty, as Cardinal Ratzinger writes, “the wound of the arrow strikes the heart and in this way opens our eyes.” 11 Our momentary resting in beautiful things makes us aware of our longing for complete rest in the completely beautiful. The experience of beautiful things, of coming face to face with them and seeing them as good and so rejoicing in them, is a shadow of the experience of a full and completed inner room, in which man comes face to face with God. Beauty in this life, as Goethe writes, “is not so much a fulfillment as rather a promise.” 12
Beauty of a Church
The function of any church is to express and affirm this promise of happiness. This purpose is what makes the church beautiful. It may seem as though what causes a church to be beautiful is first its design, its architecture. But it does not seem that this can be the case. What makes a church a church, and what makes it beautiful, is its consecration as a church. When a church is consecrated, no matter its design, the space that its walls carve out is reserved for one activity, and one activity only, which is the worship of God. A cathedral, or indeed any church, although it is simply a room, is a very special kind of room because it has been dedicated to a very specific purpose. That purpose is identical to the purpose of the interior room of the human being. It is the place into which God is received, and where he is worshipped. The church provides the space in which man, in his interior life, stretches out to God to such a degree that it overflows into bodily expression with others.
The introit to the Mass of Dedication for a church illuminates the fundamental beauty of the place where God is worshiped. It prays:
Terribilis est locus iste: hic domus Dei est et porta caeli: et vocabitur aula Dei. Quam dilecta tabernacula tua, Domine virtutum! Concupiscit, et deficit anima mea in atria Domini. Gloria Patri… Terribilis est locus iste…
Terrible is this place: it is the House of God, and the gate of Heaven; and it shall be called the Court of God. How lovely are Thy Tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts! My soul longeth and fainteth for the Courts of the Lord. Glory be to the Father… Terrible is this place… 13
The contrast between the terribleness and loveliness of a church illustrates the complexity and depth of the human interior, which, in its capacity to fear and to delight at the same time, also has the capacity to hope. In what follows, I will consider how it is that a church is both lovely and terrible, and suggest that the beauty of the church lies not in its design but in the hope for eternal life of which it is a sign.
Quam Dilecta Est Tabernacula Tua
Worship, for which the space of the church is set aside, is adoration and honor given to God. In worship, we adore God, which, as the Catechism states, is to acknowledge “God as God, Creator and Savior, the Lord and Master of everything that exists.” 14 Worship is, at heart, an acknowledgment – it has to do with our knowing, not in the sense of our discovering something new, but in the sense of resting in what we know. It is being aware of and resting in the knowledge that God is God.
An intrinsic part of our acknowledgment of God as God is that God is good. When we turn our attention to God, we affirm that God is good, precisely because we have willed ourselves to focus on him. We make him, and his goodness, the object of our will. Worship engages our whole selves, intellect and will, in the activity of reaching out and resting in, insofar as that is possible, the true and the good, which have their source and fulfillment in God.
But, because we are not pure intellects, as the angels, but rational animals with bodies informed by a rational soul, our worship of God, while stemming out of and ordered to our interior lives, cannot engage only our interior. It must involve, as well, our bodies. Only then are we giving our whole selves over to the adoration of God. The engagement of our bodies in worship occurs through various appropriate positions, but also through the engagement of our senses.
We set aside space and consecrate it as a church so that we may set aside our everyday concerns and distractions, so that we may allow our minds and wills to be totally turned to God, who comes to meet us there. And, as the introit says, that makes this place lovely, delightful.
Terribilis Est Locus Iste
But, in the introit of the Mass of Dedication, the declaration “Quam dilecta est tabernacula tua” is sandwiched by a much more ominous proclamation: “Terribilis Est Locus Iste” – terrible is this place. That a cathedral is beautiful because it is delightful, the meeting place of God and man, seems to be contradicted by the announcement that it is terrible. What is terrible, it seems, it is not delightful and so not beautiful.
It is clear, I think, that terrible is not meant in the colloquial sense with which we would use it when describing a terrible movie or a terrible restaurant, or even a terrible tragedy. Instead, the root of “terribilis,” “terreo,” meaning “to fear,” points us to something both perplexing and true about a church and the goodness of God. Affirming the goodness of God, as we do when we construct a church and when we worship there, should stir not just delight but fear.
Fear is our response, in the words of St. Thomas, to “the arduous evil, considered as an evil, and has the aspect of something to be shunned.” 15 The response of fear – a response to an arduous evil – seems so contrary to what we have seen about the delight that a church elicits.
A church is delightful because delight is our response to a present good, and God, who is completely and totally good, is present there. What, then, is the arduous evil of the church that causes us to proclaim “terribilis est locus iste”? And does it somehow mar the beauty of a church?
The solution to this conundrum lies in our earlier discussion of the inner room of man. We saw there that man, in this life, is incomplete. His inner room, which is filled through knowing what he loves, will be completely full only when he knows and loves all that is, which is possible only in seeing God face to face. His intellect, in this life, remains incomplete, and so his will, which yearns for the completion and fulfillment of his intellect – the complete good that is his happiness – stretches ever outward and upward toward reality and the source of reality.
There is something terrifying in that longing for completion. It is a longing for a good not yet fully present. In this life, man is always not yet complete. He is always on his way to happiness. He is a pilgrim.
The pilgrim on his way, although he has the good of his destination in view and is moving toward it, cannot ignore the ever-present risk of not reaching that for which he longs. He may become injured or ill, there may be a natural disaster, he may simply give up. It is this last risk that is most terrifying, because it recalls the most arduousness aspect of his trek: his interior struggle. The pilgrim must, most of all, face himself and his own shortcomings, which are the reason for the journey but also the greatest risk to the success and completion of that journey.
And the pilgrim, as he progresses on his way, becomes more and more aware of his own powerlessness. He can do only so much to prevent injury, or hunger, or cold. No matter how much he struggles and strains against his lacks, no matter how much he exerts himself on his pilgrimage, it will never be enough. He cannot accomplish the pilgrimage on his own. He must rely on others for help – for directions, for shelter, for food, for encouragement.
So, too, for man on his way to complete happiness. He cannot accomplish his pilgrimage toward his complete fulfillment on his own. Worship brings this reality into view, because he sees himself before God. When he worships, he acknowledges that God is the Creator, which means that man is a creature. To be a creature is to be totally dependent. That we are and what we are are given to us; we simply find ourselves as we are, with a nature that is determined not by ourselves but by him who causes us to be and to be human beings. Even our desire for happiness with God is given to us by God.
This means that we are totally dependent on God even to be able to worship him. How fearful it is that, for us to achieve what we desire most deeply, God had to become man and offer himself as the perfect sacrifice, so that we might be able to participate in that perfect worship. This is not a servile fear, a fear simply of punishment. Rather, it is, as Thomas calls it, “filial fear.” 16 This is a fear of offending God, as we might fear offending a father, through some fault. Truly, our lack and our falling short of that which we desire most deeply by nature is terrifying!
This complex experience – of terror and delight in response to the same object but from different aspects – is possible only because of man’s capacity for interiority that allows him to see reality, including himself, as he really is, including in his shortcomings, but also the good that, while beyond him, he might yet attain. That is, man’s interiority allows him to hope.
Hope permits man to dare to think that his future good is attainable, but also sharpens his longing for that good, since it focuses that longing on its true object, which, in this life, is never yet attained. Hope, Thomas explains, “inasmuch as it implies a present appraising of a future good causes pleasure; whereas, inasmuch as it implies absence of that good, it causes affliction.” 17 In hope, man stretches out towards the good that he desires but does not yet possess, and will not possess easily. That man does not yet possess that longed for good, and that he will not possess it easily is a cause of affliction, but the prospect of that good and that it is possible to attain is a cause of great delight.
And so it is that a church is both terrible and delightful: because it is a sign of hope for final union with God. It is the place where we have a glimpse of a shadow of our full delight in being immersed in the sight of God without end. But, in having that glimpse, our longing for it deepens, and we see how difficult our journey to that goal is and how totally incapable we are of accomplishing it on our own. But, in the church, God comes to dwell with us so that we may dwell on him. And so, we may hope, despite our fear, and indeed, because of it, that we may come to dwell with him in Beatitude. It is this hope in which a church’s beauty lies.
Physical Beauty of the Cathedral
That a church’s beauty lies not in its design but in the consecration of that space for worship, however, does not mean that the design of the church is unimportant or that it can simply be whatever we want it to be. On the contrary, precisely because the church’s beauty originates not from the architect and his designs but, rather, fromGod who comes to meet us there, the church architect has a fearful task. His task is to design a building that is a fitting meeting place for man and God.
The church is beautiful because of its consecration; the design of a church is beautiful – that is, the appearance of the church is beautiful – insofar as it expresses the invisible beauty of hope for eternal life with God in visible terms. What makes the design of a church beautiful is its appropriateness for the purpose of the church. Thomas points out that while glass is a beautiful material, a saw should not be made out of glass, because that would inhibit the saw’s purpose. 18 Likewise, the design of a church is appropriate and fitting if it aids, and does not distract, from man’s interior focus on God in worship. If the architecture of the church, and not the worship of God, becomes its focus, it is like a glass saw.
This means that the design of a church should be such that it engages the interior man, so that he is moved to delight in God and to terror at his incompleteness and longing for God. All a church need do to elicit this response is to bring man’s attention to what the church is and to what is happening there.
This is no small task, however. Human beings are extremely distractible. We are drawn by nature toward goods, of which there are many. At every moment, all around us, there are many goods that can draw us in many different directions. Ordinary, everyday life is filled with being pulled toward many goods – there are all the goods of creation that we must pursue simply to survive, and all the goods of creation that we are pulled toward to enjoy. This is part of what is wonderful about being a human being – we can use and enjoy the goods of creation more fully than any other animal. But this means that it is also very easy for those created goods to take up all of our attention and so distract us from the Uncreated Good.
This is why the walls of a church are so important. They mark a separation from the space in which we work and eat and sleep, in which we study and entertain ourselves. They mark the distinction between the space in which all other activities occur, the space in which we enjoy the goodness of Creation, and the space in which we turn our attention directly to the goodness of the Creator. The walls of a church allow us to be separated from the space in which we are taken up with the very important, but very distracting, cares of everyday life so that we may turn our full attention to the goodness of God.
Those walls, their design and their decoration, are essential for our focusing on what is happening within those walls because that focusing of attention in the interior life of man happens first through the senses. While reason is nothing but the passage to reality, the senses, in a way, are the first window of reason. The senses, like the intellect, are actively receptive. Each has an activity proper to it, and that activity is one of receiving its proper object. And, just as delight is stirred by the intellect receiving what is good, so too for the senses.
The senses come to rest, in the sense of being actively focused on and receptive to what is sensible, when they encounter their proper objects. That is, the senses are delighted by sensing objects that are good for them, that allow for their activation most fully. So a church must appeal to the senses in such a way that they can focus on the appearance of the church and never be done with it. They are open and receptive to what is before them.
And the senses in their resting openness continue to stretch out toward the building. That is, in the delight of the senses, there is also longing. The senses, in encountering what is good for them, long for more of the same, to perceive ever more deeply that which is good for them. They continue to focus on and receive what is before them.
When the senses are focused and resting in their good, man as a whole may turn his whole attention in worship to the here and now of the goodness of God. Sensible goods, instead of distracting him, help him focus on the as yet invisible good that he longs to see. In that longing looking outward toward God from his interior, he catches a glimpse of the eternity with God for which he hopes.
Conclusion
It is impossible for a philosopher to offer specific instructions on how to design a church such that it draws the senses in so that the whole man can focus on what is beyond the senses. Philosophers deal in universals, but the design of each church is particular. But, to judge from a description in Allan Temko’s book, Notre-Dame of Paris: The Biography of a Cathedral, it seems that Notre Dame, at least up to now, is a particular instance of a church that, through its design, makes visible the beauty of the church that is rooted in hope. Temko writes:
The Cathedral moves, breathes, aspires to Heaven with a human impulse. And so young in line and feeling that the prepossessing skyscrapers back home seem antiquated and even shabby in comparison. Young! … The Cathedral is younger than today’s newspaper and stands a better chance than the newspaper of being considered interesting tomorrow. 19
It seems odd to call an 800-year-old building “young,” and there are many who don’t. Certainly, to some, the building seems positively outdated. For example, the French prime minister, in announcing the competition for the redesign of the spire, called for “a new spire that is adapted to the techniques and the challenges of our era.” 20 But concern for always having what is new, for keeping up with the times, is a sure sign of being a pancake people. It looks for fulfillment in temporary goods, and looks forward only to the next temporal good, rather than daringly stretching out to the eternal good. On the other hand, it is that hopeful longing that allows men to realize their cathedral-like structure. We become pancake people, and so design unfitting churches, when, through either the presumption that reason does already know all that there is, or the despair in thinking that reason cannot know anything, we cease to hope for our complete happiness in God. As Pieper observes, the man who presumes he will easily attain that good is immature and babyish. The man who despairs, who sees the longed-for good and gives up on its pursuit, is already old. But the man who hopes remains youthful. The young look forward to the future good, recognize that it is far off and difficult to attain, and yet remain confident that it is possible. And so it makes sense to describe a beautifully designed church, such as Notre Dame, as “young,” for it is a visible manifestation of man’s hope for full and final happiness with God.
About the Author
Margaret I. Hughes is a tutor at Thomas Aquinas College, New England.
- Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The Atlantic (July/August 2008), available athttps://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-usstupid/306868/.[↩]
- Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited (New York: Back Bay Books, 2012), 220.[↩]
- Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 123.[↩]
- Teresa of Avila, Interior Castle, trans. E. Allison Peers (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2007).[↩]
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- Josef Pieper, The Silence of St. Thomas, trans. John Murray, S.J. and Daniel O’Conner (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 1998), 64; quoting Thomas Aquinas, Symb. Apost. prologue.[↩]
- Summa Theologica I, q. 5, a. 4.[↩]
- Joseph Ratzinger, “The Feeling of Things, the Contemplation of Beauty,” Message to Communion and Liberation, August 2002, available at http://www.vatican.va/roman_ curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20020824_ratzinger-clrimini_en.html.[↩]
- Josef Pieper, “Love,” in Faith, Hope, and Love, trans. Richard Winston, Clara Winston, and Mary Frances McCarthy, S.N.D. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997), 251, quoting Goethe, Campagna in Frankreich (Münster, December 1792).[↩]
- “Mass: Terribilis Est…: For the Dedication of a Church.” The Daily Missal and Liturgical Manual (London: Baronius Press, 2011), 1073-74[↩]
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2096.[↩]
- Summa Theologica I-II, q. 23, a. 2[↩]
- Summa Theologica II-II, q. 19, a. 2[↩]
- Summa Theologica I-II, q. 32, a. 3, ad 2.[↩]
- Summa Theologica I, q. 91, a. 3.[↩]
- Allan Temko, Notre-Dame of Paris: The Biography of a Cathedral (New York: Viking Press, 1955), 4.[↩]
- https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47959313[↩]