Why Modernism Intentionally Destroyed Beautiful Churches | The Deep

A Catholic church should look Catholic. Its form, sacred signs, and symbols should attract us, draw us to its interior, the statues, stained glass, a beautiful altar. There should be no confusion, even for non-Catholics who enter. This is the house of God. But instead, we have this. We go to mass in iconoclastic modernist boxes, devoid of transcendence, Catechized by what Joseph Ratzinger called the Cult of the Ugly, we call it Recovation, the brutal period of iconoclasm that engulfed the global church from the 1960s through the 1990s, whitewashing sacred art, gutting sanctuaries, and ripping out the altar rails.

We built new worship spaces shaped like flying saucers, prison blocks, and factories. What could possibly have driven Catholics to abandon centuries of Christian art? Did they really think that this was better than this? It's easy to blame Vatican II, but we have to go back further to fully understand how we got here. The War on Beauty occurred across many religious traditions, and began long before the Fathers convened for the Second Vatican Council. The Catholic Church's late and almost total capitulation to modernist architectural trends was particularly devastating on a cultural and spiritual plane, overturning, as it were, The last refuge of sacred art.

But the story of Recavation isn't just about art. The fact that Catholics offered wholesale submission to the stripping of the altars betrays a foundational loss of faith and identity. But when it comes to salvation history, destruction never has the last word. Today, hundreds of parishes and dioceses are recovering that sense of identity and faith. And I can't wait to show you some of my favorite renovation stories. But before that, we have to ask, how did we get here in the first place?

It's easy to blame Vatican II for anything we don't like about the Catholic Church today. Architect and historian Duncan Stroik says it goes back much farther. These concrete boxes, barn-like shelters, and sculptural masses all had precedent in the Pre-Conciliar era. In fact, radical new church configurations had been experimented with since the dawn of modernism in the late 19th century. The idea to model churches on auditoria, Greek theaters, large houses, or theaters in the round, grew out of low-church Protestant worship, whereas the reductionism of post-conciliar churches grew out of the modernist architectural movement in Europe.

Current church architecture, Stroik says, is not merely the child of modern theology. It is also a child of the masters of modernism. In other words, The cult of uglification in the Catholic Church followed upon the uglification of the broader West in general. The philosophy and theology of these men were rooted in the Protestant Reformation, the French Enlightenment, and German idealism and rationalism, a cocktail of reactionary historical movements that sent humanity plummeting into the spiritual, ideological, artistic, and physical bloodbath of the 20th century.

As the Protestant Reformation gained traction, bold mobs driven by an iconoclastic fervor stripped the Catholic churches of their statues, stained-glass windows, paintings, altars, and relics. Reformers, especially in Zwinglian and Calvinist regions, argued that these images encouraged idolatry and distracted from a pure spiritual encounter with God. In England and elsewhere… Secular authorities were happy to appropriate anything of value. Waves of iconoclasm swept through cities in Switzerland, the Low Countries, England, and parts of Germany. Streich points out the continuity between this anti-image theology and what we saw in the 20th century church modernists, who translated violent iconoclasm into a, quote, voluntary, minimalist aesthetic.

Requiring austerity and the absence of images. René Descartes kicked things off in the French Enlightenment with his sweeping attempt to recreate all philosophy, and by extension, all theology, from nothing, by methodically doubting everything that had come before. Starting from zero, like Descartes, became a defining characteristic, not only of modern thinking, but also of modern art. You can see this in modernist church architecture with its draconian stripping away of anything supposedly superfluous, bell towers, rose windows, extra altars. Nearly 200 years after Descartes, George Wilhelm Hegel, one of the most famous of the German idealists, drove the point home.

He argued that architectural style must express the spirit of its age. Both distinct, and also over and against all previous styles. Modernist architects adopted this vision, including Le Corbusier, who accused the tradition of stifling architecture, and Mies van der Rohe, who described architecture as the will of the age conceived in spatial terms. Churches, like banks and city halls and schools, also went modernist. Frank Lloyd Wright gave us the Unity Temple in 1904. In 1914, Louis Sullivan went full church-in-the-round at St.

Paul's. For all of these movers and shakers, the spirit of the age unquestionably existed in a dialectic struggle with the spirit of Christianity. Their struggle was to effect a, quote, revision of values, to help people realize that the doctrine, liturgy, And even the God of the Catholic Church were dead. I would be remiss if I didn't point out that, in many ways, the modernist developments were also reactions against a shameful art form born out of mass industrialization, Kichi Jesus.

Mass production weaseled its way into church art. Images of Christ and the saints imitated the appearance of the masters, but replaced depth, originality, and truth. With sentimentality, cliché, and easy emotional gratification, all in the name of affordability. The term was famously analyzed by the critic Clement Greenberg in his 1939 essay, Avant-Garde and Kitsch, where he argued that kitsch emerges in mass industrial societies as a kind of, quote, formula art designed for quick consumption. Kitsch relies on familiar symbols, Cute children, heroic poses, sentimental scenes that trigger predictable emotions without requiring reflection.

Not only was the Keech religious art shallow and manipulative, but it also groomed the average Catholic in the pews to treat the art they encountered in churches or devotional pamphlets and books as a product for consumption. The rejection of Keech may have been a factor in driving many well-intentioned Catholics, priests, and bishops seeking something more profound into the modernist heresy of art, that in order to find the transcendent, the beauties of the earth had to be dismantled, whitewashed over, and thrown away.

Catholics were not immune to the modernist spirit. Professor Randall Smith uncovered a good example of how these had wormed their way into Catholic liturgical thought by the mid-20th century. In 1952, the Liturgy Program at Notre Dame published a small booklet titled Speaking of Liturgical Architecture by Father H. A. Reinhold. In it, he offers modern principles for designing Catholic churches that had already been in play for several decades. These principles were form follows function.

This principle doesn't mean that a church building could facilitate the function of a church, which is liturgy, and to house the Eucharist. Modernist functionalism means that building design strictly limits itself to bare material necessity. For example, the inner structure, the machine-made parts, the mechanical rectangles, the modern soul of the building must be expressed on the outside. Completely free of applied decoration, such as vertical structures like spires, domes, and even large doors. Principle number two, start from zero. Like a good Hegelian, Father Reinhold discouraged Catholic architects from clinging to the Gothic, Baroque, or even Romanesque influences.

He called for a revolutionary break from the past. These older styles, he writes, were children of their own day. And Catholics in the modern era must find a new, completely unique form. Principle number three, social engineering and utility.

A good church building would, he said, create the ideal setting for full participation. Father Reinhold defined full participation a priori, not as a full communion with Christ, but as making eye contact with other worshipers throughout the liturgy. As Duncan Struyck describes it, these principles at first, quote, took the form of subtracting or abstracting traditional motifs in buildings. Later, inspired by non-objective painting and sculpture, modernist architecture sought to end the distinctions between floor and ceiling, interior and exterior, window and wall, and sacred and profane, which architecture has historically gloried in.

Modernist Catholic churches also tend to glorify modern materials of steel, concrete, and reinforced glass. These materials don't just hold up the building, but are also showcased by the building. The intent is to indicate the progress of man, and again, the radical break with tradition. It didn't have to be this way. In the early 20th century, traditionalist architects were learning to use modern materials to great effect without abandoning stained glass or decoration and shape. Famous examples include St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City and the Basilica of the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.

But these architects were increasingly marginalized by modernists like Father Reinhold and the German liturgical movement. Liturgical reformers hoped that a new architecture would free Catholics. From rigid rationalism and narrow moralism, bringing newfound freedom, love, and unity by doing away with accumulated images that no longer meant anything to modern people. So, what was Vatican II's role in the Recavation?

While affirming the sacred tradition of the past, the Council's documents are careful not to reject or even limit any particular architectural style, including the modernist style, in which the majority of architects were already in full thrall. Duncan Stoick again, the Council's acceptance of the styles of the time and rejection of limitation to any particular style. can be seen as a careful opening of the window to modernism. The architectural establishment, by this time thoroughly cut off from its historical tradition, came in like a flood.

Self-appointed reformers took the father's vision of a church open to the modern world as a mandate to impose progressive moral preferences, political commitments, and aesthetics. The message? Full modernist iconoclasm was not one among many valid styles, but was the only style fitting for a new church in a new age. Like Latin, traditional church architecture was permitted by the council, but most parishes and diocese interpreted the spirit of the council to be a complete rejection of the past. It was both a spiritual and material vision of a new age.

A physical church with no sanctuary, no holy of holies, no nave, and no rails. The old hierarchies and styles were overturned, and the art that represented them torn out. Almost 100% of American bishops and clergy tore out their altar rails, a powerful gesture indicating that the distinction between the sacred and the profane was no more. The destruction reached a sort of symbolic peak when the Archdiocese of Los Angeles commissioned Spanish architect Professor José Rafael Maneo to design Our Lady of the Angels, a cathedral with No right angles.

His design of the cathedral seems almost resigned to the modern sense of rupture and homelessness, a progressive understanding of breaking with history by breaking forms like lines, coherence, and color. In 2016, Moneo, a former Jesuit seminarian who describes himself as a non-practitioner of Catholicism, gave a lecture on the process of designing the cathedral. He conveyed an almost palpable sadness, describing how he, as an artist, lives in a world stripped of communion and faith. He remarked, Let me say something about the world today.

It isn't anymore a world that produces a homogenous community that ends up with common shared systems of values of understanding the world. Obviously, that doesn't happen today. In his mind, Asymmetry, discord, and incoherence rule the world, and that conviction shows in his design. With the exception of the famous tapestries, no decoration was allowed. His ideology of isolation forbids it. While a sort of geometric purity rules the space, this is no orderly Euclidean geometry. It is a violent, disrupted architecture sitting not on the edge of a beautiful park or river, but on a concrete highway.

The harmony that religion offers between God, ourselves, and our neighbor is not the same as the harmony that religion offers between God, ourselves, and our neighbor. Is missing. Perhaps because the architect himself never believed it existed in the first place. Moneo represents the great spiritual tragedy of the architects and artists whose skill catalyzed the Recavation. But the story of the Los Angeles Cathedral isn't the story of Moneo forcing his own tragic loss of faith on millions of Catholics. No, the story here is that the Catholic cardinal and his donors...

Moneo, who at first ignored their decision to hire him, and begged him repeatedly to take on the project. Moneo describes how he didn't want the job, but was persuaded by the diocese itself to take it up. And that's a perfect icon of the betrayal that the Catholic Recavation represents.

Bishops, cardinals, and laity swept up in the spirit of the age, wanted it to happen. They made it happen, and in doing so, committed grave acts of both desecration and profanation. The truth is that Catholic metaphysics, ontology, and spirituality are all incompatible with modernist and postmodernist artistic movements. Beauty is at the heart of worship, being, and meaning. The experience of beauty should both make us at home in this world, it should affirm what is good in human life and the natural world, but also, acknowledging our fallen nature, point us beyond this world, to the final redemption of everything here.

Objective beauty should therefore be the aim of sacred art and architecture. There is no substitute for sacred art. There is only the profane. The tragic result of gutting the churches was gutting the devotion sacred spaces should demand. Churches belong to God. They must conform, therefore, not to the spirit of the age or to my personal taste, but to the Holy Spirit and the beauty of the face of Christ. They must aid the people in conforming themselves to God, who is beauty itself.

Devastation did not have the last word. In the aftermath of the Recavation, hundreds of Catholic parishes have been slowly reclaiming their patrimony of beauty in dramatic transformations. Renovations have become opportunities for rediscovery and renewal in tradition, and they have become opportunities for rediscovery in tradition. Art and worship itself. Opportunities to reject both the quiche of a tired cultural Catholicism and the burn-everything-old-to-the-ground spirit of modernism. I could tell you, but it's better to show you a few of my favorites. First, the Cathedral of St.

Thomas More in Arlington, Virginia. The Diocese of Arlington was established in 1974, right in the heart of the American Church's Recavation Era. Its cathedral was the parish church of St. Thomas More, a mid-century modern structure completed in 1961. When the diocese began preparing for its 50th anniversary, the obvious question arose, could a building like this be transformed, inside and out, into something worthy of its sacred mission? The answer was yes, but only through a dramatic reimagining.

The project called for replacing the facades, the roof, and nearly all interior finishes. Architects O'Brien and Keene looked to the world of St. Thomas More himself, Tudor England, for inspiration. Drawing from that era and later revivals, they incorporated stonework, mixed masonry, oriel windows, tracery, and buttresses, reminiscent of early 20th century Gothic revivals. Inside, the nave and transept walls were redesigned, the oriel windows restored, and a wood-screen wall inspired by the rude screens of Catholic England was added. The tabernacle was moved to the center of the cathedral, and the choir loft was tucked out of sight to prevent distraction or performative music during the holy sacrifice of the mass.

The result? A church truly risen from the ashes of modernism. It's not just for cathedrals. Small parishes are rediscovering the beauty and tradition of Catholic architecture as well. One of the most dramatic transformations happened in Ames, Iowa. Where St. Cecilia, built in 1972 as a fully modernist worship space, completed its renovation with a rededication in July 2025. According to the architects, the pastor asked for three things, more natural light, harmony with the narthex, and sacred art that lifts the mind and heart to God.

The 14-month project began by literally cutting open the roof to bring light into the dark interior. The baptistry was moved to the entrance, the tabernacle restored to the central axis, and a marble altar installed. New pews, altar rails, crucifix, devotional shrines, and reredos now anchor the space, while murals of St. Cecilia, St. Francis, the risen Christ, and the Holy Spirit connect worshipers across the centuries, lifting the heart toward heaven through beauty. And finally, I would be remiss if I left out my favorite local story, St.

Mary's in Norwalk, Connecticut. Unlike St. Thomas More Cathedral or the transformation in Ames, Iowa, where modern buildings were reshaped into something new, this is the story of a church restored to its original glory. Irish immigrants began building St. Mary's in the era of the Know-Nothings, who registered their displeasure the old-fashioned way, first by trying to burn the church down and later by sawing the gold cross off its steeple. The Little Gothic Revival Stone Church was dedicated in 1870, and its beautiful marble work and ornamental interior painting were completed by 1890.

Then, in 1961, the Recavation came. The Reformers couldn't tear out the Gothic bones, but they did nearly everything else. Whitewashing the interior, ripping out the altar rails, marble side altars, shrines, and burritos, reducing the church to as barn-like a space as they could manage. In 2018, the parish and diocese chose restoration. With a marble sanctuary and altar rail, reconstructed side altars, renewed decorative painting, and a new high altar reredos framing Leonard Porter's painting of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

These three churches are not aberrations. They are signs and sacramentals of a restoration in the Catholic Church. A restoration of beauty, but even more than that, a restoration of faith in God, hope, Love in heaven and love for the Eucharist and each other. Our churches can become beautiful again, even more so for having passed through the fires of the Recavation.

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