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Clunk!

We just finished restoring our parish church. We almost were forced to renovate it. It was a close call.

The building was erected in 1914 — apparently by the lowest bidder. As it entered its ninth decade, it was falling apart. Inadequate drainage had allowed water to destroy the lower portions of the stucco. The bell tower was going the way of that tower in Pisa, and its fake owl, placed near the bells, wasn’t scaring off the pigeons any more. The choir loft was sagging, even without the choir in it. The unreinforced brick walls of the nave threatened to collapse when the Big One hit. 

We needed to restore the church but were urged to renovate it. “Restore” and “renovate” are not synonymous. In today’s jargon, a church is restored when it is brought back to something like its original condition. This is frowned upon. It is renovated when it is made to conform to architectural styles of the 1960s, which is to say to that modernist style of architecture that already seems outdated and that has not been documented to lift a single heart. Our parishioners wanted restoration, but we knew the bureaucracy would push for renovation.

The diocese brought in people who explained to us what we really wanted. The experts spoke about Environment and Art in Catholic Worship as though its binding force was only slightly less than that of a conciliar decree. (Never voted on by the full body of American bishops, the document in fact has no binding force at all.) The experts explained why a bare cross was more appropriate than a crucifix, even though the Mass is the re-presentation of the Crucifixion. They said things would be much better if only we would follow the lead of those in the know.

So we took an excursion to the pastoral center, where the chapel was being renovated. Standing close to us as we huddled at one side of the bare room, the kindly priest who was our guide explained the baffles that were added to the walls, the better to direct the sound. He pointed to the concrete canopy over the altar: It would send the priest’s voice out over the congregation. He explained how the rest of the furnishings would conspire to make the chapel an aural and not just a visual place. Then he walked a dozen paces into the middle of the chapel, turned to us, started to speak — and couldn’t be heard.

Clunk.

In the old chapel one could hear every knock of the rosary beads. In the newly renovated chapel, one couldn’t make out words uttered a few feet away. There was a disjunction between theory and practical application. In theory, the chapel needed to be remade, but in practice the remaking flopped. The visit taught us something. We listened, we nodded, we smiled — and then we decided to do what we wanted to do, and now the parish is done, looking just about as it did on the eve of World War I. In the process, we ended up avoiding a lesser war.

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