Vatican sources are reporting the establishment of a Liturgical Art and Sacred Music Commission by the Congregation for Divine Worship. Its task will be to collaborate with commissions in charge of evaluating church construction projects. The team will also be responsible for the further study of liturgical music and singing. Cardinal Antonio Cañizares Llovera, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, and Pope Benedict XVI consider this work “very urgent.” Critics charge that in recent decades churches have been replaced by buildings that resemble multipurpose halls or boldly shaped structures that risk denaturing modern places for Catholic worship. Too often, critics complain, architects do not use the Catholic liturgy as a starting point and end up producing avant-garde constructions that look like anything but a church. Tabernacles are obscured and sacred images are almost nonexistent. The new commission will be devising regulations on church design that will give precise instructions to dioceses.
New Roman Committee to Critique Churches
Show Comments (
)
Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
The latest from america
President Trump offered a vibrant demonstration of the kind of worst-case scenario Pope Leo may have had in mind about the collapse of critical thinking.
In his first appointment of a top-level official of the Roman Curia, Pope Leo XIV named Sister Tiziana Merletti, a canon lawyer, to be secretary of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.
“We were once leaders in petroleum and gas research; now we’re becoming leaders in green hydrogen and carbon capture. This isn’t just a technological shift; it’s a spiritual one.”
A cardinal reflects on his experience of the conclave