The American Liturgical Movement, Social Justice, and Architectural Change

Introduction

If one were to ask a typical American Catholic who lived in the United States between 1965 and 1980 what the Second Vatican Council had accomplished, one of the most common responses would surely be “the Council changed the liturgy.” Probe a bit more, and the respondent would cite the following: because of the Council, the Mass is now celebrated in English, facing the people. Probably, he would also report that his parish church had undergone architectural modifications to fulfill the Council’s wishes, including the installation of a new free-standing altar close to the seating area of the church, the removal of the “old” high altar, and the removal of altar rails. In many cases, the respondent would mention the painting over of frescoes and murals, the removal of statues and other artworks, the moving of the tabernacle to a side altar or separate chapel, and the replacement of pews by chairs.

During the post-conciliar period, some American Catholics protested when their churches were remodeled in this fashion. They were frequently told that the Council had called for the changes to which they objected. Some of the objectors did a little research and found that the Council documents did not require Mass facing the people, or the removal of altar rails, or the whitewashing of murals, or the removal of the tabernacle to a side chapel. How, then, to explain these near-universal alterations?

Even today, when this question is posed, responses are many and varied. Taking only the case of the removal of altar rails alone, it is difficult to find a clear and cogent explanation of why this happened on so large a scale. One author’s answer to the question “Why was the altar rail removed from the church” includes the observation, “In the revision of the liturgy after Vatican II no prescription is made for altar rails in church design or sanctuary décor.”¹ This response is somewhat confusing, since it also affirms that the same authorities who carried out the post-conciliar revision of the liturgy did not mention or call for the removal of existing altar rails. Other liturgical and architectural experts cite such causes as post-conciliar confusion, the social upheaval of the 1960s, democratic ideas, modernism in architecture, etc.²

While all of the above-mentioned realities were important factors in the post-conciliar Church in the United States, they do not adequately explain why so many Catholic church buildings were altered. Nor do they answer the question: why did some churches built or modified before the Council feature free-standing altars and lack communion rails, or even pews?

The real explanation is both simpler and surprising. All of the widespread architectural changes to Catholic churches in North America following the Council can be traced back to the foundational principles of the pioneers of the American Liturgical Movement, pioneers such as Virgil Michel, Reynold Hillenbrand, Gerald Ellard, Clifford Howell, Martin Hellriegel, William Busch, Hans Ansgar Reinhold, Donald Attwater, and Godfrey Diekmann. These pioneers, while themselves influenced by European predecessors, were caught up in the Catholic social justice movement of their time in a way that made the American Liturgical Movement distinctive. This overlap between the liturgical and social justice movements is an indispensable key to understanding the changes to American church architecture that are commonly, but wrongly, attributed to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

In what follows, I will lay out the foundational theological principles of the American Liturgical Movement, noting their relationship to social justice, then show how these principles were used to justify architectural changes to churches.

1. The American Liturgical Movement and Social Justice

The twentieth-century liturgical movement began in Europe. Thanks to the brilliant and energetic work of Fr. Virgil Michel, O.S.B., a monk of Collegeville,³ the movement was not only imported to the United States, but re-created as a uniquely American synthesis of theory and practice.⁴ From the beginning, the liturgical movement in the United States had its own...