Churches for a Changing Liturgy: Gillespie, Kidd & Coia and the Second Vatican Council

摘要

The relationship of Modernism in architecture with the symbolic needs of church-building was fraught with the dangers of betrayal: whether the architect indulged in personal spiritual expression, or used traditional forms, he could be accused of stylistic excess; if he applied a reductive functionalism, the result could be faulted as failing the brief. After the Second World War, expression and tradition were gradually admitted into Modernism to expand and enrich its vocabulary, and the limits of functionalism were reassessed. Churches were a field in which architects of the Modern Movement could explore their new concerns with poetic form and monumentality, in contrast to the more prosaic jobs in housing, schools, and so on; but few architects had the chance to work on churches in quite the same volume as the more pressing post-war building tasks. One firm of architects with an exceptional opportunity was Gillespie, Kidd & Coia, responsible for a series of Roman Catholic churches in Scotland, 'the finest body of post-war church building in Britain', according to Elain Harwood. This work has attracted attention from architectural historians before, particularly for its rich and humane interpretation of sacred architecture. This article, however, is not principally about style or aesthetics, but about something else that this series of churches can tell us: it is a study of the relationship between architecture and liturgy. Gillespie, Kidd & Coia's churches are especially important because they were designed at a period of significant change within the Roman Catholic Church, more significant in fact than at any time since the sixteenth century. An interpretation of architecture according to this liturgical change allows a better understanding of these buildings, and sheds light on many other church designs of the time. Beyond this, however, there are more fundamental links to be observed between many of the architectural ideals of post-war Modernism and new currents of thought within the Church.