“The whole look was both modern and very bland,” said Matthew Alderman, a graduate of the University of Notre Dame’s classical-design program who works as a consultant on sacred art and architecture.
“It was a kind of beige Catholicism that was ugly, but not aggressively ugly … and these churches looked like they were in a chain that had franchises everywhere. It was that whole Our Lady of Pizza Hut look that started in the 1950s and then took over in the ’60s and ’70s….”
Thank God for the resurrection of taste amongst our RC brethren! The big late 60’s period RC church that overshaddows our little TEC parish across the street is generally accepted as the ugliest sanctuary in town, even by its clergy! While I was moving into the rectory across from his, the local RC pastor told me that if I were ever to look out the window and see smoke billowing from St John’s…I was to do nothing at all!
I’m still LOL at “Our Lady of Pizza Hut.”
The RC parish in which I was raised had an odd shape but it was still rather stately. The odd shape did produce a perpetually leaking roof, though. The inside was another story. The removal of the communion rails and pews for the choir gave way to a design free-for-all and some really ghastly elements juxtaposed in the suddenly wide-open sanctuary.