…the design of St. John situates musicians in an old-fashioned choir loft at the rear of the nave, as opposed to a site more integrated with the assembly seating. The design makes no provision for the baptism of adults by immersion.<\/p>\n
It also breaks with the widespread practice of placing the tabernacle somewhere other than at the heart of the sanctuary, the rules for which are clearly outlined in \u201cBuilt of Living Stones\u201d\u009d (2000), the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops\u2019 directive on church architecture. In St. John Neumann Church, the reserved Blessed Sacrament is afforded optimum visibility behind the altar, where it is doubly tented beneath the domes of a metal tabernacle and marble ciborium.<\/p>\n
Whether buildings like these are compromises, aberrations or the first fruits of a full-blown \u201cmovement\u201d\u009d in American Catholic church design is still uncertain. Yet church architecture always raises the question, What is a church? Is it a temple in which God lives? A tent within which a pilgrim people assembles? Or many other things? And what does a post-Vatican II Catholic church look like if the answer is \u201cboth\u201d\u009d or a variant of \u201call of the above\u201d\u009d?<\/p>\n