Architectural Hubris? "I am the greeeat and powerful Ozzzzzzzz!"

Well, it looks like The Windex Chapel at Ave Maria has just gotten a little less glassy, though this seems to be, as Phil the Prince of Inferior Light might say, darning with faint praise. The photographs at Cannon Design frankly don't strike me as terribly promising; as far as I can tell, the revised facade looks virtually the same, but with more concrete, less glass, and no gigundo crucifix.

I think one could make a case, ala Sacrosanctum Concilium, that it isn't exactly noble simplicity: while the gilding and marble of St. Peter's is not ostentatious, saying, as my blogging consoeur Emily here puts it, "hey, we're gonna stick the biiiiggest crucifix in the world smack dab on the front of our glass chapel," is. The interior, shown above, doesn't seem too promising either. It is supremely blah, neither good nor bad. It's...interesting, the one worst word you should never stick to an architectural design. The steel tracery is rather lovely ala Thorncrown Chapel, but strikes me as likely to look too cartoonish in such an immense space. I assume Tom Monaghan is going to put his gigundo crucifix back in there at the back of the sanctuary (near the altar, which is virtually invisible in the picture), but all I see is organ pipes, never a promising sign...and, of course, the Wizard-of-Oz style Giant Floating Head of Mark Mendell.

The whole Ave Maria chapel saga has mystified me from start to finish: it seems a "methinks-the-lady-dost-protest-too-much" attempt to be different at every conceivable level from the mainstream (if one can use such a word) of the orthodox Catholic liturgical revival. While absolute rock-hard revivalism isn't the be-all and the end-all, Monaghan's clumsy embrace of modernity is utterly mystifying, since most of his students are likely going to Ave Maria to get away from the sterile parish life cultivated in big astrodome-modern parishes. It's not bad, it's just... One screws up one's face and wonders, why? What sort of message is he trying to send? I know he means well, but, Tom, Tom, Tom...why?

It verges on head-banging territory.

If you want a chapel to inspire orthodox Catholic students, get an orthodox Catholic to design it, like Thomas Gordon Smith. And, if you want some innovation within tradition, get Erik Keilholtz to do the reredos. It may take a while, but both prudence and patience are virtues, and I would hope that the students and professors of Ave Maria would have the souls of the cathedral builders who took it one stone at a time rather than members of the Microwave Generation.