White Stone Journal

In recent years, much work has been done to restore the traditional principles of church design; one principle, however, is still often overlooked: siting. St. Germanus is brief and clear on the subject, as always. In the final section of Ecclesiastical History and Mystical Contemplation, which deals directly with architectural matters, he says:

For St. Germanus, praying toward the east meant that at Mass, the priest and assembly were both on the same side of the altar. The priest was not facing the people; all faced God together. Likewise, church buildings, including St. Germanus Hagia Sophia, were commonly orientated, that is, the front doors were located toward the west and the sanctuary was located toward the east.

Note in his last sentence St. Germanus mentions two goals: Eden and the Second Coming. Thus one's movement through the church building, from west to east, darkness to light, front door to Sanctuary, is a metaphor for the personal Christian life: conception in original sin; baptism and life in sanctifying grace; increasing sanctifying grace through a life of virtue assisted by the sacraments; and finally, death, judgment, and (we hope) the Beatific Vision, that is, Eden. This structural orientation is also a metaphor for all of salvation history: from the Old Testament age of prophecy, to the New Testament age of grace, to the Second Coming and the end of the world.

There is a prominent exception to this basic rule for church siting. The earliest church buildings in Rome, built centuries before St. Germanus was born, were oriented in the exact reverse direction, that is, with the doors to the east and the sanctuary to the west. The priest in these churches stood on the west side of the altar and effectively faced the people on the other side. Liturgical scholars tell us that, at a certain point in the Mass, the assembly turned around, the church doors were opened, and all faced the rising sun in the east.

So far as I know, we can only speculate as to why these basilicas were sited this way. Three reasons are commonly offered: first, it may have been to accommodate the confessio, the tomb of a saint located underneath the high altar, often with steps leading down to it (as at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome), or the sanctuary and altar can be raised up a few steps so that the confessio is at the same level as the nave (as at San Clemente, for example). Either way, a small, simple confessio prevents the celebrant from standing on the same side of the altar as the congregation. Second, it may have been an attempt to imitate the Temple at Jerusalem, whose doors were to the east, and Holy of Holies to the west. Finally, some claim the orientation was intended to imitate synagogues, which pointed toward the Temple at Jerusalem.

St. Germanus' explanation of the symbolism of the parts-that the sanctuary is Christ's tomb; and that the apse is the cave in which He was buried; and that the altar is the spot in the tomb in which Christ was placed suggests a fourth possible reason: as one moves from east to west, from light to darkness, one joins Christ's Passion, death, and burial. When one turns around part way through the liturgy and moves from west to east, one is joined to his resurrection and ascension, and is ready to greet him when he comes again.

As beautiful as the architectural symbolism of this reverse orientation is, it strikes most people as a rather awkward arrangement for liturgy. Yet the orientation of church buildings was considered so important that people were willing to live with unusual siting in order to get it. The result sometimes produces churches like Saint Agnes Outside the Walls in Rome, where the front door is not located on the main road (the Via Nomentana) but rather near the apse. To gain access from this side, a small portico just to the north of the apse leads to the side aisle mezzanine, the ancient matroneum. This was a difficult architectural problem. On the other hand, it is just this sort of problem which sets the stage for an original and memorable solution.

A contemporary view from the Via Nomentana.

After the Middle Ages, Christians gradually stopped insisting on orientated churches. Nevertheless, we continue to refer to the sanctuary as "liturgical east" whether it is truly east or not. Of course, the orientation of our church buildings is wrapped up in liturgical questions which are beyond the scope of the architect, to be sure. But so far as this profession is concerned, a recovery of the practice would be most welcome. For a church which prays toward the east is architecturally, if not necessarily spiritually, richer for it.

Dino Marcantonio is an architect practicing in New York City, a co-founder of the Catholic Artists Society, and a board member of the Society for Catholic Liturgy. He has taught at the Yale School of Architecture and the University of Notre Dame. His Twitter account is @DinoMarcantonio.

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The greatest commandment, Jesus tells us, is: You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

Well, of course. But a commandment? I tend to empathize with the Danish Philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, who writes, in Works of Love,

But how can love ever be commanded? How can it be a duty? If it is a duty, doesnt this detract from its worth? Isnt love something that happens spontaneously when we are confronted with something or someone that is immensely good and attractive? It almost seems that the commandment to love is a command to do the impossible. Sigmund Freud, in his Civilization and Its Discontents, categorizes it as an unhealthy psychological ideal that can become embedded in a culture:

In other words, the commandment, although noble and imbedded in Christian culture, seems to imply per impossibile that we can have control of our inner emotions-something for which we can grit our teeth, stiffen our upper lip, and just . . . do.

Could anyone, for example, credibly order even their children to love? Rather, we order our children to do things connected with love: Be generous with your little sister." Forgive the boy who said that mean thing." Give your Aunt Emma a kiss, even though she scolded you." Pray for those bad people you heard about."

The challenge seems greater when it comes to loving enemies; and immensely greater with God, whom we cannot see.

One might surmise from Our Lords admonition that we can, by an act of will, just start loving God, of whom even the best of us have only the slightest knowledge and little first-hand experience. Of course, grace is supposed to help us overcome recalcitrant feelings. But what if we just dont seem to have the grace?

The key seems to be in the prepositional phrases that accompany the great commandment:

And loving our neighbor as ourselves" is basically a restatement of the Golden Rule-doing unto others as we would want them to do to us. We are hardwired" to love ourselves. So the commandment consists in extending to others the same rights and care that we would want from others-acts which may or may not be accompanied by feelings of love.

It must have been difficult for Jesus fellow Jews to understand that the whole law and the prophets" were based on this commandment of love. The multiple ceremonial laws and sacrifices in the Old Testament were said to number exactly 613-even more than the laws we are faced with in our country, governing income taxes, Obamacare, etc. The Old Testament laws included laws in the Decalogue about avoiding theft, murder, adultery, lying, idolatry, and working on the Sabbath; laws regarding circumcision and ritual purity; abstaining from pork and other forbidden meats; observance of Passover, Atonement, and the other five feasts; tithing; laws regarding marriage, slavery, retribution for crimes, etc. Carrying out these duties in the right spirit could translate for Jews into the love of God and neighbor that Jesus characterized as the greatest" commandment. The danger, of course, was that some Jews, like some of the Pharisees, would become involved in this law-keeping mechanically and ritualistically-the sort of legalism that St. Paul in his epistles contrasted with Christian freedom.

But for the Jews in Jesus time, as well as for contemporary Christians, the fulfillment of the greatest commandment boils down to the duties of increasing our knowledge of God, constantly resetting our priorities and purifying our intentions, and implementing the Golden Rule.

Howard P. Kainz is Professor Emeritus in the Philosophy Department at Marquette University.

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In my last column, I reviewed What a Young Wife Ought to Know (1901) by Emma Drake. It was part of a sex and self" series that focused on what a young woman should do to establish a successful Victorian-like home at the turn of the last American century and one of two books my wife plucked off the shelf at a used book store. She spent eight dollars for the pair. I may have mumbled about more antiquarian books coming into the house but that ended right after I found a copy of Young Wife selling on eBay for thirty-eight dollars.

The other of the pair was a companion volume, What a Young Husband Ought to Know (1897) by a then prominent Lutheran pastor, Sylvanus Stall. Young husbands are of much less interest to me than young wives but the outcry from readers-well, one reader-for a review of Young Husband was so great, I must oblige.

I did not enjoy Stall nearly as well as Drake. Whereas Drake had a few silly medical ideas and some really ungenerous notions on heredity, Stall is awash in both. He is also heavy on moralistic preachments (a hazard, I guess, of being a preacher). While Drakes goal was to produce successful women, in Stalls account the young wife appears to be little more than a dependent in need of guidance and care and company and, golly, just everything. A wise young husband will provide it.

He intersperses his commentary with old wives tales regarded as veritable and self-evident truths. His notions on pregnancy and the effects external influences have on unborn children, for example, are outrageously, um, Victorian. An expectant mother who saw a child with a sixth finger and dwelled on it obsessively gave birth to a child with the same condition. A pregnant woman could not dismiss from her mind the image of her brother-in-law who had lost a hand by amputation and the child was born missing a hand. A Jewish mother once smelled fried pork during pregnancy and ached to taste it. The child born was colic and would not nurse unless first given some bacon to suck on. Pregnant women, Stall concludes, who entertain low" and base" thoughts during pregnancy risk birthing children of low" and base" appetites. For healthy, hygienic (a favored Victorian word), and intelligent children the mother must have elevated" thoughts of a refined" sort.

Nonsense, of course, but dangerous nonsense for the possible mental mischief such ideas imposed upon women. But such were the times that Stalls Young Husband carries a strong endorsement by one Dr. Paul F. Mundè, at the time a Dartmouth College professor and gynecologist at Mt. Sinai Hospital.

Before erupting in mocking laughter, however, I recall contemporary advice on creating a comfy ambience for the gestating baby, all to produce a precociously gifted child. Placing headphones over mommys tummy and playing Mozart concertos, for example, was supposed to insure higher test scores. Prenatal flash cards were all that was missing. Of course, employing American Sign Language for non-verbalizing toddlers today has gained traction among some and comes about as close. Maybe we are not as far removed as we would like from the notions Stall and Mundè endorsed.

Yet for all the ridiculous stuff Stall offered, there is something yet to take away. If Stall saw the young wife as something of an object to be tended and Drake saw her definitely as the equal of the husband, both were nonetheless keen to create the home as the center for both their lives.

This is where I start to like the guy. A young husband, Stall admonishes, should continue to court his wife. He should, in dress and attire around the home, remember he has but one woman to captivate by his manly charms" (I think he uses that in an ironic sense), and, being a man, it will likely require continuous effort. A father should be prepared and able to care for the children while his wife is out, and a proper one will find time to play with his kids. A real husband should be home after work, avoiding bars and clubs, and he should quiet the house when he gets there so the wife can get an hours rest. He should keep the house trim and the yard clean; even a modest house will benefit from male attention.

In Stalls view being a successful young husband comes down to being a husband who will sacrifice his personal luxuries and self-indulgences" for his wife and the family, a man who will scorn the saloon . . . give up his cigar, and spend his time and his money" for the happiness of his family. He crosses a line of course with the cigar thing, but Im with him on the rest of it. I even hear a Lutherans echo of Martin Luther in here, who once talked of God and angels smiling in approval as a father washes diapers.

Russell E. Saltzman is a Lutheran pastor, an online homilist for the Christian Leadership Center at the University of Mary, and author of The Pastors Page and Other Small Essays . His previous On the Square articles can be found here.

RESOURCES

What a Young Husband Ought to Know

Luther on diapers in The Estate of Marriage

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On the Solemnity of the Epiphany, I heard a sermon-a rather well-delivered one at that-about the Magi as religious seekers." The same note, Ill wager, was struck from pulpits and ambos across the country, perhaps across the world.

But isnt there something a bit askew here?

Isnt the point of Matthews tale of the wise men from the East" (Matthew 2:1) that they were finders, not just seekers? Moreover, isnt the further point that what was found was he who has been born king of the Jews," to whom they, gentiles from afar, wished to offer gifts? Dont we lose the evangelical thrust of this charming story of seers, stars and caravans, gold and frankincense and myrrh" (Matthew 2:11), when we focus on the seeking, not the finding, which was the first moment of messianic encounter with the gentile world (meaning most-of-us)?

I dont want to overstate the indictment. All believers are seekers," in that we obey the prophets injunction to seek the Lord while he may be found" (Isaiah 55:6). Still, the point is not about the seeking, but about the finding. More than two millennia after they trekked across the Levant following a star, the Magi are of interest-indeed, compelling interest-because of who awaited them at the end of their search: a Jewish child who would become the redeemer, not only of his own people, but of all people. If the Magi had wandered about Central Asia and the Middle East for decade after decade, they would be of little interest, save perhaps as chroniclers of ancient cultures. No, the point is that the Magi were religious finders, not just religious seekers. And what they found was the fulfillment of their search.

Theres another problem with our contemporary emphasis on religious seeking": It tends to miss the fundamental dynamic of biblical religion and to confuse faith in the God of the Bible with spirituality." Go through the spirituality" section of an online bookstore or browse the spirituality" stacks of an old-fashioned bookshop, and youll find a lot about the human quest for God. That is not what biblical religion is about, however. Biblical religion is about Gods coming into history in search of us, and our learning to take the same path into the future that God is taking.

Abraham, whom the Roman Canon calls our father in faith," was not some generic spiritual seeker. Abraham, or Abram (as he then was), was a unique individual to whom God spoke disturbing and challenging words: Abram was to go on a journey to another land, led by God, who was now entering history in a new and saving way. In that promised land, God would make of Abram, who would be re-named Abraham, a great nation and ... a blessing" (Genesis 12:2). Abram-become-Abraham was to follow Gods path through history. God has the salvific initiative; God comes in search of us. We are not seekers without a compass. Nor are we just finders; we are those who have been found.

The same dynamic pervades the Gospels. There, Jesus does not appear as a homely sage who attracts disciples because he does better cures than the local medical people and tells interesting moral stories. No, Jesus says, bluntly, Follow me" (Matthew 4:19; Mark 1:17). In Johns account, two disciples of the Baptist ask Jesus, Where are you staying?" To which Jesus replies, Come and see" (John 1:38-39). The initiative in salvation history is always a divine initiative. God leads; we follow. God comes into history in search of us; we learn, often slowly and with difficulty, to follow the divine lead.

In the terms in which it presents itself today, the notion of the Christian life as a matter of spiritual seeking" usually has more to do with our culture of self-absorption than with biblical religion. In the Bible, Gods revelation is discerned in history, not outside of it, inside our heads. Seeking, in the sense of deepening our friendship with Jesus, is good; but lets first understand that we have been found.

George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

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Recently we have learned that under Obamacare-that is, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act-employer insurance plans must provide free non-medical contraception, abortifacients, and sterilization for their employees.

Free is as affordable as it gets; for an accountability-spurning culture, its just the right price, indeed. Let us pay nothing in order to beget nothing and, says this government, let us force those interfering churchy" institutions-who keep insisting that there is something worth contemplating beyond ourselves-to pick up the tab, for good measure.

There is an odd we are nothing" philosophy behind this HHS decision and the Secretary who made it, and the President who supports it-a chilling promise of emptiness where tomorrow should be. Humanity, cajoled away from fertility and trained in sterility, is being weaned from those thoughts that travel beyond the present moment; we are self-interested beyond reason, and thus profoundly bored; condom-strangled, tube-snipped, and detached from the essential materials of reproduction either through artificial means or artificial equivalencies, our vision of the future is as limited as a pay-telescopes viewer: tick, tick, tick and then a resolute click!, and it is gone.

With the administrations decision, the covert culture of death has finally made a truly overt move against the culture of life. On one side, there is cheering. Womens groups" are happy. Anti-religionists, particularly those with an animus toward the Catholic church, are nearly delirious. On the other side, there is a grimness that is interesting in its unity, particularly as it is playing out in Catholic media. The furor of more conservative Catholics is unremarkable, but the reactions of the so-called progressive" church may surprise some for the intensity of their disappointment. At the National Catholic Reporter Michael Sean Winters-furious on behalf of those Catholics who took some punches" for the sake of President Obama-declares he cannot, in good conscience, cast another vote Obamaward. He now suggests that the bishops chain themselves to the White House fence in order to bring attention to the direct assault this administration is making against the churchs constitutional right to its own conscience-its right to be what it is.

Some, just as disappointed, but looking for a way to continue supporting Obama, are calling the decision botched," as though the thing simply wasnt sufficiently thought-through. Others are hoping that one states exemption rules might somehow be adapted to Obamacare, so consciences might be assuaged by November. On NPR, Cokie Roberts expresses concern that Obama may have created problems" for himself and his re-election.

But HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and President Obama botched" nothing. The decision put forth is a purposeful one, transparently provocative. If the administration had simply wanted to provide free contraception and sterilization to those who want it, they could have inserted that notion into any one of a number of spending or entitlement bills. Had they meant to demonstrate respect for conscienceand according to Archbishop Timothy Dolan the president said he considered the protection of conscience sacred"the administration could have taken the advice of others and looked closely at how Hawaii managed conscience exemptions under their law.

There are questions as to whether HHS has authority to issue exemptions to Obamacare, although quite a few have been issued for reasons other than conscience. There appear to be no questions in the presidents mind, or in Secretary Sebelius, that they have the authority to intrude on freedom of religion. With this ruling they insist that church-affiliated institutions either act against their own belief or so narrow the scope of their community service as to be removed from the public square; either way, the government is deliberately affecting the free exercise of religion. Considering some Catholic schools, hospitals and charities were serving their communities before the secular governments even thought to follow suit, that is a damnable, and damning, legacy for a president who once taught constitutional law.

To be sure, this situation is cause for concern, but there are some bright spots in all of this. Although the mainstream press has reported very little about this event-a close examination might prove uncomfortable for their own worldviews-the unified public expression of righteous defiance by the U.S. bishops is a powerful development.

Just as importantly, the laity-divided for decades on issues ranging from felt-banners to dress to dogma-has found a line in the sand upon which they can come together; conservative" Catholics are reassured to see their more progressive" brethren defending the churchs right to be who and what she is; more progressive" Catholics may be coming to realize that-as relentlessly single-minded as some of their opponents could be-had they not held the line all these years, much could be crumbling at this moment.

Now is the time for all good Catholics to come to the aid of providers-the schools, hospitals, charities, and soup kitchens who serve communities in need without asking affiliations. And, in coming together, perhaps now is the time to ponder their long-held presumptions, each about the other, and broaden our own outreach as well.

If nothing else, in declaring war against our consciences, the Obama administration has given American Catholics a great gift of clarification; a fractious family we may be, but-as the saying goes-we are church. And we have the right to be who we are.

Elizabeth Scalia is the Managing Editor of the Catholic Portal at Patheos and blogs as The Anchoress. Her previous articles for "On the Square" can be found here.

RESOURCES

HHSs ABCs; Anybody but Catholics

American Bioethicists: not really wrong" to take a life

Michael Sean Winters

Obama has botched" it

What about Hawaii

Cokie Roberts on NPR

Unified Bishops

Sebelius' Contraception Mandate and the Media

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