Authorship
Tradition in Continuity is the Sacred Architecture Blog of Integration Design Group, PC.
The blog is maintained by firm principal Adam Hermanson.
Please direct all inquiries to admin(at)integrationdesigngroup.com.
Thank you!
Category Archives: Culture
“We do this because…” Four powerful words
Architect Steve Mouzon offers the following comment on the connection between love, sustainability, and living tradition:
“Inventiveness is great… I love inventing things. But I want those things to be lovable so that they have a chance of being sustained long beyond my lifetime. If we want to sustain things long into an uncertain future, we really should stack the deck in our favor by doing work that embodies principles proven to produce things humans love, and that can become part of a living tradition… one with a heartbeat… shouldn’t we?” Continue reading
Posted in Architecture and Design, Culture
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Beautiful Things
Mark Shea, writing for Our Sunday Visitor offers a worthwhile understanding of Beauty placed in the service of God.
“This matters because at one of the most famous banquets of all — held to celebrate the raising of Lazarus from the dead — we see the old familiar charge of obscene waste as it is leveled, not against corrupt Renaissance popes or negligent bishops, but against Jesus himself…”
Posted in Architecture and Design, Culture
Tagged Beauty, Culture, Signs and Symbols, Tabernacle
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Archbishop Chaput: Liturgy Needs to be Beautiful
Abp Chaput: “Human beings have an instinct for worship. Our longing for the good, the beautiful, and the true, is really a longing for God. Not the theoretical idea of a Creator, but a relationship with the loving, intimate, personal God – revealed in Christ Jesus. …Catholic life hinges on the worship of God and the experience of his love in glory.”
Benedict – Restoring the Theme of Beauty
Deacon Keith Fournier at Catholic Online provides an excellent recap of Pope Benedict’s recent comments on Beauty and the role of the Artist in works of sacred art and architecture.
“…Separation between the arts and a living faith has no place in a mature Christian worldview. It proceeds from a poor anthropology, a misunderstanding of the nature of man/woman. It represents an inadequate understanding of the scope and implications of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ.” Continue reading
The Sacramental Worldview, Wonder, & Worship
When we allow ourselves to wonder at the abundant generosity of the created order – including the reality of its having been created for our good, as a means to our salvation, and for God’s glory – we can appreciate more fully that all Creation is being gathered up by Christ and is offered back to the Father in and through the Spirit. Thus, Creation is, through Christ’s redemptive sacrifice, involved in the very life and love of the Trinity. Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Liturgy and Liturgical Resources
Tagged Beauty, Incarnation, Sacramental Worldview, Signs and Symbols, Wonder
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Beauty and Vocations
Readers will appreciate this excellent short video from the website One Billion Stories that discusses how inspired beauty in art captures our imagination and leads us closer to the love of Christ. Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Sacred Art & Artists
Tagged Beauty, Benedixt XVI, Culture, Sacred Art, tradition
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Colorado Catholic History – Part One
Nestled in the San Luis Valley, not too far from the New Mexico border, is the community of Conejos, Colorado. In 1858 the first Mass was said in Conejos in a wood and mud, adobe-like, church by the parish’s first pastor Fr. V.S. Montaño. This humble structure was the first Catholic Church built in Colorado and is today the state’s oldest.
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Posted in Architecture and Design, Culture, Uncategorized
Tagged church buidlings, Culture, historic
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The Liturgy & the Culture of Life
“The sacred liturgy and doctrine are intertwined and the experiential dimension of the liturgy is a profound moment for catechesis and conversion.” Continue reading
Beauty, Tradition, Symbolism… the Language of Worship
As Catholics in the Latin Rite we eagerly anticipate the introduction of the new English translation of the Roman Missal this Advent – on the first Sunday of the new liturgical year. . Admittedly this is a non-architectural topic, but … Continue reading
Posted in Architecture and Design, Culture, Liturgy and Liturgical Resources
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The Communion of Saints – Witness to Worship
Catholic sacred architecture – from its most humble origins in the catacombs of imperial Rome to its most noble cathedrals throughout Christendom – has been intimately connected with the Communion of Saints. Our church buildings are set apart for Christian worship and convey to us the reality of the entire Church – militant, suffering and triumphant – together worshipping the Lord. Continue reading
Posted in Architecture and Design, Culture, Liturgy and Liturgical Resources
Tagged church buidlings, Communion of Saints, Liturgy, Sacred Architecture, Sacred Art
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The City of God -or- the City of Man
It is not common to speak of architecture, homebuilding, design, and construction in these terms. However, if there is a person involved (and of course there always is) then our aim must be toward the proper end and fulfillment of the life of man. Surely we will miss the mark and fall short, but without some upward trajectory provided by our understanding of the City of God, the City of Man becomes shallow and hollow Continue reading
Posted in Architecture and Design, Culture
Tagged Culture, Heavenly City, Sacramental Worldview
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Building Culture
Our chuches should be Good insofar as they enable and encourage the faithful to fulfill our duties toward God in right worship, and toward our fellow brothers and sisters through Christian charity.
Our churches should be True insofar as they present to us in symbol, art, ornament, arrangement, and architecture the revealed and developed truths of the faith handed down to us in this Age of the Church, as we await Christ’s return in Glory.
Our churches should be Beautiful insofar as they show forth the Glory of the Lord and the presence of the Living God, through the work of human hands, as they prefigure for us the redemption of all of Creation which we so eagerly anticipate in each liturgical celebration. Continue reading
Posted in Building a Church, Culture
Tagged Benedixt XVI, church buidlings, Culture, Joseph Pieper, Sacred Architecture, tradition
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Lifting our Minds and Hearts to God, or Going to the Mall
There is a line in the middle of the Eucharistic Prayer that calls out to the faithful, “Lift up your hearts!” or in Latin, “Surcum corda!” It is not a difficult argument to make that the old fashioned steeple gave us a physical symbol of this fundamental movement of our hearts. Continue reading
Posted in Building a Church, Culture
Tagged historic, megachurch, Signs and Symbols, steeple, tradition
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The Heavenly City and Beauty in our Time
The material of creation conveys truths about the Creator; truths we long to know for they reveal truths about ourselves and or realtionship with the Lord. God has given to man the goods of this world, and intends that they become a way for us to make a return to Him – especially in this Age of the Church between the Pentecost and the Coming of Christ in glory Creation is in the process of contantly being redeemed in Christ. Our church buildings should offer us some foretaste of the fullness of this redemption.
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Posted in Building a Church, Culture, Liturgy and Liturgical Resources, The Bookshelf
Tagged Chicago, church buidlings, Denis McNamara, Heavenly City, Providence, Sacramental Worldview, Sacred Architecture, Signs and Symbols
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Clothing the Treasures of Heaven
We ought to dwell for a moment on his quote from the Address to Artists by Pope Paul VI in which he describes the task of the artist and architect as “grasping treasures from the heavenly realm of the spirit and clothing them in words, colors, forms — making them accessible… and comprehensible to the minds and hearts of our people.” What a beautiful mission statement for all those involved in the design, craft, and construction of sacred art and architecture. Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Lectures, Liturgy and Liturgical Resources
Tagged Adoremus Bulletin, Beauty, Cardinal Justin Rigali, Catholic University of America, Conference, Liturgy, Partnership for Sacred Architecture, Sacred Architecture, Sacred Art
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