A machine-church, whose functionalism takes priority over form, may fascinate the eye and stimulate discussion about the designer's imagination, but this is a different issue from the religious one. Verticality, harmony, symmetry and balance, and proportion of the human form are de-emphasized or entirely absent. Emptiness and architectural nihilism evoke not serenity but madness because the interior is stripped of sensory religious symbolism. Even banks and doctor's offices, decorated with art forms, are not absolute in their functional role. Ultra-abstract church architecture combines secularized Christian art and rationalized religion. Inseparably connected as they are, here the sensory aspect of the Incarnation is denied. ~ Sr. Joan L. Roccasalvo, C.S.J.

While cheap pietistic visuals are not the answer to incarnational theology, neither are antiseptically-stripped churches. ~ Sr. Joan L. Roccasalvo, C.S.J.