The question, then, is not whether there should be humility, but rather, who or what should be humble. In examining the Church’s documents, it is clear that the furnishings, foremost the altar, are actually to be exalted, as they share in the reality of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist, the Word, and his ministers.
The Church teaches that “above all, the main altar should be so placed and constructed that it is always seen to be the sign of Christ Himself [ …] to which the greatest reverence is due” and “the author of holiness is Himself present” (Eucharisticum Mysterium).
In contrast, it is the human heart that should have humility. When one enters a church like Notre Dame with its immense size, soaring height, and awe-inspiring stained glass, everyone can feel an unconscious humility of heart. Liturgical furnishings should help to increase this feeling of pious humility for anyone entering the church, and even more so for the faithful to participate in the liturgy “with proper dispositions,” as Sacrosanctum Concilium states.
In the place of plain and abstract designs, the Council’s constitution on the sacred liturgy calls for all sacred spaces and designs to “strive after noble beauty.” The concept of “noble beauty” versus “noble simplicity” is one of the most misunderstood pieces of Sacrosanctum Concilium. The term “noble simplicity” is often used as evidence that Vatican II mandated abstract and unadorned churches and furnishings. This same term was used by the Archdiocese of Paris as explanation for the new furnishings.
However, in context, this term does not refer to art and design at all. It instead refers to the rites of the Church, calling for revisions to make them clearer and more comprehensible to the faithful while still recalling their purpose in the worship of God.
When the Council fathers address sacred design four chapters later, “noble simplicity” is nowhere to be found; rather, the term “noble beauty” is used. In both contexts, “noble” means a beauty that is grand, impressive, and excelling in all qualities. This is the opposite of the modern drive towards abstraction and minimalism that is exhibited in the new furnishings.
“Clean lines” and a humble design are not what the Church prescribes but are in fact the opposite. As St. Pope John Paul II writes in Ecclesia de Eucharistia, “like the woman who anointed Jesus in Bethany, the Church has feared no ‘extravagance,’ devoting the best of her resources to expressing her wonder and adoration before the unsurpassable gift of the Eucharist.”. For a historic cathedral, resplendent with stained glass and stone vaulting paired with a $760-million renovation, it is hard to reconcile the new furnishings as having a semblance of “noble beauty.”
Lastly, Bardet is correct in saying that liturgical furnishings are to be “centered on the eternal.” Sacred art and design are meant to be transcendent, to pull people out of themselves and into the realm of God. This “otherworldliness” is foremost accomplished if “all things set apart for use in divine worship [are] truly worthy, becoming, and beautiful, signs and symbols of the supernatural world,” according to Sacrosanctum Concilium. The Catholic Church uses many signs and symbols to convey that her worship transcends time and space, connecting heaven and earth.
For example, the altar transcends its identity as a piece of “furniture” and connects in a mystical way to the altar of the Jewish Temple, the table of the Last Supper, the tomb of Christ, the body of Christ, and the eternal banquet of the Heavenly Jerusalem. As the International Committee on English in the Liturgy’s Rite of Dedication of a Church and an Altar explains, quoting St. John Chrysostom, “the altar is Christ.”
The new bronze altar at Notre Dame attempts this transcendent symbolism and is described as symbolizing “a stone taken from the earth for sacrifice, preparing itself as a fraternal table for the Lord’s Supper.” As well as this was intended, the relation of symbol and the symbolized is confused: This bronze altar is meant to symbolize stone, whereas the Church calls for an altar “of natural stone” that is meant to symbolize Christ (General Instruction of the Roman Missal, 301).
