New Photos from Thomas Aquinas College

Architect Duncan Stroik sent some new photos from the new Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity Chapel project at Thomas Aquinas College in California. It’s a great thing to see the dreamy, optimistic watercolor renderings actually turn into the real building (click each thumbnail for larger images) . I had the good fortune to meet the college president some 10 years ago in Rome when he was taking a tour of Italian churches to get ideas and see what he wanted for TAC, and the results have really paid off. The glorious baldachino is still being worked on, so it isn’t visible in these photos . This church, along with the soon-to-be-opened Shrine of Our lady of Guadalupe in LaCrosse, Wisconsin (also by Stroik), are proof that a church architecture that connects with regional traditions and the longer traditions of the Church can be done today. There are nay-sayers who claim this isn’t “of our time” because “our time” is supposedly defined by glass, steel, industry and technology. Well guess what: here it is, in our time. God still lives. We still worship with the angels and the saints and the souls in purgatory. We still read St. Thomas Aquinas’ writings. This architecture still means something. And in the Church’s time, we see the past as eternally present and the future anticipated in what we do now. I guess Duncan just redefined the Zeitgeist.*

*Zeitgeist–German, “spirit of the Age,” derived from the philosopher Hegel, used as the justification by Modernist architects to deny the past and claim a self-defined “spirit” according to whatever ideas they thought best. Usually the most cogent argument for relativist totalitarianism.