Yesterday and today I got to go to daily mass at the church right by where we live, San Andrea della Valle. It turns out that they actually have mass every morning at 8, 9, 10, and 11, so I should be able to make it every day. Mass is obviously mostly the same, but it does have a few differences--language, for instance. Yesterday everything was in Italian. Today the priest celebrated the Novus Ordo, but in Latin except for the readings, which were Italian. My Italian is not quite good enough to understand the readings either day, unfortunately. Another difference is that there hasn't been a homily either day. I don't know if that's Itailian daily mass custom or if it's just been coincidence. I also can't figure out the standard liturgical posture yet, because it's been different each day. Yesterday we knelt after the Sanctus until just after the consecration, but today we didn't kneel til the epiclesis right before the consecration, and then stood again after the consecration. I wait for a cue from everybody else who's there, but perhaps they're doing the same thing until somebody finally takes initiative...I don't know. I'll have to wait for a larger sampling of days to know what the correct way is here.
Another thing that's struck me about the churches here is they sort of seem to lack a community within them. I've been to a lot of different churches in the U.S, mostly because of Totus Tuus and just parish hopping in St. Louis, and one of the things you notice first is that each church belongs to a parish. There's usually a marquee with announcements, and stacks of bulletins in the back, and things like that. In fact, these things are so ordinary and expected that I never thought about them til now. Here, though, there's none of that. There are churches literally all over (we're analyzing different piazzas for my studio class, and the one I'm working on has churches on 3 of the 4 sides) but when you walk in one of the first things you usually see is a map showing the different paintings and saints in the various side chapels. It's as if the main function of the church is a stop on a tourist trip, with masses offered frequently for whoever happens to be around and wants to drop in. Maybe I'm having the wrong reaction, and having 4 daily masses per day is a sign of the great faithfulness of the people in Rome in general. And maybe it's different here because Rome IS such a popular pilgrimage site, and in the smaller towns of Italy things have a parish dynamic more like in the U.S.
While I was at mass today I had the thought that the churches here have more life in the actual structure of the church, and the beauty of the architecture and everything, but the churches in America have more life WITHIN the walls. I had a similar experience yesterday, too, when I went into another magnificent church for the first time and knelt down to pray, and the first thing that came to mind was the church in Limon, Colorado. It's one of my favorite churches. It's small and simple, probably built by the first people in the town, but it has its own share of beauty that comes from that simplicity. It's quite a contrast to all the churches here. I guess all of this points towards the question: are the people more important than the building, or is the building more important than the people? In Limon, the church is sacred mostly because the people make it so (and, of course, because the sacraments are celebrated there--does that sort of equal everything out and make the differences not matter?) and here, it's almost like walking into such a sacred space sanctifies the people. Which is better? I don't know. But as an architecture student who's hoping to someday maybe work in the field of sacred architecture, it's an important thing to think about. I don't know which way I prefer. Intellectually, I think I would pick the Rome way. I believe strongly that Catholicism in general shouldn't be watered down at all to cater to the people, but instead the people should rise to higher standards. That usually manifests itself in a strong preference for orthodoxy, especially in the liturgy, but applied here it seems to logically mean we should have overwhelming, ornate, beautiful churches. On the other hand, though, leaving intellectual ideas aside, I feel much more at peace in the smaller, simpler churches I've been in. They foster a sense of a more personal relationship with God. I also kind of associate them with humility, and the huge churches with magnanimity...but I know that's a sticky area to wander into because I don't think those have to be mutually exclusive, so I don't want to divide them in my head like that.
Well, I don't really have any conclusion for this, but I would love to hear more thoughts on this idea if anyone has any.
Also, you might be reading this blog because you want to know the things I've been up to, not just the thoughts I've had while doing it, so here's a little bit of that: classes started Monday! I have all architecture classes (I'm not going to take Italian after all), which means my work is alot of walking around the city and drawing and analyzing different parts of it. History is going to be especially good, I think, because the professor is a lady who just knows scads of it. We walk around and she tells us stories about most of the buildings we pass. In the one class we've had so far, we talked a lot about the founding of Rome and the Roman Forum, but about other random things too, and it was all really fascinating. For Urbanism we analyzed the Campidoglia, which is a really cool piazza designed by Michelangelo. For studio, we basically have one long project that will take the whole semester, but it's divided into 3 parts. At the end, we'll have a design for a few university buildings in a piazza by the Tiber, rebuilt where a few buildings were torn down in the 30s and never replaced. It's a project that could actually happen, too...the city wants to put something new there and we're working in conjunction with a Roman school somehow, and I think they might actually build one of our proposals. Anyway, we're starting with a short analysis of the existing piazzas in Rome so we can learn how they work, so we're working in groups and each group looks at one in particular and then we'll all look at what every group has done. It's interesting and not TOO stressful yet, and it's not a design project, which always makes it a little easier. But, speaking of which, I need to get to work...
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