In his book The Spirit of the Liturgy Pope Benedict XVI has an interesting chapter on sacred architecture. He observes that, down through history religious buildings were first and foremost temples, or dwelling places for God. In the pagan world, and for the Jewish people, a temple was not a place to have a religious meeting. It was God’s house--the place where the people went to offer sacrifice and worship to the God who was present there.

The Jewish people worshipped in the temple, but they also met in the synagogue week by week to read the Scriptures and hear the faith taught. The synagogue was much more of a meeting place for a religious service. The  first Christians were Jews, and they therefore built on their Jewish traditions and as they met in one another’s homes their buildings for worship were like meeting houses for prayer and preaching.

However, they also met for the Eucharist, and the sacrificial aspect of their worship, and their awareness that Jesus Christ was present in the breaking of the bread, meant that their meeting places increasingly combined the demands of a meeting house and a temple. The two traditions were brought together and the early Christian churches therefore combined both the idea of a temple and the idea of a meeting house for a religious service.

The same tension exists in the church today. In the past Catholic architects have emphasized the aspect of the church being a temple or dwelling place for God, and they sometimes neglected the needs of the worshippers. Nowadays many modern Catholic churches have gone in the other direction and are designed as effective meeting houses for worship, but the builders have forgotten that a Catholic church is also a temple or dwelling place for God.