The Future of American Catholic Architecture | Duncan Stroik
The Future of American Catholic Architecture | Duncan Stroik  
Podcast: The Pursuit of Beauty with Matthew Wilkinson
Published On: Fri Aug 07 2026
Description: Notre Dame architecture professor Duncan Stroik on why modern churches fail — and how to build sacred ones again.Stroik is the designer of Christ Chapel at Hillsdale College and the chapel at Thomas Aquinas College. In this interview he traces Catholic church architecture from the earliest basilicas to the traditional parish churches going up across America right now. If you've ever walked into a church that felt like an airplane hangar and wondered how we got here, this conversation is the answer.We start with what Catholic and Orthodox churches once shared: the rood screen and the iconostasis. Before the Renaissance, both East and West screened the altar — and Stroik walks through Torcello, San Marco in Venice, the stone screens of Naumburg Cathedral, and the screen still standing inside the Sistine Chapel to show how the West tore its screens out while the East made its own solid. Along the way: the ciborium and its curtains, the veil of the temple, and why recovering mystery may be the future of church design.Then the old fight: Gothic vs. classical architecture. Stroik has little patience for Pugin's claim that Gothic is the only Christian style — "somehow for 1,000, 1,200 years we didn't build in a Christian style, but suddenly they did" — and argues a Catholic architect must inherit all of it: Romanesque, Byzantine, Renaissance, Baroque. On modernist church architecture he is blunter: essentially iconoclastic, with no place in Catholic building. He also weighs in on the repainting of Chartres, the restoration of Notre-Dame de Paris, and Sacré-Cœur as Byzantine architecture in the West.On church restoration, his advice is concrete: spend the money on the sanctuary first — altar, tabernacle, flooring, altar rail — because the building teaches whether you meant it to or not. He describes the Cathedral of St. Joseph in Sioux Falls, the paint schemes that turned over every 25 years, and the 1975 low point when whole interiors went beige.And because a church is more than a building, we talk sacred music: Anglican Evensong and the Daily Office, why Germany fills organ recitals while America doesn't, French vs. German organ improvisation, and Stroik's own work designing organ cases. The interview closes with the Raffaella Ballet, commissioned in memory of his daughter, and her motto from Dostoevsky: beauty will save the world.Gothic or classical — where do you land? Say why in the comments. And subscribe for more long-form conversations on sacred architecture, liturgy, and church music.#SacredArchitecture #ChurchArchitecture #CatholicChurch #DuncanStroikCHAPTERS0:00 Hook2:42 Introduction3:14 Anglican Evensong and the Daily Office7:30 Columns, arches, and domes: Andrew Gould's question10:26 Rood screens and iconostasis: what East and West shared (Torcello)11:21 Sistine Chapel's forgotten screen — and the screens of Venice12:51 The veil of the temple: thresholds and the Holy of Holies16:54 Altar curtains, the ciborium, and the schola cantorum19:55 St. Francis at Greccio: the Franciscan paradox22:11 Sacrament houses: Nuremberg's giant tabernacle24:35 Why the choir moved behind29:43 Naumburg Cathedral's surviving stone screens32:14 Stained glass in America 38:24 Gothic vs. classical: Pugin, Ruskin, and Baltimore Cathedral42:35 Notre Dame's classical architecture47:20 Church paint schemes 51:13 Gothic darkness vs. Renaissance light53:14 The Chartres Cathedral repainting54:41 What Gothic architecture gave the Renaissance59:55 The confessional: a Borromeo invention1:01:39 Sacré-Cœur1:02:51 Church restoration1:07:31 Does traditional architecture cost more?1:09:29 America leads — Latin America and Africa 1:11:31 A Nigerian bishop, and churches that don't survive1:14:28 Organ culture: why Germany fills recitals1:17:15 French vs. German organ improvisation1:23:44 Organ case design1:27:22 New churches that give him hope1:30:05 The Raffaella Ballet1:33:45 "Beauty will save the world"