Does a Vatican II church exist?

Abstract

In the last 50 years there has been a remarkable change in the shape of the Catholic Church building with regard to the preceding decades. It is usually considered that this evolution is due to the Second Vatican Council: the renewal of the Christian liturgical space would be one of its most visible consequences. However, the Council said little about liturgical architecture and certainly did not intend to give specific guidelines on how to build churches. The analysis of the conciliar texts show that a Vatican II church is a place of prayer, with the understanding of prayer as as a general way of denominating a broad program of usage. The two main criteria that the Council desired in the renewal of Cristian architecture were: liturgical functionality and the promotion of active participation by the faithful. This should have been realised at the same time as the reform of the books of the renewed liturgy.