Now, time for a liturgical palette cleanser.

Yes, it's a break from the war, but it'll still probably make you fighting mad.

James Lileks offers us his invaluable perspective on modern church architecture, complete with photographs:

Nearer My God to Mies.

"Or, the Savior in the Grey Flannel Robe: Postwar Church Architecture." More proof that Lileks is one of the geniuses of our time:

Post-war churches faced a dilemma: how to look like a house of worship while looking modern? You might say "that's only a dilemma if they thought churches had to look modern to attract believers," and you'd be right. There was no good reason churches had to cast off a thousand years of tradition and start dressing up like bank branches, but that's exactly what they did. The Depression and the War had done away with the old architectural vocabulary, and the triumphant rise of the Modernists meant that even churches would now be bent to the rationalist's lathe. (Or T-square.)

Preach on, Brother Jim!