That's like saying every historical monument or building should be redesigned in a modern context. No thanks.
Quotes to support my statement:
> Altars in the chapels would also be displaced and only four confessionals maintained on the ground floor.
> So the chapels, some of which could be renamed after Asia, Africa and other themes, should display “multiple offerings” such as light projections of Bible quotes in foreign languages including Chinese.
Before that, the mindset for reconstructing historic places was pretty much "hey we have millions of donations, let's throw all this old junk away and install a multimedia show for tourists".
One might say that any old historic building that is not in ruins has already underwent at least one of reform in that style.
There’s always a complex dialogue between maintaining what exists, cost, and adapting to new practices and ideals. Where there is massive destruction, though, that usually shifts the balance far in the direction of new designs, because cost no longer heavily favors the status quo.
From the Churches point of view, if no one leaves thinking "maybe Catholicism is for me after all" then on some level they're not doing their job right. I guess that explains the focus on Chinese tourists since that is a huge untapped 'market' I'm sure they would love to break into. Having "multiple offerings" makes it easier to A/B tests different types of marketing and tailor the sales pitch to the audience. At the end of the day the Catholic church has always been business and their primary goal is to convert as many 'customers' as possible, and church architecture as always been a reflection of that mission.
[1] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dc03e1b8-512d-11ec-8d72-b...
The old Church did resonate with me (though the Sagrada Familia definitely resonated more), but a modern light-show definitely wouldn't resonate at all.
I think think part of the point of cathedrals is to be a little otherworldly, and chasing the "modern context" subverts that. That may not have been true in the past (stained glass is insanely expensive and you definitely wouldn't have seen it everywhere hundreds of years ago, even if it was state-of-the-art), but it's definitely true now.
And even modest remodels of cathedrals (or even parish churches, or auxiliary buildings like parish halls) tend to be controversial, without Church-State tension, or larger scale remodeling of the type at issue here.
Yeah, my point is that those are unusual events, resulting in bigger remodels and associated larger controversies, while even the more routine remodels tend to be controversial.
That is, while the event precipitating it may be somewhat unusual, the situation resulting from the precipitating event, including the large proposed modernizing remodel and the controversy over it, is not at all an abnormal result of such an event.
Because not all "modern contexts" are equivalent. We're at a point now where the "modern context" is so cheap it's become boring and mundane.