Monks Celebrate Fifty Years of Bauhaus "Church"

Bauhaus' Cold Abstraction Only Leaves the Barest Outline of a Church

"When we enter ornate and clean Basilicas, adorned with crosses, sacred images, altars, and burning lamps, we most easily conceive devotion. But, on the other hand, when we enter the temples of the heretics, where there is nothing except a chair for preaching and a wooden table for making a meal, we feel ourselves to be entering a profane hall and not the house of God" - St. Robert Bellarmine

Edit: it was actually built before the Vatican Council, so you can't blame that.  In fact, the Abbey Church at St. John's Abbey in Collegeville Minnesota, was almost built in expectation of the catastrophic loss of confidence in the Catholic Church following the Vatican Council's publication.  The structure itself and the interior design are not only illustrative of the revolutionary values of the architect, Marcel Breuer, but it also signifies the utter lack of direction and mission at this Monastery.  St. John's Abbey is mercifully dying off.  It's no wonder, because the Abbey Church itself, whatever might be said of it in peer reviewed architecture textbooks, looks more like a tumulus for the ashes of deceased paupers, a kind of decrepit bus station ferrying the dead to the after life.  The building really does give the impression that a Catholic monastery has been hijacked by the U.N..  Indeed, Breuer also designed the UNESCO building.

Note the absence of Christ and palpable lack of focus

A few of the features of the building, not least of which is its cold and barren appearance, is the fact that the altar has been moved forward toward, if not into, the nave and there is no room for reredos or a tabernacle beneath the apse of the almost non-existent sanctuary, but there are blocky, industrial chairs for the presider and his/her acolytes to sit in majesty.  These chairs actually look almost like deck furniture for the Bill Shatner era Enterprise.

They're actually the same color too.

Contrasts are always helpful, especially when presented with such bland fare as this.  Where the gothic presents a soaring and brilliant interior, soaring heavenward as a compliment to the miracle of the Mass itself. St. John's Abbey presents a thoroughly utilitarian approach to the Liturgy, a kind of bus station outside of Leningrad circa 1956.

You know pretty well what's going on here. It's Gothic.

It is frequently the case that the contrasts presented by the historical changes taking place before the Council and after, give the impression of two different religions.  It's what many Catholic priests felt in the wake of the Protestant Revolt in England and many intelligent Catholics, like Micheal Davies, have noticed something like that in our own days.  Sometimes it's helpful to illustrate the right way to do something after you've criticized something:

Contrasts are nice

Monks of St. John's Abbey to celebrate 50th anniversary of dedication of Collegeville church | The Republic