Collegiate charism: the post-Vatican II architecture of the St. Thomas More Oratory at the University of Delaware

Abstract

The St. Thomas More Oratory has been the spiritual home of Catholic students at the University of Delaware since 1970, and it is also a useful example of vernacular post-Vatican II architecture. This thesis argues that the Oratory’s design was aligned both with local building customs and, most importantly, recent Church teaching following the changes of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). The Oratory’s economic use of ornament, radical horizontality, and flexible seating are important artifacts of a period in social and theological flux. While time has demonstrated that it was not as effective at creating a multi-generationally beloved environment of worship as the designers intended, and new church designs are closer to the Gothic and Classical styles that long existed in the Catholic imagination, the Church’s experimentation with Modernism was a sincere and pragmatic attempt at reconciling a millennia-old faith with a changing world.