Penance for Your Eyes: St. Konrad ‘Catholic’ Church in Offenbach, Germany

Wait till you see the tabernacle!

Penance for Your Eyes:
St. Konrad ‘Catholic’ Church in Offenbach, Germany

(image: Rudolf Stricker/Wikimedia Commons)

Wherever you may be in the Western world, if you ever notice an architectural monstrosity that you can’t quite identify, a good rule of thumb is: If it’s too ugly to be a library, a medical office, or a government building, then it’s probably a Novus Ordo church.

Take, for example, the ‘Catholic’ church of St. Konrad in the German town of Offenbach, near Frankfurt, in the state of Hesse. It’s an eye magnet, and not in a good way. The photo above doesn’t lie.

The official reason given for the bizarre architectural design of a tower with two steel beams and a rectangular cuboid that ‘pierces’ them is that it is to represent a capital ‘A’ for the Greek letter alpha, since Christ is “Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Apoc 22:13). Unfortunately — or perhaps we should be grateful — the original idea of making the church portion of the building represent the letter omega, never materialized.

This is explained on the state of Hesse’s web site for protected historic buildings:

According to the original concept, the symbolic letters Alpha and Omega were to be translated into the design of a church building: an A-shaped tower adjoined by a space with an almost circular floor plan. … In Offenbach, the space was elongated during the planning process, with only the tower’s shape retained.

(Source; translation via DeepL.com)

Here are some more images of the building, inside and outside:

St. Konrad’s at night…
(above image source: Google Maps/screenshot)

Inside the rectangular cuboid…
(above image source: Karin Berkemann of kirchenkunst.info)

A view of the sanctuary…
(above image source: Bistum Mainz/Tim Soljan/screenshot)

Yes, this is the ‘tabernacle’…
(above image source: Google Maps/screenshot)

According to information provided by the city of Offenbach regarding its hideous landmark, the sanctuary was completely revamped in 1978, clearly bringing it in line with the ecclesiology and liturgical principles of Vatican II. The mosaic altarpiece was added in December of 1979.

On account of the ‘New Springtime’ of Vatican II that is still in full bloom in Novus Ordo Land, St. Konrad’s is no longer a parish in its own right. Instead, it was merged with some other ‘Catholic’ churches into a larger parish family.

By the way: St. Konrad’s is part of the diocese of Mainz, which is presently occupied by ‘Bishop’ Peter Kohlgraf (b. 1967). In 2017, Kohlgraf declared in an interview that “as a church we need to work on our view of sin and that traditional moral theology does not correspond to reality”. In other words, if people don’t live according to God’s commandments, then obviously we’ve misunderstood the commandments. This is typical of the Neo-Modernist theological approach, according to which divine revelation is not given from the top down, so to speak, but from the bottom up: It is the ‘lived experience’ of man that reveals God’s truth, and as experience changes, so does revelation. (Hence the need for a ‘synodal church’ with endless ‘listening’ sessions.)

This hearkens back to one of the Modernist errors condemned by Pope St. Pius X, namely: “The dogmas which the Church professes as revealed are not truths fallen from heaven, but they are a kind of interpretation of religious facts, which the human mind by a laborious effort prepared for itself” (Decree Lamentabili Sane, error no. 22; Denz. 2022).

Come to think of it, it is not a bad thing that Novus Ordo churches should distinguish themselves by their ugliness. In this way, the external building reflects the internal religious reality, and people are less likely to mistake it for a Roman Catholic church.

Saint Conrad of Parzham, pray for us.