Church Restorer Puts His Faith in the Power of Gothic Design

Does your church need a face-lift? Rhett Judice, church doctor, to the rescue. He didn’t plan it that way. Judice is an architectural restorer and classical musician who was once content playing the organ for Sunday services. Now he finds himself rebuilding the insides of religious structures.

He can take what looked like a ski lodge and turn it into a Gothic cathedral, carve a dark cave into an English abbey, whip a stark side aisle into a regal arcade. Sometimes his biggest job is to undo what’s been done “the ugly way,” as he would call it.

The past 30 years have been hard on the eyes for Judice, who studies church interiors and once spent a year in England helping restore St. Matthew’s Anglican church, a Gothic structure in London that was damaged by fire. “There’s been a great emphasis in ecclesiastical design to have God come down to the people instead of us going up to God,” he says of the trend that includes moving the altar closer to the people. “I don’t think that’s a healthy psychology, or theology. There’s been a lot of dumbing down of church design because of it.”

The man has definite ideas about where to find heaven on Earth. For him, heaven is inside English Gothic cathedrals. Their vaulted ceilings, soaring space, carved wooden choirs and gold leafing say something to him: “Let’s get out of strip-mall thinking about our sacred spaces and make them inspirational.”

‘A Need for Someone Who Reaches to the Past’

An architectural draftsman whose house in San Marino displays antique prayer books and small devotional objects--a silver baptismal spoon, priests’ vestments and what could pass for a bishop’s throne--Judice, 40, is a lifelong Episcopalian with a great affection for church traditions. “My views may be conservative,” he says, “but I believe there will always be a need for someone who reaches back to the past.”

Since the second Vatican Council, an ecumenical gathering sponsored by the Roman Catholic church in the mid-’60s, many established ways have changed at a fast-forward pace that is unusual for religious institutions. The role of the congregation sped from observer to participant as members began reading Scripture, serving Communion, giving homilies or reflections at times.

The updated thinking about that role affected ideas about how to design a church. Altars and baptismal fountains bolted loose from their usual place and rocked forward, backward, even into the center of the church, particularly in Roman Catholic and Episcopal churches.

Altars were pulled away from the far wall of the sanctuary and moved toward the center of the room. “Theology always shapes sacred architecture,” says Armando Ruiz, 57, a Diamond Bar-based architect who specializes in churches and serves on the L.A. archdiocese’s liturgical design committee. Ruiz is a leading force in modernizing church interiors. “The altar was moved so the priest could face the people and they could see what he was doing.”

Baptismal fountains were moved from the side to the center of the church vestibule. “The new theology is that we all participate in the sacraments. When someone enters the church to be baptized, we are all involved in it, so the baptismal font belongs in our midst, not off to the side.” Pulpits were moved forward too. “That brings the priest closer to the people,” Ruiz says.

Ruiz often finds that architects are hired to redesign churches but do not know the reasons behind the changes. “So many approach renovation strictly from an architectural standpoint,” he says. “That’s a mistake.”

While Ruiz’s approach puts God among us, Judice prefers to have God as a higher power in a higher station.

When Father Carroll Barbour, rector of St. Thomas the Apostle Episcopal Church in Hollywood, met then-church member Rhett Judice 15 years ago, he asked a question. “Father Barbour wondered what I would suggest for the interior of the church,” Judice recalls. “It launched my career.” He had worked primarily on redesigning private homes until then.

St. Thomas is a Gothic church built in the 1930s that needed work in the sanctuary and in two side chapels. “There was a stained-glass window behind the altar that blinded you when you looked in that direction,” Barbour says. Now, it has a carved wooden screen, called a reredos, in front of the window. The altar railing, a modern style that didn’t go with the theme, is framed by wooden fretwork like an altar rail in a Gothic cathedral.

“Rhett restored things to be in keeping with the original style,” Barbour says. “There were scads of meetings with the congregation along the way. For the most part, we didn’t have problems. But people quibbled over paint colors, especially a vivid blue that they have since come to love.

I now realize when you’re working with an artist, the fewer people on the planning committee the better. Otherwise you’ll get a giraffe. They say giraffes were designed by committee.”

Since then Judice has done both large and smaller jobs, including some work on Mayor Richard Riordan’s chapel in his Brentwood home. There, he designed a triptych--a three-paneled religious painting--and kneelers. He also chose an antique English crucifix and cross, and a 19th century altar front.

Work Helping Architects Is a Kind of Ministry

He also is hired as a consultant by architects who are working on sacred spaces and don’t have experience with liturgical design. “Lots of architects don’t know the function of things,” he says. “I see my work helping them as a ministry. In fact all the church work I do is a ministry.” He charges lower rates for churches than for the home interiors he designs. “I’ve learned something by working on residences along with churches,” he says. “Don’t make a worship space look like a living room. Keep it dignified.”

Color is a perfect example. “Don’t paint a church pink,” he advises. “Be loyal to the seasonal colors of the liturgical calendar. Purple in Lent, red at Pentecost, green for ordinary time and white for festival days.”

If he has one problem with the latest thinking on sacred space, it’s with altars. The closer an altar gets to the middle of the room, the farther Judice feels from the pageantry he loves. “It is part of my picture that the Mass be less about ‘me,’ more about glorifying God,” he says. “We’re not the center of it. The point is to carry out the drama of the passion, death and resurrection of Christ.”

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An altar in the middle of the church puts a cramp on wedding ceremonies too. “There’s no great, long aisle for a bride to walk, or a bishop,” he says.

He may be outspoken, but he’s not inflexible. His latest project is to redesign the interior of St. Edmund’s Episcopal Church, a ‘50s modern-style edifice in San Marino. He is adding a few arches and replacing the carpets with a stone floor, but nothing outrageous.

“I’d make a lousy priest,” he says. “I’m too opinionated and too quick to say what I think.” Instead, he uses his musical talents composing Masses as the other half of his dual career. Recently, he completed his first musical. The subject is perfect for him: England’s Queen Victoria, who reigned during a Gothic revival.

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Mary Rourke can be reached at mary.rourke@latimes.com.