Prakfalvi Endre: Roman Catholic Churches in Unified Budapest - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2003)
Under the Code ecclesiastic, a church is a building designed to serve the purposes of public worship (aedai sacra). The edifice is vested with its sacred function, or made into a Sacred Site, by the ceremony of dedication or benediction (dedicatione vel benedictione) as prescribed in the liturgical books (canons 1205 and 1214). Consecration (dedicatio or comecratio) takes the form of anointment with chrism, a ceremony whose location is identified by consecration crosses on the interior walls. There are those who would call into question the symbolic character of churches, the ability of these buildings to express their own status in the secularised world of today. To the author it appears that the architects of recently constructed churches have continued to emphasise the spiritual character of their work. It is proclaimed with emphasis in the liturgy of church consecrations in the reformed Rituale Romanum that the church temporal prefigures the celestial Jerusalem and that the church building itself also anticipates the celestial Jerusalem. However, in the day-to-day practice of religious worship the church is the House of God (domus del), as is often proclaimed in inscriptions on the fapade or inside the vestibule, the Celestial Hall (aula coeli), and, above all, the site of prayer (locus orationis). Currently, the Parish Church of the Holy Angels is under construction to designs by Imre Koppány by a large housing estate in southern Buda on the outskirts of the city. Angels are "ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who ■ The Parish Church of the Holy Angela in Gazdagrét under construction. 2001 8
