Again inspired by a post on the Ignatius Press blog concerning church architecture, I offer a few thoughts:

The dearth of good church architecture should be understood as an aspect of the general decline of all religious art. Art, as artists constantly remind us, is a language by which the artist non-verbally expresses his very being. True religious art can, therefore, only be produced by a deeply religious, praying soul. Such art inspires those who share the artist’s spiritual disposition at a visceral, non-verbal level. When we talk about art, when we analyze it and critique it, we are attempting to translate from the language of art to language proper, and like all translations something is invariably lost.
The process is generally backward today. A secular architect, hired by a parish, is not expressing his very soul, unmediated by language. Rather, the faithful try to translate their spiritual life into language, tell him about it, and then he tries to translate it into art. Such third-hand art cannot possibly inspire. It will always be cold, banal, and predictable.
No less banal, though aesthetically worthy of far more respect, are attempts at mimicking the architecture of the past. In order to have inspirational Christian architecture, we must have inspired Christian architects.