Altar Distance

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Why, before the Mass of Paul VI was it not important that the altar be “close to the people.” In Gothic churches with choirs, for example, the santuary is sometimes 100 feet away from the front of the congregation. Granted, its easy to follow the mass given the altars central place and excellent acoustics, but I’m sure this seems offensive to modern thinkers. In St. Patrick’s, NY, for example, O’Connor made a point of building a new altar in front of the new one that was “closer to the people,” even though it was probably only 10 feet in front of the beautiful one behind it.

Also, in historic Churches like Chartres, why are the new altars always designed to compete with the older ones? The altar at Chartres looks out of place because it’s raised to the same hight as the magnificent baroque altar behind it. Why not just use a movable altar that can be moved out of the way and give the High Altar with the tabernacle the place of honor the building lends to it?

I ask to understand the rationale behind the traditional altar and move beyond modern criticisms. What I really want to know is why for the founders of the liturgical movement, like Don Gueranger, who wanted the people to understand and appreciate the richness of the liturgy, moving the altar out of the choir wasn’t a priority.
 
mcliffor said:
Why, before the Mass of Paul VI was it not important that the altar be “close to the people.” In Gothic churches with choirs, for example, the santuary is sometimes 100 feet away from the front of the congregation. Granted, its easy to follow the mass given the altars central place and excellent acoustics, but I’m sure this seems offensive to modern thinkers. In St. Patrick’s, NY, for example, O’Connor made a point of building a new altar in front of the new one that was “closer to the people,” even though it was probably only 10 feet in front of the beautiful one behind it.

Also, in historic Churches like Chartres, why are the new altars always designed to compete with the older ones? The altar at Chartres looks out of place because it’s raised to the same hight as the magnificent baroque altar behind it. Why not just use a movable altar that can be moved out of the way and give the High Altar with the tabernacle the place of honor the building lends to it?

I ask to understand the rationale behind the traditional altar and move beyond modern criticisms. What I really want to know is why for the founders of the liturgical movement, like Don Gueranger, who wanted the people to understand and appreciate the richness of the liturgy, moving the altar out of the choir wasn’t a priority.
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I think what they actually envisioned was the altar to be freestanding in the exact center of the Church, with all of the pews circling it. That way everyones attention would be drawn to it and it would more accurately reflect their vision of Christ present in the midst of the community, exact center, in the midst the people, get it?

The way most traditional altars were constructed led more to envisioning of God through a horizontal form of worship and they wanted a more vertical form of worship, and voila, freestanding altars closer to the people, ideally in the center of the church…
 
mcliffor said:
Also, in historic Churches like Chartres, why are the new altars always designed to compete with the older ones? The altar at Chartres looks out of place because it’s raised to the same hight as the magnificent baroque altar behind it. Why not just use a movable altar that can be moved out of the way and give the High Altar with the tabernacle the place of honor the building lends to it?

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Canon law(1235) requires the altar being used in churches to be fixed, not movable.
 
Canon Law does indeed envisage that altars will be fixed.

Good luck. I’d venture to guess the majority of American churches, at least, violate this ideal.

I once had a non-Catholic (raised agnostic/religion-less, etc.) friend in college. She came once to the college church for Mass. She had some questions for Father. He wasn’t happy:

First was:
  1. Why would you not use the magnificent 150 year old marble altar, instead of that wooden table?
 
A movable altar can be “fixed” to the sanctuary floor in about 30 seconds. Anyone who has worked in the construction world knows that with the use of hooks/pins and slide latch anchors will attach the altar to the sanctuary floor in a snap. In fact I can almost guarntee that if the boiler exploded in the church the last thing standing would likely be that altar latched to the floor.

Think of your mini van with the removable bench seat…which latches to the frame of the vehichle.
 
This issue has deep repercussions on Catholic psychology.

If you see a church with a huge marble altar that isn’t going anywhere, and then, in the same church, a wooden table which can be pushed around (in one parish I visited, a succession of 3 different pastors pushed it to new locations, one central, one a bit off-center, the other back center, etc.)…well, it says something about your liturgy.

Of course most places realized that you couldn’t have vestiges of the old fighting with the new…the new could never win. So they gutted the old.

One thing I remember vividly from college was when the “new” altar wasn’t enough for them…they installed a new new altar in the center of the pews, to convey that obsession with surrounding the altar with the assembly. The bishop used it once when visiting (lest anyone think the bishop would have stopped the practice “if he’d only known”, the tired refrain of some). The college chaplain told me the only reason they didn’t remove the high altar was all the “alumni” who would protest…“they think this is a museum…not a people on the move.”

Thank God for the alumni and historical preservationists…some of them not Catholic…who keep the Catholic Vandals at bay.
 
AlexV said:
This issue has deep repercussions on Catholic psychology.

If you see a church with a huge marble altar that isn’t going anywhere, and then, in the same church, a wooden table which can be pushed around (in one parish I visited, a succession of 3 different pastors pushed it to new locations, one central, one a bit off-center, the other back center, etc.)…well, it says something about your liturgy.

Of course most places realized that you couldn’t have vestiges of the old fighting with the new…the new could never win. So they gutted the old.

One thing I remember vividly from college was when the “new” altar wasn’t enough for them…they installed a new new altar in the center of the pews, to convey that obsession with surrounding the altar with the assembly. The bishop used it once when visiting (lest anyone think the bishop would have stopped the practice “if he’d only known”, the tired refrain of some). The college chaplain told me the only reason they didn’t remove the high altar was all the “alumni” who would protest…“they think this is a museum…not a people on the move.”

Thank God for the alumni and historical preservationists…some of them not Catholic…who keep the Catholic Vandals at bay.
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These wreckovators and people who engage in this vandalism of Churches are quasi-protestants. Simple as. Who are only completing the work of Luther and the other Heretic ‘reformers’. Its atrocious.

Thank God indeed for those alumni. Its a shame more didn’t stand up to these Modernists.
 
The people renovating the churches and liturgy want to make the new church in their own image. They know that nobody want this to happen as people respect truth, not innovation. They will flock to innovation for a little while until it needs to be reinnovated.

One of the ways of doing this is moving the altar to better represent a new belief system. There is no need to move the altar to the middle to focus more on Jesus as the focus was on Him before. Yet the feeling also is that this will bring a more community focus with more participation. Unfortunately we see that people are always tempted to bring focus to themselves and their desires over God.
This is pretty much the exact opposite of Catholicism, which is a submittal to God’s will. Putting man over God is so tempting most don’t see that they are doing it and it needs to be guarded against very strictly. This is the problem with moving to circular community worship as the worship moves away from a focus on God and toward a focus on how we work together as a community.
The intention is good, but the result is eventually moving away from focus on God. As Catholics God should come first, we forsake everything else for God. This is the radical teaching that Jesus focused on, leave everything behind and focus on serving God.
…Then we serve others, seeing God in them.
Not the other way around and that is what even slight changes in worship do. First bring the Altar closer, then up in the middle of the front, then lower it to the center.
It changes the focus of our worship and our faith. Though well intentioned it has disasterous results, as everything reflects truth. Misrepresent truth for years and you destroy faith.

In Christ
Scylla
 
Just yesterday I visited an Orange County post-V2 church with a very nice presumably stone altar, freestanding with the tabernacle centered directly behind it.
There was a wooden table erected in a side aisle at which the priest celebrated an evening Mass. There was a processional cross propped beside the tabernacle, but no other crucifix in sight.
Sort of a freestanding altar with a freestanding altar…:confused:
 
In 1971 we moved to a small NE Washington community. After we had registered with the local Catholic parish we were told by some of the parishoners that the church had recently been wreck o vated by the pastor and his liberal cronies after dark one night. The old hand made Altar, by a Bavarian craftsman, was thrown out in the county dump where some of the locals found it. In its place they took the corpus off of a crucifix and suspended it by wires in an alcove behind the tabernacle. But that is where the damage was stopped by the parish council.

Never have I seen a completely circlular church. Have seen lots of 270 -320 degree circles though.

I’m just about to leave a parish where the pastor refuses to allow the choir to use the loft. As a consequence no one wants to join the choir because they don’t want to stand in front of everyone to sing. naturally the singing is lousy and there is no chant at all.
 
I’d like to find the answers to these 3 questoins:
  1. Why were these altars constructed so far from the congregation initially? Was it to provide room for the choir, or provide the needed space to carry out the eleaborate ceremonies?
  2. Why wasn’t moving the altar “closer to the people,” a priority for the founders of the liturgical movement (ie. Dom Geuranger)?
  3. What is the significance of building a new altar only ten feet infront of a usuable free-standing altar, like O’Connor did at St. Patrick’s in NY?
Is the new altar supposed to be a symbol of the liturgical revolution and discontinuity, showing the people that what we have is a new way of doing things that is seperate from the old way?
 
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