Can a Catholic Church and a protestant church share the same building?

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WildCatholic

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The reason I ask this is that in my state, there is a tourist attraction where in the old days, there was this town that was really small and had only one church building because they didn’t want to spend money on two of them. Anyways the church has a Catholic altar on one end, and a protestant altar on the other, and this church was built in the early 1900’s. So is this okay for a Catholic church? I’ve never heard an answer.
 
WildCatholic said:
The reason I ask this is that in my state, there is a tourist attraction where in the old days, there was this town that was really small and had only one church building because they didn’t want to spend money on two of them. Anyways the church has a Catholic altar on one end, and a protestant altar on the other, and this church was built in the early 1900’s. So is this okay for a Catholic church? I’ve never heard an answer.
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While this isn’t too common in the United States, there are a lot of them in Germany. I also think you will find them at some other histoic church buildings in mainland European Protestant nations.
 
phil19034 said:
While this isn’t too common in the United States, there are a lot of them in Germany. I also think you will find them at some other histoic church buildings in mainland European Protestant nations.
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I was just about to mention the case in Germany. Such churches are called simultankirchen (“same churches”, or “shared churches”) and there are dozens upon dozens of them in Germany. More interesting is that many of these Lutheran/Reformed/Catholic hybrids have been around for centuries. As in the case of the OP these churches typically have separate altars for the respective denominations and services meet at different times. If it isn’t OK for Catholics to share a church building with Protestants then I think the Vatican is really late in saying anything. 😃
 
In my home town, the Methodist church lent their space to the Ukrainian Orthodox group every Sunday after the regular church and Sunday school services, since the Ukrainian population didn’t speak English and there wasn’t an Eastern Orthodox church of any kind within a 2 hour drive.
 
Just read the history of an old Baptist church which co-built a church with the Presbyterians back in the 1800s. Neither congregation had enough money to build separate churches. They eventually separated but not until the mid 1900s.
 
Miserissima said:
Military chapels do it all the time.
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While Canadian military bases usually have two chapels, American bases seem to often have one chapel for everyone. There’s a former American base here and the chapel has that interesting ‘travelling Jesus’: the Cross is bare for the Protestant service but a few turns of a crank and the empty Cross moves behind a curtain and a Crucifix takes its place.

When Catholics & Protestants regularly used this chapel there was a very small Blessed Sacrament Chapel off the sacristy. That’s where the Tabernacle and the Baptismal Font were located and where daily Mass was often celebrated.
 
In addition to the military, it’s also common in hospitals and in airports.
 
Phemie said:
While Canadian military bases usually have two chapels, American bases seem to often have one chapel for everyone. There’s a former American base here and the chapel has that interesting ‘travelling Jesus’: the Cross is bare for the Protestant service but a few turns of a crank and the empty Cross moves behind a curtain and a Crucifix takes its place.

When Catholics & Protestants regularly used this chapel there was a very small Blessed Sacrament Chapel off the sacristy. That’s where the Tabernacle and the Baptismal Font were located and where daily Mass was often celebrated.
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I was almost an adult when I found out that it wasn’t normal to have just one building. 🤷 I thought the “traveling Jesus” was in every church.

Then we moved off of the military base and went to a parish.

What a difference.
 
WildCatholic said:
The reason I ask this is that in my state, there is a tourist attraction where in the old days, there was this town that was really small and had only one church building because they didn’t want to spend money on two of them. Anyways the church has a Catholic altar on one end, and a protestant altar on the other, and this church was built in the early 1900’s. So is this okay for a Catholic church? I’ve never heard an answer.
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This is acceptable. Canon law specifically allows the bishop to offer a church building to a Protestant congregation lacking a “dignified” place to worship. Catholic mass similarly may be offered in any dignified location. I’ve seen this done in the south, where a single priest will travel several hours each Sunday to offer mass in various towns with small Catholic populations that couldn’t support its own building.
 
Our chapel shares the building with Wiccan and pagan services, this bothers me, but no one seems to care.
 
HoneyBea said:
Our chapel shares the building with Wiccan and pagan services, this bothers me, but no one seems to care.
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That really is not ideal, bordering on unacceptable, but your status indicates you are in the air force, so I assume it is a limitation based on where you are stationed?

I’ve seen photos of a military chaplain celebrating the mass in Latin on the trunk of a jeep prior to Vatican II, so the mass really can be celebrated anywhere!
 
My wife and I belonged to a parish nearby that did something like that.

Back in the 50’s, Cardinal Mooney of Detroit determined that there was a need for a new parish in the area.

So construction began, but while the Church was being built, he, in conjunction with a local Methodist parish, began having Mass said at the Methodist Church. An Altar was set up in the church basement, and that is where Catholic heard Mass.

The two did not share a Sanctuary (the Catholics were in the parish basement) but they did share a building for several months.

Interestingly enough, that parish sort of returned the favor. In the 90’s, a local Orthodox parish had a fire, and the pastor offered the Church to the Orthodox for Divine Liturgy while the fire damage was being repaired.

In that Case, the Orthodox DID use the Sanctuary and altar, just at a different time.
 
When St Elizabeth Seton church was being built and it took a very long time we shared quarters with St Baranabas Episcopal in the Episcopal church. There was one altar and the two took turns. The only thing separate was the tabernacles.

But the two churches got along well for years. The Episcopalians gave a pulpit to the CC, and the CC gave a thurible to the Episcopalians. At one time the daughter of the Episcopal Rector was married to a prominent Catholic. Both priests celebrated their respective masses on the same altar.
 
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre has several churches that share it. Here is an excerpt from good old Wikipedia. lol

Today it also serves as the headquarters of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, while control of the building is shared between several Christian churches and secular entities in complicated arrangements essentially unchanged for centuries. Today, the church is home to branches of Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy as well as to Roman Catholicism.
 
This happens all the time in rural Ontario towns. Often, there will be a separate altar in a closet, which the priest will wheel out for mass, and the priest travels with the vestments and other necessary supplies, as well as a portable tabernacle. They will then say mass in the protestant building, high school gym, community hall, or wherever they use. The pastor at my church used to say 6 masses on Sunday - 1 at a Catholic church, 3 at other small towns in their protestant (United around here) buildings, and then 2 at a local prison.
 
Just a little more background. This is a town called Keystone, NE, which is in the Grand Island diocese. I don’t think it is a church anymore, but it is a really small community that didn’t want to spend the money to build two churches so they built one with two altars.
 
There’s a village in England called Mapledurham. It’s famous because the WW2 movie “The Eagle has Landed” was filmed there. The village Church is official Anglican but the altar area of the Lady Chapel is actually a tiny Catholic chapel, separated from the rest of the church by an iron railing. Pre-dating the reformation, it must be one of the oldest Catholic altars in the south of England to have been in coninuously Catholic. I don’t know if masses are still said there nowadays but it was used regularly in the past. The family who used to rule the village are an old Catholic family who stuck with their faith throughout the reformation. Their house also has a number of priest holes where Catholic priests could hide behind sliding panels and secret doors and things whenever the goverment sent people to inspect.
 
Cirdan_XII said:
There’s a village in England called Mapledurham. It’s famous because the WW2 movie “The Eagle has Landed” was filmed there. The village Church is official Anglican but the altar area of the Lady Chapel is actually a tiny Catholic chapel, separated from the rest of the church by an iron railing. Pre-dating the reformation, it must be one of the oldest Catholic altars in the south of England to have been in coninuously Catholic. I don’t know if masses are still said there nowadays but it was used regularly in the past. The family who used to rule the village are an old Catholic family who stuck with their faith throughout the reformation. Their house also has a number of priest holes where Catholic priests could hide behind sliding panels and secret doors and things whenever the goverment sent people to inspect.
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Interesting. I actually just found out about priest holes due to the last James Bond movie where Bond’s ancestral home had a priest hole. I thought it was rather interesting, and from what I read showed what great faith and bravery the English Catholics had during the reformation and later periods of anti-Catholicism.
 
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