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

[DebChris]

I grew up in a military family so having one chapel serve all denominations was common.
The times for the various services were posted outside. There never seemed to be any conflict. As another poster mentioned, I have also attended field Masses.

 

[Cirdan_XII]

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.

Priest holes were just one part of the many things they did to preserve their faith. Being Catholic was never actually fully forbidden although Catholics were barred from certain professions and could not live in London. Being a Catholic priest, however, was absolutely forbidden and so priests were trained in foreign seminars and travelled through England incognito, often risking their lives in the process. There were many secret signs that Catholics used to identify one another, or to identify to priests that this was a Catholic house and they were welcome. One of these was that they would cement oyster shells to the east-facing gables that caught the sunlight when it shone at a certain angle. You can still see these on many old houses today. Near where I lived there was also an old pub where the landlord used to be secretly catholic and he had a chapel in the basement. So people would pretend to pop into the pub for a pint on Sunday but then vanish through the back door and hear Mass. Of course it was spoken Mass only as singing would attract the attention of the normals in the pub above.