Crucifix above the altar, yes or no?

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as it should. as quoted above, the Girm speaks directly against that.
 
It has been my understanding that there must be a crucifix but that it need not be prominently displayed to all who are attending Mass.
 
All the things you stated we have except a crucified Jesus. I don’t like it but the church has changed other things over the years but one thing they can’t change is doctrine. I was going to and old Church that was built in the 1930. It had the straight aisle marble floors,a really pretty Church. Till the 1990 when the diocese changed it to a circular pattern and covered the pretty floors with carpet. So disappointing. I said they would change it back and they did.A pretty Church again.
 
Our Church was built in the early 20th century. There is large crucifix above the high altar. The tabernacle in placed on the high altar.

During the Easter season the corpus is changed to a risen Christ. There is always a crucifix carried in the processional and during the season it is left near the altar.
 
We now have a Crucifix above the altar but when I joined my parish, we had a smaller Crucifix off to the side, on the back wall behind the altar.
I much prefer it above the altar.
 
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Thank you! this picture is a bit old, so now the floor is no longer shiny, and there are 5 sanctuary lamps hanging from the ceiling… I love it, though:)
 
SMHW said:
It has been my understanding that there must be a crucifix but that it need not be prominently displayed to all who are attending Mass.
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Basically yes.

There must be a crucifix. It must be displayed, and that implies that people see it. However, it need not be “prominently” displayed. There might be a church that seats 3,000 people but the crucifix is just 4 inches high and sits on the altar itself. That meets the requirement.
 
Our parish has a wood carved figure of the risen Christ on the back wall. The church was built @ 30 years ago.

One parishioner recently started to agitate to remove the figure and replace it with a crucifix. And that, in spite of the fact that there is a crucifix, about 6 to 8 inches tall on the altar, another crucifix, about 4 inches tall on the top of the tabernacle, and a third, the processional crucifix, with a corpus somewhere around 12 to 14 inches tall in the sanctuary during Mass.

He is a relatively recent member of the parish; I suggested that we did not really need 4 crucifixes during Mass.
 
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According the Pope Paul VI’s 1968 Credo of the People of God:
We believe that as the bread and wine consecrated by the Lord at the Last Supper were changed into His body and His blood which were to be offered for us on the cross, likewise the bread and wine consecrated by the priest are changed into the body and blood of Christ enthroned gloriously in heaven…

Although Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross is rendered sacramentally present on our altars, it is rendered sacramentally present with the body and blood of the risen Christ and offered in sacrifice in an unbloody manner at Mass. Remember, the body of the risen Christ still bears the marks of his crucifixion. (See John 20:20-27; Revelation 5:6) So, a statue of the risen Christ above an altar, especially one that still shows the marks of his crucifixion, is not entirely out of place. Personally, at the consecration at Mass, it is the risen Christ enthrone gloriously that I imagine before me.
 
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Of course, where else?

Unless we want to be like the mega churches I attended before converting who had no crosses at all, let alone a crucifix. Might offend someone you know. In a church
 
Duesenberg said:
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FrDavid96:
A crucifix is required for the celebration of Mass. Every church must have one.
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The two dimensional San Damiano Crucifix satisfies that requirement.
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No kidding.

⛪
 
Maximilian75 said:
while the rubrics say there simply has to be a crucifix visible (I believe), just astheticly, it would help the symmetry of the church to have it centered in the sanctuary, like my church here

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The picture you show, is a perfect example of the hierarchy, the Eucharist, the source and summit of our belief. The altar the sacrifice re-presented, the monstrance/or the tabernacle His body and blood truly present, given for our salvation, then Jesus on the cross.
 
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In the years prior to Vatican II Catholics had very prominent crucifixes in churches, classrooms, their homes, and other places. A 1970 Catholic would see a new statue in front of the church, and say “that’s the Risen Christ” because they had been raised very much aware of the Crucifixion, especially related to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The Crucifix was still very much in their minds and hearts.

In 2017 most Catholics have far less awareness of the Crucifixion in general, or the Crucifixion as related to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, or as related to their own life. So that so called Risen Christ is just a statue of Jesus, the ones I see I call the “floating Jesus”. Is this Easter? Transfiguration? Ascension? How do you know it is Jesus? I am guessing most young Catholics don’t know.

In one church they replaced the traditional, realistic Stations of the Cross with painless, stylized, stick figures - a representation of a representation. The focus is on the artist, not on what happened, the price paid for us.

There are prudent reasons, in 2017, to have a prominent crucifix visible in the same view as the altar and the tabernacle, because they are all in relation to each other. The focus should not be on the congregation, on the priest’s chair, on the musician, or on any ambiguous statue.
 
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I would agree that crucifixes were prominent in churches before Vatican II, but they were not typically so large and stood out so much. They were part of an overall high altar, often statues were more prominent on these altars than the crucifix. So I still say, having a very crucifix as the main art work above the altar or on the wall behind the altar in so many Catholic churches is a rather new style. I like it, but I think I would like the traditional high altars better in many churches.
 
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