How to explain altar rails?

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One can step past but only if allowed. It is required to stop, genuflect and cross yourself whenever you are passing by the altar.
 
edwest211 said:
One can step past but only if allowed. It is required to stop, genuflect and cross yourself whenever you are passing by the altar.
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Unless the tabernacle is elsewhere, as it has been for hundreds of years in many churches, especially monasteries and cathedrals with a choir (chapters of Canons). In which case you bow, not genuflect.

From my 1935 Ceremonial which is a newer edition of the 1910 edition signed by Saint Pius X:
  1. Regularly, the Holy Eucharist must be kept at the main altar which is the most noble and honourable unless another altar is preferable for the veneration and cult due to this august Sacrament.
However in cathedral, collegial and conventual churches, where choral functions must take place at the main altar, it is opportune to habitually conserve the Holy Eucharist at another altar than the main altar.
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You might argue most people attended Mass in their parish church and not the cathedral, collegial or conventual churches. However every diocese has a cathedral, and for those living in proximity to the cathedral, it is their parish church. In medieval times too, a monastery was the church of the local inhabitants.
 
Medawlinno said:
I suspect ‘alter rails’ may be the equivalent to the actual “walls” (I’m sure there’s a proper term, it just escapes me at the moment) used in the eastern Rite churches
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“iconostasis”. The Iconostasis and altar rail indeed have the same origin (keeping out the animals). Now I’m blanking on the name for the other wall (chancel?) in the latin rite–and couldn’t tell you where it came from, anyway.

Once things went from the practical (animals) to explanation/meeting, the Temple and its practices (curtain, special room) did indeed come into play.

hawk
 
Good point. Normally I support the tabernacle always being in the center, but people forget that there are some scenarios where the tabernacle is traditionally located elsewhere, for whatever reason. And this wasn’t an “innovation of Vatican 2,” but was always the tradition.
 
“Chancel” was the word I was trying to remember (whether it was the correct one or not 🙂 )

hawk
 
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That’s true, but after Vatican II, self-proclaimed “reformers” wanted and did destroy reverence and tradition. That was their goal. Remove statues and altar rails/communion rails. That’s why so much of this is being restored.
 
I less-than-3 foot altar rail could hardly be compared to the veil which was torn at Christs death.
 
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