The Alter Rail

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Yeoman

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I’d thought that post Vatican II, at least in the US, Alter Rails had to come out of the churches for some reason. I guess I know they came out of all the local ones (I was just a boy at the time), but I thought, without really pondering it much, that it was mandatory.

I heard, however, Jimmy Akin on Catholic Answers just the other day say it wasn’t.

Does anyone know the full story?

Our church had a beautiful marble alter rail. I don’t know why, but the past few years I’ve really been lamenting its removal, even though it was now something like forty years ago. I guess part of it is in a local restaurant somewhere, although I don’t know which one (a Priest mentioned that to me when I asked). If they didn’t have to come out, I’m now truly appalled.
 
It wasn’t mandatory. You can find churches, usually historic ones, and cathedrals where the altar rails were left in place.

Many churches chose to remove them however because they were perceived as a barrier between the altar and the people and because you weren’t supposed to receive communion at the altar rail anymore.
 
Not to be pedantic, and it’s probably you spell-checker’s fault, but it’s spelled altar.

That said, their removal was never mandatory. Many of the parishes and other churches I visit around here still have them. Others do not. In some monastic churches, they never existed: the priests or deacons would stand at a gate in the enclosure fence or grille to give communion to the faithful.

I guess it boiled down to how Vatican II was viewed in some places. One of the churches our schola sings at was built in 1964 with an altar rail, which is still in place. A more recent church nearby was built in 1989 without one.
 
OraLabora said:
Not to be pedantic, and it’s probably you spell-checker’s fault, but it’s spelled altar…
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It’s probably my fault for typiing before the coffee kicked in.

I know that there must be a way to edit that, but I’m not sure how.😦
 
Yeoman said:
It’s probably my fault for typiing before the coffee kicked in.

I know that there must be a way to edit that, but I’m not sure how.😦
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Alas there’s a 20 minute limit on editing a post… but normally you click on the “edit” button next to the “quote” button. Then you can edit your post. If the “edit” button is missing, it’s because the 20 minute limit has kicked in.

I’m with you on the coffee. I’m totally useless in the morning without it.
 
Yeoman said:
I’d thought that post Vatican II, at least in the US, Alter Rails had to come out of the churches for some reason. I guess I know they came out of all the local ones (I was just a boy at the time), but I thought, without really pondering it much, that it was mandatory.

I heard, however, Jimmy Akin on Catholic Answers just the other day say it wasn’t.

Does anyone know the full story?

Our church had a beautiful marble alter rail. I don’t know why, but the past few years I’ve really been lamenting its removal, even though it was now something like forty years ago. I guess part of it is in a local restaurant somewhere, although I don’t know which one (a Priest mentioned that to me when I asked). If they didn’t have to come out, I’m now truly appalled.
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No, they were not officially required to be removed. That is why, in relatively recent years, they are being put back in, along with other Church restorations that have and are being done. The common reason was to restore what was removed in the 1960s. Even if I had the names of those responsible, I couldn’t post them here.

Ed
 
Tis_Bearself said:
It wasn’t mandatory. You can find churches, usually historic ones, and cathedrals where the altar rails were left in place.
**
Many churches chose to remove them however because they were perceived as a barrier between the altar and the people and because you weren’t supposed to receive communion at the altar rail anymore.**
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Post VII and the Promulgation of the Mass of Paul VI, did they actually prohibit receiving at the rail or was it one of those things were you weren’t required to receive at the rail… that everyone then ran with as something you shouldn’t do anymore?

Not unlike how the now Ordinary Form, is technically still a Latin Mass that’s first language is still Latin, but everyone chooses to say it in the vernacular since that’s now allowed?
 
The altar rail is not part of monastic tradition. The monks giving communion would stand at an opening in the enclosure. I’m pretty sure pre-Council that it was still kneeling and on the tongue, but not at a “rail”:

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
 
Yeoman said:
I’d thought that post Vatican II, at least in the US, Alter Rails had to come out of the churches for some reason. I guess I know they came out of all the local ones (I was just a boy at the time), but I thought, without really pondering it much, that it was mandatory.

I heard, however, Jimmy Akin on Catholic Answers just the other day say it wasn’t.

Does anyone know the full story?

**Our church had a beautiful marble alter rail. I don’t know why, but the past few years I’ve really been lamenting its removal, **even though it was now something like forty years ago. I guess part of it is in a local restaurant somewhere, although I don’t know which one (a Priest mentioned that to me when I asked). If they didn’t have to come out, I’m now truly appalled.
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This strikes a chord and I am so sorry. What a loss that was

Many months ago I went into a tiny church here in the most idyllic setting, River and mountains.
The font , altar and altar rails are made completely of Connemara marble. The man at the local shop told me they had been a gift from one man.
They are still there. Cool and smooth to the touch and the patterning. I have some chunks of the raw marble here. Amazing ancient rock.
Odd though; there are black marble parts in another church and I cannot remember if the altar rails are complete there. It is a bigger church. Ah checked and just the Altar is marble .
 
Padres1969 said:
Post VII and the Promulgation of the Mass of Paul VI, did they actually prohibit receiving at the rail or was it one of those things were you weren’t required to receive at the rail… that everyone then ran with as something you shouldn’t do anymore?
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I probably gave a slightly wrong impression there. Neither the Vatican nor the bishops made a rule after Vatican II that you couldn’t kneel to receive Communion. The directives said you could either stand or kneel. However, it became the custom in the US and in many other places that people would receive standing up in a line. I know that when I was a child in the late 60s and early 70s it was very rare to see people kneeling at a Communion rail - I saw this at maybe one Mass every year or two, usually at some Cathedral or other ornate historic church that still had an altar rail with a kneeler.

In 2002 the USCCB changed the GIRM to state that the norm for receiving Communion in the US was standing, although you can’t be refused Communion for kneeling.

Reference here: ewtn.com/expert/answers/communion_posture.htm
 
Tis_Bearself said:
I probably gave a slightly wrong impression there. Neither the Vatican nor the bishops made a rule after Vatican II that you couldn’t kneel to receive Communion. The directives said you could either stand or kneel. However, it became the custom in the US and in many other places that people would receive standing up in a line. I know that when I was a child in the late 60s and early 70s it was very rare to see people kneeling at a Communion rail - I saw this at maybe one Mass every year or two, usually at some Cathedral or other ornate historic church that still had an altar rail with a kneeler.

In 2002 the USCCB changed the GIRM to state that the norm for receiving Communion in the US was standing, although you can’t be refused Communion for kneeling.

Reference here: ewtn.com/expert/answers/communion_posture.htm
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So it was another of those things that something was allowed in the 60’s, in this case standing in a line, and everyone ran with it and it became the de facto norm as a result.

So really there’s nothing stopping a parish or diocese from re-instituting communion at the rail (albeit standing at the rail after the USCCB’s 2002 directive on standing being the preferred method now).

Seems to be an odd trend of the RCC in the 60’s and early 70’s that anything that was now “allowed” even if technically still not the preferred method, became the de facto norm in short order.
 
Rosebud77 said:
This strikes a chord and I am so sorry. What a loss that was

Many months ago I went into a tiny church here in the most idyllic setting, River and mountains.
The font , altar and altar rails are made completely of Connemara marble. The man at the local shop told me they had been a gift from one man.
They are still there. Cool and smooth to the touch and the patterning. I have some chunks of the raw marble here. Amazing ancient rock.
Odd though; there are black marble parts in another church and I cannot remember if the altar rails are complete there. It is a bigger church. Ah checked and just the Altar is marble .
Click to expand...
In my view, and of course I realize its purely a matter of personal opinion, nearly all of the architectural changes to my home parish produced negative ascetic results. And there were a number of them. I can recall grumbling about the removal of the alter rail, and I really recall complaints when one pastor decided to take out one row of pews to facilitate additional Eucharistic Ministers. The “no” finally came from the parish when a proposal to put in a large Baptismal Font up front was made. Over time we lost the rail, one confessional, brass lanterns,and a row of pews.

Then a few years back we had a pastor, from another country, who quietly and on his own began to restore what he could. Not everything could be reclaimed however.

I suppose that’s what started me thinking about the altar rail. He actually knew where part it was (assuming that the same place didn’t have all of it). I wish somebody would get it back and put it back in, but I suppose you can’t really go to a remote owner and say “hey, give me that back”.

As a purely non religious observation, major changes to the design of old structures rarely really improve them. As a religious observation, changing the architecture of a carefully designed church might send the wrong message or give the wrong impression.
 
Padres1969 said:
So it was another of those things that something was allowed in the 60’s, in this case standing in a line, and everyone ran with it and it became the de facto norm as a result.

So really there’s nothing stopping a parish or diocese from re-instituting communion at the rail (albeit standing at the rail after the USCCB’s 2002 directive on standing being the preferred method now).

Seems to be an odd trend of the RCC in the 60’s and early 70’s that anything that was now “allowed” even if technically still not the preferred method, became the de facto norm in short order.
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I’d agree with your observation. I’m amazed by how many things that I grew up believing we had to do post Vatican II we really didn’t. In some instances, I wish we hadn’t.
 
Rosebud77 said:
The man at the local shop told me they had been a gift from one man.
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Everything in our church of this type was a gift. The altar rail was the gift of a family. I don’t know about now, but I do know that at the time the altar rail came out a member of that family was still a parishioner of our church.

I can’t speak for him, but I would have been sick at heart to think of it being taken out, let alone sold or given away.
 
Padres1969 said:
Seems to be an odd trend of the RCC in the 60’s and early 70’s that anything that was now “allowed” even if technically still not the preferred method, became the de facto norm in short order.
Click to expand...
It was a weird time to be a Catholic. It wasn’t weird for me because I was a child born well after Vatican II and I didn’t know any other way. But it was weird for my mom and her family and others who had been Catholics for decades already to see everything all of a sudden change. I picked up on their vibes.

It is interesting how some things are changing back now. An example of a small change is that when I was a child, the response before Communion was, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof” which as a young child I thought at first was referring to the roof of one’s mouth because people would take the Host in their mouths, until I somehow learned that it referred to an actual house roof in a Bible story. Then in the 70s they changed it to “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you.” Some time in the last few years it went back to “enter under my roof” so I get transported mentally back about 5 decades every time I hear that. Among other things.
 
edwest2 said:
We’re talking about the average Catholic Church. We knelt at the Communion Rail and received the Host on the tongue.

Ed
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I think it is highly relevant. The Western Church has always been a blend of traditions from, initially, around Europe and the religious orders, then from around the world; and then there are the Eastern Churches in communion with us. The cross-fertilization and honouring of of different forms of spirituality with their traditions in the Church is, I think, one of the gifts of Vatican II.

I for one would be saddened if a sentimental nostalgia for a past age were to squash this exposure to different ways of doing things.

On the other hand I share the sadness for the misplaced wrecking of the historical beauty and architecture of churches. I was gladdened a few years ago, when visiting the cathedral in Chicoutimi Quebec, to see that the “wreckovated” high altar had been fetched from the basement, restored, and put back in its rightful place. I think folks are coming around to realizing that many of these removals did violence to the churches involved. It is not necessary to remove an altar rail to give communion differently. having the priest stand at the opening to the sanctuary, with a line forming up the central aisle, can most certainly be done even if there’s an altar rail. It then resembles the picture above.

Incidentally at the crypt church of St. Joseph’s Oratory, in Montreal, not only is the altar rail still in place, it is still in use in the usual fashion.
 
Yeoman said:
I’d thought that post Vatican II, at least in the US, Alter Rails had to come out of the churches for some reason. I guess I know they came out of all the local ones (I was just a boy at the time), but I thought, without really pondering it much, that it was mandatory.
Click to expand...
Our church still has the marble altar rail, the high altar, and the old fashioned pulpit that the priest has to climb up to. We’re not an affluent parish, and I suspect that if they had had the money to remodel, that stuff would have been gone long ago.
 
OraLabora said:
I think it is highly relevant. The Western Church has always been a blend of traditions from, initially, around Europe and the religious orders, then from around the world; and then there are the Eastern Churches in communion with us. The cross-fertilization and honouring of of different forms of spirituality with their traditions in the Church is, I think, one of the gifts of Vatican II.

I for one would be saddened if a sentimental nostalgia for a past age were to squash this exposure to different ways of doing things.

On the other hand I share the sadness for the misplaced wrecking of the historical beauty and architecture of churches. I was gladdened a few years ago, when visiting the cathedral in Chicoutimi Quebec, to see that the “wreckovated” high altar had been fetched from the basement, restored, and put back in its rightful place. I think folks are coming around to realizing that many of these removals did violence to the churches involved. It is not necessary to remove an altar rail to give communion differently. having the priest stand at the opening to the sanctuary, with a line forming up the central aisle, can most certainly be done even if there’s an altar rail. It then resembles the picture above.

Incidentally at the crypt church of St. Joseph’s Oratory, in Montreal, not only is the altar rail still in place, it is still in use in the usual fashion.
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I’m appropriating the use of the word “wreckovated”. Just letting you know.

And you are right. Where our rail was, it had a marble gate that swung open to both sides. Nothing about how communion is presently served would have changed and the removal facilitated nothing in real terms other than to remove the rail. I have heard this explained as removing a barrier between the Priest and the Parishioners but I disagree with that view.
 
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