Which was does your altar face at Mass?

[The_Serpent]

This is a trick question. Since my parish is old enough to have an original altar facing east, but slightly north. So the congregation faces east during Mass. But, it has a altar table which makes the Priest face west, in the direction of the congregation.

 

[babochka]

Our priest and congregation face west. Our church began life as a Serbian Orthodox church, and I thought they kept to the tradition more closely, but apparently not, although the Serbian’s current (very magnificent) has an east-facing altar.

The Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament in Sacramento has an eastward orientation, or would if the Mass were said facing the same direction as the people.

 

[Hmgbrd]

Our Church was built in 1826 and the Alter faces East with small naves North and South. It is built on the East/West axis. The entry doors are on the West side of the building so that we come in walking East toward the Tabernacle and Alter. The people face East during mass. We have both the EF and OF Masses. In the OF the Priest faces us during Mass. In the EF he also faces East together with us.

 

[Filii_Dei]

Have a little pity for those of us limited by the land allotments. Even our oldest churches don’t face east properly, and they were built long before the First Vatican Council (yes, First). Heck, even the Armenian Church of Saint Gregory the Illuminator faces southeast. It doesn’t mean we hate tradition. It’s just the way successive governments have laid the streets and parcelled the land.

 

[crazzeto]

Looks like ours is North East, ditto land allotments. We’re actually going to be transfering perhaps to St. Joseph in Raleigh which shares one thing in common with our current parish (St. Michael), it’s well described in the link I provided earlier about the failure of church architecture (“form follows function”). We’re also considering Sacred Heart Cathedral which is much older. Not sure which direction the cathedral faces.

 

[garn9173]

It took me a year to figure it out as I easily got direction turned in the building that in the church, the altar faces to the west and in the daily chapel, it faces the north.

 

[johnthebaptist1]

Our church has seating “in the round” with the altar in the center. The altar has no front or back. The priest often walks around it during the homily. I think for the canon of the Mass, he faces West. This is probably incidental.

Hi, what do you mean “In the round”,and all altars have a front, back and two sides,right?. God Bless.

 

[SMHW]

Hi, what do you mean “In the round”,and all altars have a front, back and two sides,right?. God Bless.

She means the altar is in the center of the church and the seating circles the altar. If the altar (as viewed from above) is a circle or a regular polygon (all sides the same length) then there might not be any obvious front, side, or back.

 

[JackieMom]

She means the altar is in the center of the church and the seating circles the altar. If the altar (as viewed from above) is a circle or a regular polygon (all sides the same length) then there might not be any obvious front, side, or back.

Yep. Seating is in roughly concentric circles around the altar, which is in the center of the church. The altar is a plain slab of granite, there is no discernible front or back.