Why not versus populum and ad orientem at the same time?

[grt]

Sincere question. Put the altar west of the pews. People in pews watch the consecration, facing westward. Priest faces the people while consecrating, facing eastward – is he ad orientem and versus populum at the same time? Would this be very Traditional? Am I missing something?

 

[Entwhistler]

The problem with this is that the church, in theory, is supposed to face East. When the altar is put in the middle with everyone around it facing it, no one is really facing East. They are just facing the altar.

 

[FrDavid96]

Sincere question. Put the altar west of the pews. People in pews watch the consecration, facing westward. Priest faces the people while consecrating, facing eastward – is he ad orientem and versus populum at the same time? Would this be very Traditional? Am I missing something?

That is “sort of” how things were originally done at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. I say “sort of” because at the consecration, everyone would face East.

Because it was built on a hill, the church had to be built facing West (in other words, backwards). That’s the only way to do it while keeping the altar above the actual grave of St. Peter.

The same was done in some other important historic churches (very few), but I can’t name any off-hand at the moment.

 

[Augustinian]

Am I missing something?

What I think you are missing is the concept of “liturgical east”. what ever actual geographic orientation the building actually has, its deemed to be facing east- liturgical east.

 

[LisaB]

The idea is that the priest and the congregation should be facing east together, not just the priest consecrating the Eucharist.

 

[BartholomewB]

Exactly so! In the United States and also in Britain, it’s customary to build churches with the altar/sanctuary at the (geographical) east end. In many other countries, including both France and Italy, they don’t seem to attach the same importance to that. At least in the big cities, churches just face the same way as all the other buildings on the same street. I should add that this is just my very limited personal experience―I haven’t attempted to conduct a survey! But in any case, ad orientem always means looking from the nave toward the altar. It’s the liturgical east, not necessarily―or even not very often―the same as the geographical east.

 

[Genesis315]

I’ve been to some cross shaped churches (built before ad populum became popular) and, the way the pews were oriented, there were people facing three different directions. It doesn’t seem it always had to be where everyone faced the same directions.