RCIA 10/21/2008

As some of you may or may not know, I am currently sponsoring my friend during his RCIA. Today the topic of the session was the procession/order of mass. When the priest got through his whole spiel, I figured it would be a good time for me to ask a nagging question I had about this particular church. This church has their tabernacle located in a side room at the back of the church. As most Catholics know, the tabernacle is customarily placed in the front of the church, primarily behind the center of the altar.

So I asked him why the tabernacle in his church was not on the alter. The following is pretty much exactly what he said. He launched into his explanation that prior to the middle ages there was no such thing as a tabernacle. Instead the church would receive their hosts/communion prior to mass and then use it all during the mass. Apparently during the Enlightenment (or something) less people were able to receive communion because they were in states of sin. But they figured that if they couldnt receive the Eucharist they wanted to at least see its presence. So they placed the host in the center of the altar and this is where Eucharistic adoration originates (and the concept of a tabernacle which is where the host was kept).

Well, Vatican II came around and the counsel evidently wanted to go back to the way things were originally. [Which makes no sense to me because Vatican II seems to be a time when we broke from many of our traditions.] So they wanted to do away with the tabernacle. But that was considered controversial because people had grown accustomed to Eucharistic adoration, so the idea was to compromise....remove the tabernacle from the altar and have a separate chapel devoted to Eucharistic adoration. [Which is what this church has opted to do.]

The priest then said it's still a topic for discussion. Recently his parish was host to a local archbishop. The archbishop asked the priest where was the tabernacle and the priest pointed to the back. The archbishop then shook his head and said that the tabernacle should be in the center of the altar. The priest then said it would cost alot of money to make that renovation, which is what is primarily holding them back from doing so.

He then went on to talk about restructuring of churches, which seems to be common in many churches nowadays. He said many churches are going in favor of moving the altar directly in the center of the church since the sacrifice and Word are central themes. They are also in favor of making larger baptismal fonts which you should be able to hear the water flowing in. He thought his church, if they remodeled, would move in that direction and that the tabernacle would go on the altar then. I asked if this model would be similar to the renovation of the Cathedral in Milwaukee. He said yeah but that a better example would be the new Cathedral in Los Angeles. (Don't know what that looks like.)

Milwaukee Pre-Renovation










Milwaukee Post-Renovation