Recently, a church in my diocese was broken into and the altar desecrated. The tabernacle was smashed open and the consecrated Hosts contained within were scattered over the altar and sanctuary. Our bishop, quite properly, ordered prayers to be said throughout the diocese in reparation for the sacrilege. What, I wondered, was the motive of the person who committed this terrible act against the Blessed Sacrament; perhaps it was simple theft? He surely could have had no idea of the enormity of his crime. The words of Our Lord sprang to mind when He asked His Father's forgiveness for those responsible for His suffering and death on the cross: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."My thoughts on this matter led me to dwell upon another contentious issue of the day in which the participants, the perpetrators, most certainly do know what they are doing. I speak not about forcible entry but about the wholesale removal of tabernacles from our high altars, from our sanctuaries, and in some instances even from our churches.
The tabernacle is now a distraction.
What are the motives of the people responsible for these deeds? The liturgical innovators justify themselves by claiming it is the will of 'The Council' and is being done for the good of the Church and for the spiritual good of the faithful. The tabernacle, apparently, is now a distraction to the main event, the celebration of the Eucharist, as Holy Mass is now more commonly called. The words, "Father, forgive them, for they know what they do," cannot be used to excuse this new development. The legality, or should I say illegality, of their case is not supported by any document of Vatican II or any aspect of history or tradition. Pope Paul VI declared in his Encyclical Mysterium Fidei (September 1965) that, "the Blessed Sacrament be kept in churches with the greatest honour and in the most distinguished position." Even as recently as 1956, only six years before Vatican II, Pope Pius XII warned in an address to the International Congress on Pastoral Liturgy that, "to separate tabernacle from altar is to separate two things which by their origin and nature should remain united."
Technically, there may be no direct sacrilege in removing tabernacles from our high altars or from our sanctuaries but there is surely great insult and injury done to Our Blessed Lord in demoting Him from His rightful place of, "greatest honour and in the most distinguished position," to some obscure corner away from the general public gaze, as has happened in my own diocesan cathedral church. The tabernacle has been removed from the sanctuary and placed on a side altar in the furthest corner of the church and cannot be seen by anyone entering from the main doorway. The object that now has pride of place in the centre of the sanctuary is the bishop's chair and is not, as is usual, between the altar and the people or at the side but is placed centrally, on an octagonal dais, behind the altar at the head of the cathedral. Where Christ once reigned in His tabernacle for all to see and adore, His bishop now sits grandly on a throne.
A little piece of heaven on earth.
I well remember an old priest telling a group of children in the early 1950s that the Catholic Church had one great cherished prize that the other Churches did not have - the tabernacle. He described it as a little piece of Heaven on Earth. When the priest unlocked the tabernacle door he had to kneel immediately before his Lord before reaching for the ciborium and when doing this he was reaching into Heaven itself. For this reason, the children were told, we all had to have the utmost respect for it and for what it contained. The church is the house of God and the tabernacle is His resting place within His house. When the sanctuary lamp burned they were in the presence of God in His heaven.
I can see the cynics smirking at this simple tale, dismissing it as being fit only for children. After all, are we not more sophisticated these days? The old, simple, childlike faith is outdated. Are we not living in the space age? Are we not nearing the end of the second millennium for goodness sake, get with it? But are we not all children before Almighty God? Is there now no room in the renewed, updated Church for simple piety and honest uncomplicated faith? When one sees the ruthless and heartless manner in which the old devotions have been cast aside it would appear not.
God has been evicted from His own house.
I remember a one-time Secretary of the National Liturgical Commission, say: "The church is the house of the people of God. The idea of the church building as the Temple of God has not yet been finally laid to rest." God has been evicted from His own house and some think this is progress. If this feeling is indeed prevalent among our more avant-garde liturgists then surely they should accept that the people of God should have a greater say in the management of 'their' house? But of course the will of the people of God is only recognized when it accords with those who rule the liturgical roost.
Perhaps those in the vanguard of this spiritual and physical destructive re- ordering than they take a rest from their labours and sit down and read the life story of The Curé of Ars, pronounced a saint and named the Patron of the Clergy by Pope Pius XI in 1925. The Curé, Saint John Marie Vianney, was not a man of great intellect or blessed with 'new insights', in fact he was considered by his diocesan authorities as being dull and unlearned and accordingly placed among the illiterate peasants of Ars. How fortunate these people were. Within a few short years the name of Ars and its curé became household words. The curé had a great love for the Blessed Sacrament and spent hours in his church simply sitting looking at the tabernacle. Among other things, he instituted perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. How would he have reacted, I wonder, this saintly model for the clergy, if the suggestion had been made that he remove the tabernacle from his high altar or his sanctuary?
Like the good curé, many of us can still remember that air of serenity, that respectful silence, that absolute certainty that you were not alone whilst kneeling in prayerful solitude in the pew. It is indeed one of the great mysteries of faith that just cannot be explained, that you know you are being watched from within the tabernacle, that you know deep within you that you are truly talking to Our Blessed Lord really present in the tabernacle on the altar.
F. Stansfield, in his wonderful hymn Sweet Sacrament Divine, sums it up admirably:
"Sweet Sacrament divine, For 'suppliant' perhaps it would be more appropriate these days to say 'sorrowful' as the divine Sacrament is so well hidden it is often difficult to find. How can our children be expected to follow in this age-old tradition and belief when their spiritual formation in the new re-ordered churches, in the schools and inevitably in the home, is now so abysmal?
Hid in Thy earthly home,
Lo! round Thy lowly shrine,
With suppliant hearts we come"
A foretaste of heavenly bliss.
Many of our older priests and our bishops will no doubt remember the book by the Rev. Dr. Nicholas Gihr entitled, The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass - Dogmatically, Liturgically and Ascetically Explained. In what was for many a standard reference book, Dr. Gihr explained:
"The altar, upon which the Eucharistic God and King is enthroned, is for all devout and faithful souls a most sacred place and a most happy heaven upon earth, the dearest home and the most blissful paradise. The unbroken stillness, the solemn dim light, the mystic glow of the sanctuary lamp, the familiar nearness, the blessed presence of the Eucharistic Saviour - often enable the weary soul at the foot of the altar to enjoy a foretaste of heavenly bliss and a supermundane peace, while the restless world without is full of noise and tumult, fatiguing and torturing itself in its feverish race for gain and the pursuit of pleasure."For many devout and faithful souls it has become less of a most sacred place, it is no longer a most happy heaven upon earth, no longer the place to enjoy a foretaste of heavenly bliss, because Our Lord has been removed and His blessed presence denied them. Dr. Gihr also recalls the words of the Royal Psalmist:
"How lovely are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts! ...One thing I have asked of the Lord, this will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, that I may see the delight of the Lord and visit His temple. For He had hidden me in His tabernacle; in the days of evils He hath protected me in the secret place of His tabernacle. O how great is the multitude of Thy sweet-ness, O Lord, which Thou hast wrought for them that hope in Thee, in the sight of the sons of men! Thou shalt hide them in the secret of Thy face from the disturbance of men, - Thou shalt protect them in Thy tabernacle from the contradiction of tongues."How lovely, indeed, are the tabernacles of the Lord so why have they been removed from His altar of sacrifice? Why can we no longer see the delight of the Lord and visit His temple? Is it also not coincidental that with the tabernacles no longer being protected we have lost our language of unity - Latin - and have been afflicted with a contradiction of vernacular tongues?
A recent correspondent in The Universe described the moment when, as an Anglican, he first set foot inside a Catholic church. He said he was immediately aware that here was something different; that he had discovered the Presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. He went on to say that whenever he returned to that particular little church, "that living red light by the tabernacle welcomed me, signifying the living reality of Jesus present within." He was subsequently received into the Catholic Church.
The Sacred Heart complained to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque in the following words:
"I have a burning thirst to be honoured in the Blessed Sacrament, and I find hardly anyone who endeavours according to My desires to quench that thirst by making some returns to me."Do we satisfy the thirst of the Sacred Heart of Our Blessed Lord to be honoured by removing His presence from His own sanctuary to the relative obscurity of a side chapel or sometimes not even that indignity. The old adage, 'out of sight, out of mind' will surely be proved right. Indeed, it is happening already. The respect that the ordinary Catholic once had for the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle is rapidly disappearing. It is there for all to see on any Sunday. People often no longer genuflect, they sit and chat quite unconcerned as to where they are, they chew gum and eat sweets and then proceed to receive, 'The Body of Christ.'
If we really believe that the substance in the tabernacle is the Son of God truly present then any position in the church which is not the most prominent, the most worthy, is quite simply an insult.
God has been evicted from His own house and some think this is progress!
Habits may change with the fashion for many of the clergy but they die hard with the majority of the simple faithful. Isn't it strange, but understandable, that many Catholics in those churches where the tabernacle has been removed from the sanctuary still genuflect towards the main altar which is bare and empty and pass without reaction the side altar, or wherever, where Our Blessed Lord has been relegated.
The removal of the tabernacle is the great coup de grace of the modernists. The servant has usurped the Master. It is the servant who now is now centre stage and who presides over the people. Our Blessed Lord, who suffered and died on a cross for our salvation, lies discarded and ignored in some quiet corner while His servant enjoys the limelight and the star billing.
St. John the Baptist was described by Jesus as the greatest man ever born of a woman. When the crowds which used to flock to John for baptism reduced in numbers and John's disciples complained that Jesus, the new prophet, was stealing his thunder and overshadowing him, John said; "He must become more and more and I must become less and less."
When one catalogues all the changes that have taken place on the sanctuary in recent years one cannot help but wonder whether many of our liturgists know what the word sanctuary really means. It is described in the dictionary, among other things, as 'part of chancel between altar rails and east window containing high altar,' 'a place of refuge, a place inviolate.' Under medieval law it was a place of safety against arrest or violence and respected as such by all Christians. That tradition has now been turned on its head and it is those within who are violating the sanctuary, this holy place of refuge of Our Blessed Lord, this place of protection and asylum.
Our wishes are of no importance.
Now, unhappily, the sanctuary is a place where most vandalism has been wreaked. It is the laity who are vociferous against it but whose wishes are usually dismissed and brushed aside as being of no importance. The end result being that if many of the clergy do not appear to care why should the laity care? - ergo, apathy, accelerating lapsation, diminishing congregations, and diminishing vocations.
When one considers the new style open plan sanctuary in the context of plus and minus what is it that meets the eye? On the plus (?) side there is usually a wooden altar table or block of stone on a flat sanctuary, a president's chair, a lectern, possibly a couple of candle-sticks, and, of course, a microphone so that the people of God are able to dwell intently upon every word spoken; not a great deal really considering all the new insights and liturgical riches with which we have been blessed in recent years.
What, then, on the minus side? No altar worthy of the name, no altar steps, often no crucifix, no tabernacle, no sanctuary lamp, no altar rails, no big six candlesticks, and no pulpit. In effect, no sanctuary in the sense of the word as understood for centuries.
Once the tabernacle is removed from altar and sanctuary it becomes so much easier to get away with celebrating Mass anywhere; in school halls, in public gymnasiums, or even in the field next to the church, "After all, it is such a nice day, much too nice to be indoors," was a remark I once heard from a priest as he set up a trestle in the meadow. Remove the tabernacle and the church building will no longer be seen as being special.
Can any church in which the tabernacle has been moved to a side altar or removed altogether, still claim to have a sanctuary, truly so called, in the Catholic sense? Obviously, it is no longer a place 'inviolate'. Also, if our Blessed Lord is no longer living there, can it be called 'a place of refuge'. Pope Paul VI described the tabernacle as, "the living heart of our churches." It is not necessary to be an eminent physician to realise that if the heart is removed the body dies, even the most uneducated dullard intent on self-preservation can grasp this basic fact. But this is what is happening. Our parish churches are dying through lack of interest and poor attendance because the living hearts within them are being removed.
One of the more tragic consequences of the removal of tabernacles concerns the Maundy Thursday Mass as celebrated up to the time of Vatican II; of the solemn procession in which the Blessed Sacrament was transferred with honour and solemnity from the tabernacle on the high altar to the altar of repose; of the ritual stripping of the altar; the opening wide of the tabernacle door exposing the bare interior and symbolizing the fact that Christ had been taken prisoner and deserted by His followers; all these rituals had an important function - it was not meaningless ceremonial but truly brought home the message that we were entering a very special period indeed in the liturgical year.
Who could not be impressed and realise the significance when entering a church between Maundy Thursday night and the Easter Vigil service and seeing the bare altar and empty desolate tabernacle that Our Blessed Lord had been crucified and was in the tomb. 'The living heart of our Church' temporarily extinguished. How do you compensate for this when there is no tabernacle on the altar or in the sanctuary? How can the message be portrayed when it has been removed because it is no longer relevant in the new 'Eucharistic service.' Remembering the powerful symbolism of the empty tabernacle and considering that many priests have removed their tabernacles entirely from the sanctuary as being no longer relevant does this not signify a modern-day abandonment and desertion of Christ by His ministers or is this too harsh a judgement for a layman to make? The sanctuary with an empty tabernacle is a sombre place but we understood that this would be for a short time only and we lived in joyful expectation because we also knew that Christ would be triumphantly restored to His altar on Easter Sunday after His resurrection. Those parishioners who have had their tabernacles permanently removed and have no immediate hope or expectation of Christ's return must be truly sad indeed.
Like helpless onlookers at Calvary.
I think it is true to say that the British people have a great interest in history and in particular for historic and grand houses. These houses attract millions of visitors every year who gladly pay to marvel at their grandeur and the skill of the workmen who built them. Why then are we dismantling our beautiful churches that have been built with the same great love and skill and dedication? As it is, we who protest are pushed aside and stand, in a sense, like the helpless onlookers at Calvary, unable to stop the destruction of our altars and sanctuaries which were built, in the main, from hard earned contributions from our fathers and grandfathers who, at the time, probably did not have two spare pennies to rub together.
My parish church was built in great part by a building fund created in the late nineteenth century by a penny-a-week deduction from the pay packets of all Catholic men who were employed in the local ironworks. This kind of action was commonplace. Now, of course, parish-ioners are being asked to pay for the removal of those very altars their own grand and great grandparents built.
Bishop Fulton Sheen, is his book The Priest Is Not His Own writes in some depth about the tabernacle. In a chapter dedicated to the holiness of the sanctuary he described from the Old Testament how God had sent fire from heaven upon the altar of sacrifice and directed that it be kept burning, like a sanctuary lamp before a tabernacle (Leviticus 9:23, 24). Aaron's two sons, who had just become priests, died being consumed by fire because they failed to follow God's instructions. Bishop Sheen said:
"Whatever the sin of those Old Testament priests was, we are bidden to 'worship God as He would have us worship Him, in awe and reverence.' For irreverence to what was a mere figure of the Blessed Sacrament (the Ark), thePhilistines were afflicted with diseases, the Israelites visited with death. If the penalty seems to us severe, it is because our minds have fallen short of the reverence due to either what symbolizes His presence, or what is the Presence Itself."He tells the story of a newly-ordained French priest who received a visit from a strange priest of another nationality. The visitor, being unkempt, was given a poor room in the attic. The French priest lived to see that visitor canonized, as Don Bosco. On learning of the canonization, he reflected: "If I knew he was a saint I would have given him a better room.' And yet, knowing full well who Christ is, many of our clergy are moving Him from the best room in the church (the sanctuary) to a side room or even outside the church entirely. Bishop Sheen said:
"The moral rot of the priesthood starts with a want of lively faith in the Divine presence, and the sanctity of the priesthood starts there too. Every sick call, every word of counsel in the parlour, every catechism lesson taught to children, every official act in the chancery, flows from the altar. All power resides there, and the more 'short-cuts' we take from the tabernacle to our other priestly duties, the less spiritual strength we have for them. The pastor's primary concern should be the tabernacle, not the rectory, not the ego, but the Lord, not his comfort, but God's glory. Wall to wall carpeting in a rectory goes poorly with an altar and tabernacle looking like a house on stilts. Should not the King have a better home than His representative?"Monsignor Ronald Knox described it admirably. "He (Jesus), would honour us by a special kind of presence in the Blessed Sacrament on the altar." Our Blessed Lord makes Himself available to all of us in the tabernacle; the greatest gift mankind could possibly be given. And what do our bishops and priests do with this gift, this special presence? they reject it like some unwanted gift and, even worse, deny everyone else the opportunity of enjoying it. And as an unwanted gift it is put away into some corner to be forgotten. Pope Pius XII, in his wonderful encyclical Mediator Dei (1947) to the bishops of the Church said:
"With your usual zeal, therefore, Venerable Brethren, see that our churches, which have been built by the faith and devotion of Christian generations as a perpetual hymn of glory to Almighty God and as a dwelling-place for our Redeemer present under the Eucharistic species, are thrown open to ever-increasing crowds of the faithful; so that, gathered at the feet of our Saviour, they may hear His gracious invitation: 'Come to me, all you that labour and are burdened, and I will give you rest.' Let our churches be truly the house of God in which those who enter to ask for blessings may rejoice in obtaining all their requests and receive heavenly consolation."In this one succinct paragraph Pope Pius XII says it all. He recognizes who built the churches - the laity - and why they built them. Christ, Himself, invites us to come and see Him and yet those clergy who remove the tabernacle from its rightful place are denying the laity their right to visit Christ and receive His heavenly consolation.
Each time a priest extinguishes and removes a red lamp from his sanctuary, little by little but ever so surely, the light of the true Church of Christ is being snuffed out. The life of the Church will surely only begin to revive again when the tabernacles, the living hearts of the Church, are replaced to their rightful place of honour dominating the sanctuary from atop the high altar and Christ the King, the Sacred Heart, not His servants, once again presides and reigns in His Kingship over His people.
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Angelsand
Tabernacle
Father Wilfrid Elkin
Angels are gracious and light-filled beings. In my mind's eye of faith, I often think of them as 'sparks that run through the stubble', as the Book of Wisdom mentions. Especially when I enter the sanctuary to begin the celebration of Mass, my faith sees the Angels surrounding the Tabernacle on all sides, in wonder and adoration of the Lord of Glory who dwells therein; some of these Angels are within the church, some outside on the other side of the sanctuary wall, since walls and metal do not obscure their view of their Lord. As I begin Mass, perhaps they make the prayers of the Mass their own but they remain where they are, adoring. When, though, I say the words of Consecration, 'This is My Body', 'This is the Cup of My Blood', some Angels now surround me with their light and graceful forms, for their Lord is now brought down on to the altar, while others remain at the Tabernacle. So they remain until the moment of Holy Communion. When I carry the ciborium with the Lord Jesus and begin to distribute His Body to the congregation, I see the whole church begin to fill with the light of Angels, as the communicants move back to their places.
And, at the end of Mass, as the congregation begins to return home, the streets of my village begin to light up with the glory of the Angels as they accompany their Lord through the streets, sometimes to a home close by, sometimes by car to a home on the other side of the parish. Until, slowly, the lights fade as the Real Presence of the Lord begins to fade in those who have received Him. And the Angels return to the Tabernacle to continue their vigil of wonder and adoration of their Lord and Master Whom they see face to face.
[Taken from the Latin Mass Society's May 2000 Newsletter.]