Altar Cloths and Presider’s Chairs
As I have been going around our county these last two weeks, I have been experimenting a little bit with altar cloths and presider’s chairs. In general, this is a terrible idea – pastor transitions involve a lot of grief and anxiety, so messing with something as obvious and public as the altar area is a good way to increase that grief and anxiety unnecessarily. Normally, a new pastor would wait a few months before changing anything liturgical like that.
And yet, with Partners in the Gospel, within a year we will be discussing far bigger questions, like our staff structure, our daily Mass times and office hours, and our faith formation programs; we will all, continually, be feeling grief and anxiety, so when does it make sense to move a chair in the sanctuary? My conclusion – rightly or wrongly – is that we need to get comfortable with change rather quickly, and that smaller changes like this are a good introduction to that idea. And I always have ringing in my ears the admonition of Bishop Barron, when he was rector of my seminary, that “right worship leads to right belief” – which was his way of saying that the first improvements should always be to the liturgy, as the foundation of everything else that we do.
So what am I doing, exactly? I am making sure all of our altars have a white cloth on top of them and, where it is possible and makes sense with the shape of our sanctuaries, and I am making sure our presider’s chairs face the altar. Why?
Altar Cloths
Regarding altar cloths, the GIRM (the rules for how we are supposed to say Mass) is very clear:
“304. Out of reverence for the celebration of the memorial of the Lord and for the banquet in which the Body and Blood of the Lord are offered, there should be, on an altar where this is celebrated, at least one cloth, white in color, whose shape, size, and decoration are in keeping with the altar’s structure. When, in the Dioceses of the United States of America, other cloths are used in addition to the altar cloth, then those cloths may be of other colors possessing Christian honorific or festive significance according to longstanding local usage, provided that the uppermost cloth covering the mensa (i.e., the altar cloth itself) is always white in color.”
Presider’s Chairs
Regarding presider’s chairs, things get a little more confusing. The instructions for the Mass state this:
“310. The chair of the Priest Celebrant must signify his function of presiding over the gathering and of directing the prayer. Thus the more suitable place for the chair is facing the people at the head of the sanctuary, unless the design of the building or other features prevent this: as, for example, if on account of too great a distance, communication between the Priest and the congregation would be difficult, or if the tabernacle were to be positioned in the center behind the altar. […]
The seat for the Deacon should be placed near that of the celebrant. For the other ministers seats should be arranged so that they are clearly distinguishable from seats for the clergy and so that the ministers are easily able to carry out the function entrusted to them.”
There is a lot of historical and theological background that informs the application of this instruction (you might start with Parts 1 and 2 of this article on the history of clergy seating, or this very long discussion on the importance of the presider’s chair), but suffice it to say that this instruction imagines an ancient Roman apse with the altar situated between the priest and the people. (Orthodox churches still preserve this architectural idea here, here, and here.) Note that the key idea of the second sentence is not that the chairs should face the people, but that when they are at the head of the sanctuary, they should face the people (which means they are also facing the altar). When there is a tabernacle in that spot, as we have at every one of our churches except Assumption, the GIRM does not specify which way the chairs should face.
When a tabernacle is present, the reason I turn the chairs to face the altar is, rubrically, because the footnote in that part of the GIRM references Inter Oecumenici (the first Vatican document explaining how to implement the liturgical instructions of Vatican II), and the sentence of that document immediately before the instruction on the chair says this (emphasis mine):
“91. The main altar should preferably be freestanding, to permit walking around it and celebration facing the people. Its location in the place of worship should be truly central so that the attention of the whole congregation naturally focuses there.”
In other words, the focus on the entire congregation, including the clergy, should be the altar. More practically, we might think of it this way: the only times the priest sits during the Mass are (1) during the readings, (2) during the preparation of the altar, and (3) after the reception of communion, and at all three of these times the priest is focused on the ambo or the altar, not on looking at the people.
Lutheran Vacation Bible School
The last few years, I have promised Trinity Lutheran in Bellingham that we would advertise their Vacation Bible School in our bulletins (as long as it did not interfere with our own programs – thanks to St. Joseph in Ferndale for hosting such an excellent Jesus Day Camp last week!!). The reason I agree to this is because (1) the Missouri Synod Lutherans are close enough to Catholics doctrinally that I think it would be beneficial, not detrimental, for our children to attend; and (2) it is important for us to build bridges with our fellow Christians, and this is an easy way to do so.
Their VBS runs July 22 – 26, for preschool through 5th grade. More information and registration can be found at: https://www.trinitybellingham.org/vbs/
Fr. Moore 