Thursday, January 13, 2011

What Tabernacle placement tells us

"Michael Voris has another indirect, deeply nuanced reflection, this time touching on issues such as the placement of the tabernacle in churches," says Fr. Z in his post yesterday, "Michael Voris about tabernacles and, gasp, liberals!" (WDTPRS, January 12, 2011).



Voris is dead-on-target as to the heart the crisis in the Church today, whether we're talking about catechesis, or morals, or liturgy, or, yes, the placement of the Tabernacle in church: the problem of disbelief in Christ as the incarnation of the Living God and in His Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament.

Voris may not always get his facts right when talking about Protestants. Martin Luther, whom he references here, did in fact believe in the Real Presence. That was the sticking point in his debate with Ulrich Zwingli; but Voris is right about the effects of the Pandora's Box that Luther opened. The vast majority of Protestants today disbelieve in anything like the Real Presence, and the majority of "sacramentalized pagans" that populate many liberal (AmChurch) Catholic parishes are not far behind them.

1 comment:

Nick said...

I will definitely pass this along; it's a terribly scandalous and sacrilegious practice.

I was once at a very big parish with many well to do families, yet the tabernacle was in the REAR of the Church (shaped in a circle, of course). I went to the priest at the end and told him that was scandalous and I couldn't return until it was fixed. Luckily, it seems he was a new priest there and was making arrangements to fix the problem, which he did.

Just as bad was when I was visiting University of Portland and the place they had mass wasn't even a church but a commons area with a stage, and the Tabernacle was in a CLOSET as you exit from the back. On top of that, there were no kneelers, so students were effectively discouraged from kneeling. This was at an alleged "Catholic" university that also received significant funding.

The way it's been done is so ingenious that it's hard to even confront the priest about, since often the Tabernacle is placed off to the side, so that while not in the center, it can be argued that it's still "sort of" in front.