Palm Sunday Mass - 4.5.2020 - St. Patrick's Catholic Church

The Church and Pandemic.

St. Mary's Cathedral, Diocese of Cheyenne Wyoming.

When this particular blog was started back in 2011 its stated purposes was simply to depict churches and not to otherwise comment.  And, during the time this blog has been up, that's largely what it has done. Indeed, at this point it not only depicts the architecture of numerous churches around the west, but also religious houses belonging to several other religions.  So, it's pretty much stuck to its task.

Perhaps inevitably, however, it strays from time to time with comments.  Indeed, a blog on religious structures is going to have, at some point, a hard time not commenting on something with a religious theme.  When we've done that, we have tried not to make proselytizing arguments of any kind, but rather comment on issues where issues appear. Frankly, in at least one case, we pulled back on one such draft item and never posted it as it had the appearance of going perhaps where it should  not, if it was going to remain consistent with the theme of the blog.

Be that as it may, there are items from time to time that are commented upon as comments.  And often they involve Catholic themes when they do, as we are Catholics.  Indeed, the original about section of the blog, where it now states;

This blog is a collection of photographs of churches, and sometimes a bit more, that we find interesting. It isn't an attempt to catalog all the churches in any one town, or even of any one area in a town. The selection of churches featured is simply our own choice, based on churches we find architecturally or historically interesting for one reason or another.

it once stated:

This blog is a collection of photographs of churches, mostly Catholic, and sometimes a bit more, that we find interesting. It isn't an attempt to catalog all the churches in any one town, or even of any one area in a town. The selection of churches featured is simply our own choice, based on churches we find architecturally or historically interesting for one reason or another.

That turned out never to be true, actually as the very first 2011 set of photographs included more Protestant churches than Catholic ones.

Anyhow, quite often when we may have been tempted to comment on a supposed controversy it was as controversy that wasn't.  A lot of the common comments a person hears on religious topics in general and Catholic ones in particular are wildly wrong as a rule.  The often repeated story about the rise of the "None's", for example, is grossly misreported and actually doesn't amount to anywhere near as much of a story as its made out to be.  Tales of Catholic dissention are typically fairly off the mark itself and indeed the concepts surrounding it are often not at all understood by the leadership of the Church within the Church, as perhaps best exemplified by the leadership of the German church which is strangely stuck in the liberal 1970s rather than the increasingly conservative 2020s.

Anyhow, if there's a lesson here it's that crises come and go, and often they go without having amounted to anywhere near as much as they were thought to be at the time of their onset.

All of which argues for not posting this comment here.  But, as the saying goes, fools rush in . . . 

The crises this time is a real crisis, although even right now the full dimensions and parameters of it are not known and they will not be until the crisis is over.  And that crisis is, of course, the Coronavirus Pandemic of 2020.

All around the United States, as the serious nature of the spread of COVID 19 became apparent, things have been shutting down as state and local governments shut them down.  The Federal Government has been less clear about its desires and goals in regards to this, and has generally followed the states.  Be that as it may, generally, most states went from warnings to be careful to orders to shut things down.  In my own state, this occurred in a series of events that took place over about a three week period and it will now extend to the end of April.  Our state isn't shut down completely, but most public gathering places, including churches, are now subject to orders that basically require them to close for the stated public emergency duration.

Switching from the general to the particular, I'm going to only address this in the context of the Catholic Church and explain my reasoning for doing so. All around the country churches have been adjusting to this change, with difficulty.  A lot of churches of all denominations (and I'll bet this is true of non Christian religions as well) have gone to televised and Youtube services.  Indeed, I visited with several friends, Catholic and non Catholic, who have experienced this with mixed results.  But departing from that, for members of the Apostolic Churches this is a particularly difficult time for a variety of reasons all of which is based on the fact that they're understanding of the sacraments varies from the Protestant churches and even varies from those Protestant churches that are very closely based on the Catholic Church.  The simple reason for that is that members of the Apostolic Churches are deprived of the core of their faith if they can't receive direct communication with their clerics.

When this crisis arrived here, the first thing that was done was the suspension of the "greeting", that being the handshake that was introduced into the Latin Rite after Vatican Two, borrowed from the practice of a greeting that is found in the Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches (interestingly those Protestant churches closely based on the Catholic Church followed suit and introduced it at the same time in some instances).  I frankly don't like shaking hands and wouldn't care of that practice disappeared forever, so I sure didn't miss that.  At the same time, Communion from the cup was suspended in the Latin Rite.  I don't know about the Eastern Rite of the Catholic Church or the Orthodox, but I'd note that at least the Eastern Orthodox in Rome, Italy, at about the same time refused to alter the Eastern practice in which the Host is served from the chalice with a small spoon, a very intimate and distinct practice in the East.  I frankly don't even know if there's a way that, in the East, that could be validly altered.

Next, however, came the end of Public Masses. 

And following this, has been controversy.

The suspension of Public Masses in our Diocese was thought to be limited, at first, to just that, and indeed that's exactly how the Parish Priest presented it.  Public gatherings, he noted, would be stopped, including the Mass, during the emergency period noted by the Bishop, but everything else would go on.  He'd do the Stations of the Cross and if people were there, so be it. He'd continue to hear Confessions as well.

This contrasted with the neighboring Diocese of Salt Lake, where by that time everything, including Confessions, had been stopped.

Cathedral of the Madeline, Salt Lake City Utah.

I found the thought of the Diocese of Salt Lake halting Confessions to be shocking, but the Diocese of Wyoming soon clarified and made it clear that its Priests were to do the same.

Now, prior to that clarification there were a few days of confusion.  It was clear that everything had been stopped at one parish and not another as different Pastors no doubt interpreted the order in accordance with its spirit or letter.  The Diocese soon made it clear, apparently, what was meant.

So all the sacraments (maybe) have been ceased, and not just here, but in most places.  Maybe everywhere.

No Baptisms, no marriages, no Last Rights (apparently, but I'm not really sure, and apparently not everywhere), no Masses, and no Confessions (save perhaps by appointment).

But was that the right thing to do?

I really wondered right from the onset.  I get it, and I particularly get it about the Public Masses.  But I don't think this was done well, and frankly, in looking at it, I think there were real mistakes made in this approach.

I'm apparently note the only one as a real debate has broken out among deep thinking Catholics on these topics including those in the Catholic pundit class, the Canon Law class, and the laymen class.  I've heard arguments on both sides, and frankly I'm in the camp that thinks the Bishops made real errors in their approach.  Not only do I think that, but this is another area where the current American Bishops are really not measuring up.  And there, it's yet another area where the lay members of the Church appear to be ahead of their Bishops in some things. 

Interestingly, while I don't follow it, apparently the same debate and criticism is going on in Anglican circles. At least one critic who jointly follows Anglican and Catholic issues (which must make him an Anglo Catholic type of Anglican) is very much doing the same.

Phil Lawler, who writes at Catholic Culture, perhaps can be viewed as summarizing the loyal but critical laymen class.  He's written at least two articles on the topic, including one entitled When Our Churches Open Up Again.  In that article he addresses a variety of topics, starting off with this one:

Why did you forbid the administration of the sacraments? For reasons of public health— and in many cases, because of emergency government regulations— you were forced to curtail public ceremonies. But were you forced to issue a blanket prohibition? Weren’t there ways to allow some acts of public worship, with appropriate safeguards? Did you explore those possibilities thoroughly? 

Just a few months ago, at the Amazon Synod, we heard pleas for the ordination of married men, based on the argument that the faithful must have access to the sacraments. 

Why wasn’t the same imperative felt during the pandemic: the need to take special measures to ensure that the sacraments were available?

That really hits the nail right on the head.

The problem is that there's really no good reason for the way that this was done in some instances.  Catholics were simply told that their Church was not going to provide sacraments.  Any sacraments.

The degree to which this is a serious matter cannot be overstated.  The sacramental life of the Church is very broad and not limited to Sunday "services". This provides the essence of the vast gulf between most Protestant denominations and the Apostolic faiths.  Apostolic Christians can get by without Sunday Masses or Divine Liturgy (in the East), but they don't hold that things can generally be done by laymen and their understanding of Ordination is vastly different than that of Protestants.  

Apostolic Christians hold the sacraments to be divinely ordained and only capable of being bestowed by a Priest.  Baptism, for Catholics and the Orthodox, isn't a ceremony, it's a sacrament that changes the subjects relationship with God.  Catholics and Orthodox baptize at birth due to the danger of death, to ensure that should that disaster fall upon an infant, they're sinless soul will go on to enjoy the full benefits of the next life.  Catholics generally hold that an unbaptized infant is of course sinless and trust in the Mercy of God to provide for the departed child, but there's no definitive teaching on exactly what that means.

There is one on what dying in a state of mortal sin means, however, and unlike some Protestants there's no view that a person can just get right with God once, or perhaps again and again, and it'll be okay.  Apostolic Christians don't believe that once a person is saved, their salvation is guaranteed, it can be lost, and they therefore take very seriously Christ's commission that his Apostolic ministers could bind and loose, forgive and not forgive.  Hence the institution of Confession.

Many would point out, and have in other context beyond that, that a Catholic can make an act of "Perfect Contrition", and the Pope has pointed this out in this crisis. But, while my view may be a hard one, an act of "Perfect Contrition", in which a person prays their guilt and is perfectly sorrowful and repentant of it, is not easy to do.  Indeed, the Church does not require Perfect Contrition for Confession.  Merely being concerned about the impact of sin in the next world is regarded as sufficient for a Catholic to receive absolution in Confession.  Perfect Contrition is obviously much better, but it's not regarded as necessary.  To receive remission of a person's sins when Confession is not available, Perfect Contrition is required.

The suggestion of Pope Francis in regard to this is nice and pastoral, but it frankly will be taken by many as an adoption of the Protestant view.  "Well, I said I was sorry so God forgives me and that's good enough".  Not hardly, in the Catholic view.  Indeed, most Confessors will relate that certain sins are confessed extraordinarily frequently in spite of their serious nature, and some seriously religious Catholics confess the same ones again and again.  Simply saying we'll all get through this and get back to normal doesn't acknowledge that what we are going through is extraordinary and some people are going right to the grave with their sins unconfessed.

Indeed, suggestion that a person simply adopt an attitude of Perfect Confession reduces the seriousness of sin in the way that secularized Christians take it, which is the polar opposite of how the Apostolic Churches view it.  Contrary to fundamentalist Protestant Christians, Apostolic Christians do not hold that there's a vast number of rules (although they're frequently criticized by Protestants who don't grasp what Apostolic Christians believe), but they do hold that there are sins that are very serious.  Unlike at least one local Protestant minister who takes the view that St. Paul's admonitions are mere suggestions, Apostolic Christians don't.

A suggestion that achieving forgiveness is really easy all on your own, while not intended, ignores that Apostolic Christians have always strongly held that achieving forgiveness of sins is easy, but it usually requires a Priest.  Now some will accidentally assume the opposite, and beyond that, in at least much of the U.S., there are no scheduled Confessions as it is.

There's still resort to scheduled private Confessions but people are likely to be hesitant to take that step, particularly in the Latin Rite where not having to do a face to face Confession is protected by Canon Law.  Beyond that, there's a large number of basically observant Catholics who are in the practice of confessing once a year, prior to Easter.  Indeed, when I was a kid, the common belief was that a person had to Confess during the Easter season.

At least Dr. Edward Peters believes that its not possible for a Priest's right to hear Confessions to be suspended, which is not the same, I'd note, about cancelling regularly schedule Confessions.  He notes:

1. Some bishops think they can suspend the celebration of Confession in their diocese or otherwise forbid their priests from hearing confession and granting absolution because of the pandemic. I think this is wrong. 

All pastors have “faculties” (i.e., necessary but, in all respects relevant here, sufficient authorization) for Confession by law (c. 968) and most other priests (e.g., associates) have faculties by formal grant of their bishop (c. 969); once acquired, moreover, such faculties remain effective unless, say, the pastor is removed from office (c. 975, which assumes the process for pastor removal outlined in cc. 1740-1747 has been applied) or the bishop has revoked the grant to a specific priest “for a grave cause” (c. 974, which assumes that “pandemic” satisfies as ‘grave cause’ to strip priests of their faculties for Confession, a claim for which I find zero evidence in the literature).

In our Diocese I believe private Confessions, i.e., ones scheduled with the Priest privately, can still be done.  This would suggest that Last Rights would likewise be available here, as those are always done just that way.

A lot of this could have been easily addressed by the Bishops by providing, when they dismissed their parishioners for that last Public Mass, that the presiding Priest was authorized to give a General Absolution.  Regarding General Absolution, Lawler noted:

If the precepts of the Church are important, why didn’t you address them in your public statements? Catholics are under a solemn obligation to attend Mass on Sunday. When you made it impossible to fulfill that norm, did you assure the faithful that they were dispensed? A diocesan bishop has the authority to allow for general absolution. When you forbade sacramental confessions, did you encourage your priests to offer general absolution?

The Last General Absolution of the Munsters. This famous painting depicts a real event during World War One in which a Catholic Chaplain gave General Absolution to an Irish unit from Munster, many of whom were killed in the battle occuring minutes afterwards. 

General Absolution is a long established practice in which a Catholic Priest can forgive sins, often to a collection of people, immediately prior to some event for a grave reason.  The penitent is obligated to confess the sins they would have confessed next time they go to Confession, but the forgiveness is real and should the person pass before that next Confession occurs, it's a good and valid Confession.

General Absolutions are really common in warfare but they can be authorized for other reasons.  For some reason, it didn't occur to the Bishops to authorize their Priests to given General Absolution for those who were at Mass that last Sunday.  They no doubt thought that things would be opened back up in a couple of weeks.

When they weren't, they should have authorized the Pastors to give General Absolutions even if it meant violating the Governor's orders.  

Being called to be a Priest is called, no matter what a person might think, to a certain type of heroism.  Indeed, it's worth noting that right now an Antiochian Orthodox Priest is being considered for the heroic deed of hearing Confession during the 1918-1919 Spanish Flu Epidemic even thought that ultimately cost him his life.  Another example would be St. Damien De Veuster, the Belgian priest who died ministering to lepers who became afflicted with the disease himself in the course of doing that.

St. Damien De Veuster shortly prior to his death.

That may sound harsh, and the point isn't that Priests should go out and get killed in the epidemic. . .but Christ did provide that we were to minister to the sick and that entails risk.

Right now, in contrasts, Pastors are responding differently and in a confusing manner.  One local Priest immediately started a Youtube channel which is excellent, with his Sunday Mass going up Saturday night, no doubt recorded at his Saturday Mass of anticipation.  It's excellent. The Diocese has its televised Mass which it has had for years, but which compares poorly, but at least is there. The two other local Parishes are silent so far, including one that was clearly being turned into a Parish with a dedicated Hispanic ministry. What do those Parishioners do now?

A lot more need to be done, if even only to have all the Parishes on Youtube.  But its more than that which is cried for, and part of that is providing the sacraments that would normally be provided, save except for the Public Masses.  If that entails risk and heroism, well being a Priest isn't a normal job.

The Bishops, who are Priests, should know that.  American Bishops haven't looked all that great in recent years and few have looked heroic (although some have).  This was an opportunity for them to really rise to the occasion. So far, few have.

A few have even suspended the Lenten obligation of meatless Fridays. This is really going a bridge too far.  Latin Rite Catholics once had meatless Fridays all year long, imposed as a law of the Church during that period during which that amounted to a real penitential sacrifice.  Suspending what little remains of this when it entails sacrifice once again suggests that we really shouldn't have to suffer at all for our Faith. 

Indeed, right now, the Faithful are, but because of duties being suspended, not the reverse.  And the Church has looked as if it has sort of checked out during the crisis, much like movie theaters that are closed for our safety.  

Some of this is necessary.  Not all of it is. This wasn't well done.

It was Cardinal John Henry Newman who observed that "to know history is to be Catholic".   While no doubt some would dispute that, there's a large element of truth to it.  Unfortunately, the Church here seems to have forgotten its own history.  The history of Apostolic Priests who endured sickness to minister to their flocks is a strong tradition of the Church which seems to have been suspended during the COVID 19 crisis.  It's certainly a legal action by the Bishops, but the history of such prior actions should give a person pause. As theologian Dr. Edward Peters has observed, the Papal suspension of sacraments during the early Reformation spawned crisis in England was also legal, but the action did not bear fruit and arguably the opposite was the case.

Of course, all of this was done just a couple of weeks ago.  There's time to adjust course.   And with it looking like much of the country will be shut down longer than originally thought, this would be a good time to do that.

The Diocese of Cheyenne suspends public Masses due to the Coronavirus

Yesterday we reported on some regional actions by Catholic churches to address the Coronavirus.  Since we made that post, the Diocese of Cheyenne has suspended public Masses due to the virus, effective as of the Masses today.

It's now known when they'll resume.  Confessions remain unaltered for the time being and the directive does not extend to other Catholic observances.

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday Morning Scene: The Church and the Pandemic...

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday Morning Scene: The Church and the Pandemic...:

Sunday Morning Scene: The Church and the Pandemic

Diocese of Cheyenne:

From: Bishop Steven Biegler

Date: March 13, 2020 Re: Obligation to attend Sunday MassAs the Coronavirus continues to spread throughout the United States, the Diocese of Cheyenne is committed to taking all reasonable precautions to prevent transmission of the virus. In addition to the directives issued on March 3, 2020 (summarized below), from March 13 to April 8, 2020, a dispensation from the obligation to attend Holy Mass (canon 1245) is granted to:

• those of any age who are ill, and • those with an underlying health condition, such as chronic lung disease, COPD, asthma, etc. • Moreover, any person over 60 years old may choose to use this dispensation.Stay home if you are sick or in a high-risk category, since this virus is primarily transmitted through contact with respiratory droplets when an infected person coughs or sneezes. Sunday Mass is broadcast on K2 (ABC) at 9 AM.CORONAVIRUS PRECAUTIONS • Mandatory hand-washing for all ministers and thorough washing of all liturgical vessels. • Permission to suspend Holy Communion from the Chalice accompanied by encouragement to receive Holy Communion in the hand and not on the tongue. • Permission to suspend physical contact during the Sign of Peace. • Permission to empty Holy Water fonts.

Please note: these precautions are of limited effectiveness. They are no substitute for staying home when you are ill. We will continue to monitor the progression of this disease and make appropriate recommendations. Clergy and lay leaders are to make prudent decisions so that non-essential gatherings are avoided. In addition to the effect on physical health, I am concerned about the social and economic impacts of this outbreak. Isolation and loneliness are already experienced by so many people. I encourage clergy to discuss with Finance and Pastoral Councils how the parish might offer outreach to those who are affected by social isolation or how they could collaborate with the local community to provide support to those needing financial aid because of health care costs or lack of employment. Please offer the following or a similar intention at Masses: For all people affected by COVID-19 or any serious illness, the elderly and homebound, as well as all medical personnel and caregivers for the sick.

Archdiocese of Denver:

The bishops of the three dioceses of Colorado have announced that all public Masses have been canceled, effective immediately. This includes daily Masses. Parishes offices will remain open for now. More information will be posted shortly….NOTE: When Mass is unavailable, the Catholic faithful are dispensed from their Sunday obligation.

This decision was made was made in the interest of the common good after the governor of Colorado ordered the cancellation of all public gatherings of 250 or more people. We are acting out of prudence and in charity to our communities to do our part to mitigate the spread of this virus. We have the examples of countries from around the world, where those who took proactive steps quickly are seeing far better outcomes. 

Diocese of Salt Lake City:

Based on Bishop Oscar A. Solis’ consultation with senior diocesan staff and the announcement from Governor Gary R. Herbert regarding the precautions to be taken with regard to the coronavirus disease, Bishop Solis is suspending the public celebration of worship, including Sunday, weekday and other Holy Masses from March 14 to March 31, or until further notice.During this time, Catholic school facilities will close and instruction to students will be provided remotely. Each individual school will contact parents and inform them of how instruction will be delivered at home for each grade level.The Utah Catholic Schools do not have any confirmed cases of COVID-19, but some students and family members have been quarantined due to their possible exposure to the virus.All other parish or school meetings, public gatherings and other events also are canceled. Funerals and weddings are to be postponed when possible; otherwise, these are to be limited to immediate family members only.Private Confessions will depend on the availability of the priest.Churches may remain open for personal prayer as appropriate; holy water fonts must be emptied to help avoid transmission of virus.By reason of this emergency, a general dispensation is given from the Sunday and Holy Day obligation. Catholics are asked to pray at home, with the rosary, biblical prayer, personal devotions and/or to devoutly watch televised Masses. It is appropriate to pray for the healing of those suffering the current outbreak of illness, for health professionals, public officials and those serving the common good, and to ask that our merciful and loving Father will strengthen our faith and trust in His goodness and divine providence. “In view of the very serious development of the growing, unpredictable and uncontrolled spread of the coronavirus and with an abundance of caution, it is critical to have clearly defined measures to guide us in facing this pandemic and protecting everyone,” Bishop Solis said. “It is no longer about containment of the spread of the disease but preventing the loss of lives and the greater well-being of the faithful.”

St. Peter's Catholic Church, Carpenter Wyoming

This is St. Peter's Catholic Church in Carpenter, Wyoming. The Church is served by St. Paul's parish in Pine Bluffs, which is the closest Wyoming town to Carpenter.

As with the Methodist Church in Carpenter which is discussed immediately below,  I don't know the age of this Prairie Gothic style church in tiny unincorporated Carpenter.  My suspicion is that the church is nearly as old as Carpenter, but I don't have the immediate information on that.

Minor Irritants

My home Parish, 1958.  This was before I was born.  It was also before the architectural insult of removing the alter rails occurred in the 1970s.

I was originally going to post this at our companion blog Lex Anteinternet, as some of the observations have general application and this is more of the type of thing I tend to publish there, but in thinking about it, as it involves observations derived at Mass, and because it also in part involves architecture, I'm going it here instead.  This is, therefore, one of our few real departures from the general theme of this blog, which is photography related in the main.

I'm attuned, I suppose, to the spoken word in part due to my occupation, which involves speaking a lot, as well as writing. Therefore, perhaps, in some ways I might be viewing this matter from a prospective that's more out of the past than the present, as to how most people perceive the world, although I don't think so.  I give that by way of a caveat.

Also as a caveat, I'm in my mid 50s, and I'm in a high stress occupation, which can make me really cranky.  As a Catholic in my mid 50s, I've now sat through, but not appreciated until much later, the changes brought about by the "spirit of Vatican II" and I frankly don't like most of them.  That's a view that I've come to over the years and feel more now that I'm in my mid 50s than I did in about them in my mid 20s when I was aware, but barely aware, of them.  That may be because I now have a deeper appreciation of quite a few things and a better appreciation of the history of things, let alone the direction of things, than I did back then.  That doesn't really place me in the "Trad" camp in the Catholic world, and certainly not in the "Rad Trad" camp, but I can see the Trad camp, I suppose, from where I'm camped.

And from where I'm camped I've viewed certain things come into the churches that ought to go right back out.  So here goes.

The late announcements.

If you want to totally destroy any audience recollection of what you have just said in an assembly of any sort, put some announcements at the end of your assembly.

This applies to any sort of assembly.

The Catholic Mass is a type of assembly and an ancient one.  It's basic form has existed the entire length of Christianity and it features two principal aspects.  One is the reading or readings, and the second one is Holy Communion. The readings lead up to Communion.

In its common form, in all Rites, and beyond the Catholic Church in all Apostolic Churches and those which claim Apostolic succession, there's a central reading followed by a homily.  In the current Latin Rite, there's a reading from the Old Testament, from the Psalms, from the New Testament, and the main reading from the Gospels.  Then there's the homily.  The readers are selected so that they're tied together in some fashion.  They lead up to the homily, and then that is followed by Holy Communion.  There's some short aspects of the Mass following the homily, followed by the dismissal of the congregation, which is done with the worlds "The Mass has ended, go in Peace."

If the homily is effective, it should remain on your mind on the way out of the Church.  If it isn't, at the readings out to.

They probably won't if just before dismissing the congregation there's the "please be seated for just a few announcements".

Human beings are set by their nature to receive a main message.  Once its received, it's received.  They aren't set by their nature to receive auxiliary messages after that.  If they receive them, they delete the first one.

In spite of this being really obvious, if you have ever experienced it, in recent years Catholic parishes where I've gone to Mass have become absolutely chronic about tail end messages. So much so, that some of them start to become auxiliary homilies.  The number of extra speakers that come up to the ambo to deliver a message to the congregation, frequently delivered by somebody who has absolutely no public speaking skills whatsoever, is at an all time high.  And the Priests themselves have taken up delivering all sorts of messages just before they dismiss the congregation.  Perhaps the most frequent of those messages, and in some ways the most insulting, is the extraordinarily irritating habit of reading bits of the bulletin to the congregation. 

On that last item, I was an early reader and ever since then I've hated to be read to.  I know how to read.  Reading out loud is for those who can't read.  Reading a bulletin is an implicit suggestion that the congregation isn't reading the bulletin.  Why should it, it the Priest is going to read the important parts, by his definition, to you before he dismisses the congregation?

Anyhow, any more it's not uncommon to go to Mass, be standing for the dismissal be told to sit, have one speaker come up on something like Marriage Encounter, or enrolling your kids in school, or encouraging people to join the youth group, or go to some function, followed perhaps by an additional auxiliary message from the Priest, and then highlights of the bulletin. By the time that's been done, the homily is completely lost.

Think about it, if your parish was to receive a letter from St. Paul today, you'd be eager (and given the nature of St. Paul's letter, likely a bit scared), to hear them.  It's easy to imagine the Priest or Deacon standing up and trembling a bit and saying "now we're going to hear a letter from St. Paul".  If that happened, you'd probably solemnly go up to Communion after that, be dismissed, and go home thinking about it for the rest of the week.

What wouldn't occur is that the Priest would stand up and say, please be seated we have . . . and two boring speakers stood up and droned on about something followed by the Priest reading the bulletin.

But that's exactly what's occurring on most Sundays.

We'd note that its actually contrary to the rubrics.  Announcements are supposed to come before the Mass. 

Not after.

The Screens

Humans are evolved for the reception of oral information.  Early on, we learned how to write and read, but receiving information in that fashion is much more recent.

Up above I stated I hate to be read to, and I do. But one thing about most writing is that it isn't designed to be read to an audience.  Ancient texts, however, are as they were written at at time in which most people couldn't read.  Indeed, they were often written by a scrivener who received dictation from somebody who could neither read nor write, so the messages were often sent by somebody who couldn't read or write and received by somebody who couldn't read or write and in both instances require the assistance of somebody who could do both.

The text of the Bible, in the Mass, can and should be effectively delivered orally, as the homily should as well.  The entire Mass is immediate sensory, involving your direct listening and often, depending upon the right, various distinct sounds and smells.

Contrary to what some churches apparently like to believe, and what many lawyers and courts have come to believe, what people don't do well is receive information second party via screens.

Every since the 1960s there's been the idea around that because television and movies (and now video games) are so common, people must receive information in that fashion.  In reality, they tune most of that out.

Proof of that is ample.  For one thing, it's really difficult to tune out an effective speaker if you are in the same room as that speaker.  It's easy to tune out a boring speaker, but its easy to tune out anything that's boring.  Tuning out video and screen received information is really easy however.

Indeed, there are a lot of people who turn on televisions for "background noise".  I absolutely hate that, but it's really common.  There are plenty of people who turn the television on the second they get up and keep it on until they go to sleep without ever really watching anything its playing (again, that really annoys me). 

This is also true, I'd note, of second person sound delivered by some medium such as radio.  If you want to listen, you will, but there are a lot of people who turn on the radio and never listen to it.  Personally, I can't stand to have the radio on at all when I'm working and as a result I've had more than one occasion where I've had to tell secretaries to turn their radios down, as I could hear them in my office.  A former partner of mine, in contrast, bought an expensive speaker set for his work computer (I now have it) as he'd play music all day long.

Anyhow, if you really want people to be distracted and/or bored, bring in a screen.

Screens in churches exist in two forms. One is the old slide screen, now commonly used for a video presentation. Video presentations delivered in churches nearly uniformly feature bad production values and horrible audio, so they are ineffective.  They usually are in aid of some campaign, but they aren't convincing for that reason.  Additionally, as the person who controls the presentation in the church usually has the same technical skills as teachers in classrooms who use the same technology, either problems showing the presentation or constant messing with the audio is nearly inevitable.

There are exceptions to this.  Our local Parish has been featuring a series on the Mass that it has been showing before Mass commences and it has been excellent and engaging.

The other type of screen is the television type screen.

A beautiful church across town, where I'll now be attending on Sundays due to a schedule change at my old parish, has been wounded there by the inclusion of screens bolted to the walls.  They serve no purpose whatsoever other than to put up a selection words here and there for the readings and then a picture or pictures for the homily.

That really needs to be stopped.

All that does is distract and again, it's insulting to the congregation.  It really isn't hte case that they were ignoring the engaging Priest there with his deep booming voice.  He didn't need the electronic aids and it actually detracts from his presentation, as it would anyone's.

Not thinking things out

I have to be careful on this one as it could sound like I'm saying something that I'm not.

When I was really young my family attended an early Sunday morning Mass.  I've been told how early it was, and it was early.

Later on, we attended the Saturday evening Mass.  I guess this was done as we weren't doing anything on Saturday evening and this was a convenient way to attend Mass and leave all of Sunday open to do whatever.  When I was in university I normally attended the Saturday evening Mass for the same reason, or simply because I was acclimated to it. When I moved back to town and got married, we did as well.

When the kids were born we switched to the across town Parish as it had a better cry room.

Later, however, we started attending the Sunday morning early mass again, which was at 7:30 at that point.  I can't recall quite why, but it was likely because after that the kids attended the Catechism class that was held at the old Catholic school on Sundays, so it worked out really well.  As they grew older and processed through that, we kept going to the Sunday morning Mass.

One Priest moved the time of that Mass to 8:00.  That was fine.  Recently the new Priest has moved it to 9:00.  The 11:00 Mass, which is later than I normally ever go to, has been moved to 11:30, and is now the Spanish Mass.  The late Sunday Mass at 5:15 and the Saturday evening Mass at 5:15 remain in the same positions.

All of this makes a huge amount of sense and it reflects a demographic shift in the Parish.  I think the decisions to change the times was fully warranted.  Indeed, back some years ago when I attended a special meeting of parishioners it struck me that it made no sense that in a town of our size, which sin't small but isn't gigantic, it didn't make sense to have three churches with Saturday evening Masses (which still is the case) and two that offered early Sunday morning Mass.  Indeed, taking a Medieval view of things I'd tend to have consolidated all three Parishes into the "Tri Parish" that they technically are.

Be that as it may, it has a direct impact on me, and now I'll go across town. For a guy who routinely wakes up as early as 3:00 a.m., 9:00 a.m. is fairly late.

None of that is my point.

All this came about for two reasons, both of which are demographic and one of which is due to poor planning.

The downtown Parish, where I attend, was the founding church in the county.  All the other churches were founded by it.  When the second church was built across town,t hat church was bigger, but the downtown church was still very large.  The third one is much smaller.

All three had school buildings on their grounds, but only one school actually existed. That school dated to the 1920s, I think, and was one black away from the downtown church.  It was the central Catholic school for the town.

Now, I n ever went there and I don't have any romantic feelings about it. But I do grasp the demographic realities of schools.

When the downtown church was built, it was the only Catholic church in town, which it still was at the time the school was built.  AS the town expanded, however, a second church was built on the east side of town, and it is larger.  It's a beautiful church.

The obvious intent was for it to have its own school, but Catholics are a minority population here and therefore there was never a sufficient Catholic population base that would have justified that.  Indeed, the struggle for many years was to keep the existing school viable.  For the same demographic reasons, two other religious schools, one Lutheran and one of a Calvinist variety, are present in town, even though there's more than one church for each respective group that provides the population base for the schools.

All that was fine but in the 1990s a very generous donor family granted a very large sum of money just to build a school  It was really needed as well as the old school was now very long in the tooth and had the problems that all old buildings have.

What was determined to be done was to build a school on the very expansive grounds of the small mid town church on the west side, as it had the grounds.  That was done, and the old school was closed.

That was a mistake.

The problem with that decision was an absolute failure to grasp demographics.  The downtown parish, the oldest one, was the largest because it was the first and it had the school.  Over time, the east side parish probably had more people who attended it, but the numbers were close.  The mid town church, on the other hand, was small and more of a neighborhood church. 

When the downtown church was built, a century ago, the town was around 20,000 in population and the nicest part of town was in fact close to it.  It's location meant that a high percentage of school age children could walk to it, something that is made more evident by the fact of a major public grade school being just one block away, and the town's then only high school being about four blocks away.  By  the 1970s, however, that was less and less true and more people likely lived on the east side of town.  Kids got to the school by their parents taking them there, which if you went by early in the morning was pretty clear.

The location really had its drawbacks.  It didn't have an expansive modern playground and it evolved into being right on the edge of the busy downtown.  But it was one block away from the oldest downtown church and the kids who went to the school went to Mass at that Parish. So did their parents, who tended to keep going there as those kids grew up.

Once the school was closed, however, that ended.  Kids went to the mid town Parish, which was on the same grounds.  Their parents no longer went to the downtown Parish either, either going to the mid town church or to the one on the east side, close to where it was located.

That this would have occurred should have been evident.  None the less, the mistakes were compounded.  The old school building, which was still used for a time for various church functions including religious education, was sold.  The neighboring convent, which had once housed nuns who taught at the school (which had ended long before the school was closed) was also sold.  Religious education was moved to a building that once housed the Knights of Columbus, between teh church and the school, after the Knights moved to the east side church.

And with all of that, predictably, the church lost a lot of Parishioners.

The ones it didn't loose, however, were Hispanic.  The reasons aren't really clear but its most likely due to most of them being newer residents of the town. As they moved into town, they looked for a parish, and the downtown one is by far the easiest to find.  And as its centrally located, it's easy to get to.

Not that any of the local churches are hard to get to, and that's one of the challenges the downtown church faces. They're all fairly easy to get to, but the other two are right on the edge of residential areas whereas the downtown parish is right at the edge of the downtown.  They're all on the borders, however, of residential areas.

The downtown parish, however, is a lot easier to get to if you live in the town that borders this one immediately to the north, which is all middle class housing.  It's also really close to another neighboring town that likewise has a strong working class base, and it's not hard to get to from a third town that meets that category.  It's by far the easiest to get to for people who live in the oldest sections of the town that are very much in a working class district.  Anyway you look at it, it's well situated for a new community that's comprised of working people.

All the parishes have people who meet that definition and indeed Catholicism in Wyoming has always had s strong working class element to it.  But another added element to it is that if you are part of a new demographic to an area, you are part of a "community" in a unique way.

In recent years I've heard a lot in Catholic circles about "building community".  I frankly think the entire concept is grossly misunderstood in some ways. All Catholics are part of a unique community simply by being Catholic, and usually only people who are very poorly Catechized or who were Protestants for most of their life really don't have the sense of the Catholic Community. That's part of what makes being  a Catholic really unique.  Catholics have a sense of the near, the far, and the supernatural.  When Catholics refer to "the communion of the Saints", they have the sense of the Saints being with us in the present time.  Our distinction between the living and the dead is much slighter than other people.  And likewise, as we're part of the Universal Church, which is what "Catholic" implies, we feel as much as part of a church across the world in many ways as we do to our own.  Only when the local churches disrupt that do we feel ill at ease.

Indeed, a lot of Catholics never register at a parish, and are called "vagabondi" in terms of Canon Law.  This isn't a weird concept for Catholics and actually the phrase "joining a church" that Protestants use is hopelessly bizarre to Catholics.

But for recent immigrant populations, they are a special kind of community and that plays in here as well.  Speaking a different language and coming from a different culture, they'll tend to go to one church as its where they are most at home, even if it involves some inconvenience.

None of this is wrong or a problem, and indeed the Church and the Parish is right to react to serve them, so that they are served. And by changing a Mass time to the middle of Sunday, that makes a lot of sense. The prior Spanish Mass was only twice a month and in the middle of Sunday afternoon, which made sense at the time but no longer does. Further, a Hispanic youth group leader has stepped forward and volunteered to serve in that capacity and, beyond that, some Spanish speaking nuns from Mexico have arrived in town.

All that points in a very clear direction and it makes sense. But there's a risk running there as well.  In the thinking things out area, hopefully this has been done.

Closing the school detached people from the downtown church and reattached them either to the small neighborhood church which is near the school or to the big across the town church near where man of them lived.  That this would occur was inevitable and should have been appreciated from the start.  The subsequent selling of the old school and the convent that followed was an incredibly bad mistake that deprived the old downtown church of two major items of infrastructure. Selling real property is nearly always a horrifically bad idea, and its one the Parish did over the protest of a lot of people who had a romantic attachment to their old school. That romantic attachment was wrong, but the selling of the property was even worse.  

All that left the downtown parish with a population of parishioners who either went there out of long habit (like me), personal taste (probably also partially me), because they lived nearby (which almost made them older by default, with rare exceptions), or they were part of a unique demographic.

The remaining parishioners today, therefore, are not likely to be the ones with young kids, except for Hispanic families.  The exception to that was the 11:00 Mass which was attended by a lot of people with families.  If those families don't speak Spanish, most of them will not go elsewhere.  Not due to prejudice, but because they won't easily understand what's being said at Mass.

If the overall idea is that the Parish will simply become an Hispanic one, that will probably fail. Even with the increased number of Hispanic Catholics in town, they're still not numerous enough to carry a Parish on their own, unless the Church is successful in getting a lot of quasi observant Hispanic Catholics to attend.  It might, but that will be difficult.

That's probably part of the goal, and maybe they'll be able to do it. If that's the plan, they need to dive full in and not try to make any compromises at all.  It'll be tough, however, as right now while there are many, many, highly observant Hispanic Catholics in our culture, the results of the Mexican Revolution are still being recovered from in regard to this.  The Mexican government was bitterly hostile to Catholicism for decades and ultimately produced a result much like that produced by the Russian Revolution in which people remain attached to their faith, but in a looser fashion than had been the case prior to the suppression.  As with the many Russians who remain highly loyal to the Russian Orthodox Church, and the many Ukrainians who remain loyal to the Ukrainian Catholic Church, there are many Mexicans who remain loyal to the Roman Catholic Church. There are also, however, a lot whose affiliation is much looser.  They're Catholic, but their attendance tends to be light.  Overcoming that would in fact be a huge triumph and would fill the church at every Mass, but it will be tough to accomplish.

If it isn't accomplished, what will occur is that the non Spanish speaking Parishioners will go to another church and most will take their financial support with them to that new Parish.  Right now, for example, I remain registered at the downtown Parish and when I go there I make my donation. But now I'm mostly going across town due to the Mass times.  I may re-register and if I don't, it's only out of a sense that my old downtown Parish should retain some loyalty from me.  But most won't view it that way and will feel that their loyalty and support should go to the Parish where they attend.

There are things that could be done and could have been done to stem this, but they weren't thought out.  I'll get to some of those in just a moment, but a lot of this goes back to the school. The school was in really bad shape, but it didn't need to come down.  It didn't. It was renovated into apartments as was the old convent.  That no doubt took a lot of money, but the point is that the downtown parish had an infrastructure that was available.  It sold it.

After it was sold some Catholic home schoolers made a move to try to establish a Catholic high school here.  It fell flat.  I don't think that would have been a good idea, but one of the things that made it absolutely impossible is that it would have entailed building another school building.  Such a school would never have had a large number of students, so ironically the existing building, particularly if considered in the context of the neighboring convent, would have sufficed, with remodeling, for that.  

Those structures could have also served other purposes, including allowing the convent to be a convent.  For some reason people's sense of the time doesn't tend to extent beyond the immediate and it was apparently believed there'd never be nuns here again. Well, even since the convent closed there has been from time to time, and there are once again.  

A page probably could have been taken here from the Episcopal Diocese for Wyoming which ultimately moved its offices to Casper rather than retain them in Laramie. Why Laramie was chosen for the Episcopal Cathedral in the first place makes for an interesting topic, but it was a poor choice right from the onset.  Moving the offices to Casper made sense, and frankly they ought to just make their large downtown church an auxiliary cathedral.

That's also what should have been done to the downtown parish.  Business offices are presently in Cheyenne, as is the beautiful cathedral, which does make sense. But frankly Cheyenne as the state capitol doesn't make sense as its practically in Colorado and Nebraska. No state would locate its capitol in a corner of the state if it had the choice and Cheyenne being the state capitol is an accident of history.  The choice of Cheyenne as the location for the Catholic Cathedral makes sense, but it means that the bishop has double to triple the normal amount of ground to cover that he ought to.  Making Casper the auxiliary seat would make sense.

It still would, but clearly things aren't headed that way.  It would have made more sense but for the shortsighted sale of all the real property.

I hope the changes work out and I agree with their being made. But my suspicion is that they won't work out well.  Probably the main body of remaining parishioners who aren't Hispanic will relocate if they're not older parishioners, and even if they are and they were going to the 11:00 Mass.  They same groups will remain if they're older at the now 9:00 Mass, Saturday 5:15 Mass and Sunday 5:15 Mass.  But over time, unless the change is hugely successful, I suspect that this will put the Parish in a financial bind and won't be the last of the changes that will be forthcoming.

People who supported moving the school, and selling it, should have seen that coming.

Making It Impossible To Go To Mass

I've talked about Mass times a lot in the item above, so it would seem I wouldn't have a lot to add, but I do.  It just doesn't relate to Sunday.  Well, not much.

I think one of the things that is sometimes not grasped by those who set Mass times is that Wyoming is incredibly working class in a unique way.  Lots of people work six days out of seven if not seven out of seven, by necessity.  Getting to Mass for them is an effort in and of itself, but most make it.  

That means, however, that a lot of people are getting Mass in prior to or after something that they're otherwise fitting in, often by necessity.  Getting to Mass should be the priority, and for most it is, but the reality of their lives means that simply getting to Mass can be an effort that it isn't for people who live in Denver.

I'll go so far as to state for people who work six days out of seven, that may simply include trying to have some downtime on Sunday. That sounds absolutely awful, but in a really rural state with really hard working conditions, that's true.  Lots of families live in a situation in which the breadwinner or winners work six days out of the week, go to Mass on Sunday, and then head out to go fishing or hunting for the rest of the day, or any number of things like that.

Pushing Mass into later in the day makes it hard to do that.  Of course, there's always Saturday evening's Mass, the mass of Anticipation. But frankly if you worked all day on Saturday, and lots of people do (I do most Saturdays), by evening you are pretty beat.  

I note this as the later Mass is on Sunday morning the more likely it is that the observant will simply end up with the classic American (Protestant) lazy Sunday.  

Some people really like that idea, but it's not the regional idea of how things work.  Wyoming has actually always been the least observant state, in terms of religion, in the United States and this is part of the reason why.  The whole idea of getting up late, getting dressed up, going to church, going to lunch (or the detestable brunch) and then spending the rest of the day doing nothing doesn't appeal to a lot of people here, particularly locals.  If you go to an 8:00 Mass in the summer you'll see vehicles that are clearly going right out to the prairie after Mass.  Nobody is dressed up (which isn't part of Catholic culture here) and they're not going to.  If you make the Mass a 9:00 Mass, they'll have to go to another Parish.

Ultimately, if you make it impossible for them to go early, they'll end up going in the middle of the day.  They'll accommodate the Church, and they should, but it's something that at least a little more consideration should be given to.

A lot more consideration should be given to Holy Day schedules.

At the time I'm writing this its All Saints Day (I started this on the morning of All Hallowed Eve).  This means its a Holy Day of Obligation and I must go to Mass.

It's also a blistering work day.

The Catholic Priests on Catholic Stuff You Should Know have noted that the inconvenience of attending a Holy Day Mass is part of what makes it something that should in fact exist.  It refocuses you in a necessary fashion.  I agree with that, but those who schedule Masses should also make it at least somewhat easy to attend.

The downtown Parish has a built in demographic of downtown Catholics. For many years, it had a noon Mass.  I used to attend it and not only on Holy Days, but on days I was in town.  I loved it. Rather than lunch, which I'm not a huge fan of, I'd just go to Mass.  I'd see some of the same people who worked downtown doing the same thing I was, walking to Mass for noon.

Due to their being only one Priest at the Parish for a time, the noon Mass was eliminated. There are two now, but the noon one has never been restored.  There is an early morning Mass, but frankly working people aren't going ot make that one as a rule, even though its very early.  I suppose I could, but I leave the house plenty early as it is, and when I still had to take children to school, it was impossible.

Noon was quite possible.

On Holy Days a person could make that early morning Mass, but I won't.  I'll have to make one later in the day.

Both of the other parishes have a Mass at 9:00. No working person can make that.

Our Parish used to have an anticipatory Mass at 5:15.  That was ideal for working people who worked downtown.  You got off work and went right to Mass.

Well, now that's at 6:00.  For downtown workers that means they'll go home and then go elsewhere, as a rule.

For anticipatory Masses, in fact, there are no early ones.  Two of the churches have 6:00 Masses.  But again, if you worked a hard day, by the time you go home, you'll be tired.  For people with young children, they'll be fussy.  For people with older children, the specter of homework will be looming.  

Indeed, locally, the only Mass that now is convenient for me is the 5:30 Holy Day Mass at the neighborhood church.  So the rescheduling has not only taken me out of my local parish again, it's taken me right to one of the churches that is now full to overflowing at every Mass, because of the relocation of the school.

Greeters

Okay, one more really minor one.

I know that one of the really common complaints people have about any church is that "they don't feel welcome".

Frankly, I doubt that.  I've never felt unwelcome at a Catholic Church and what I think the real story is that people who leave a church use an excuse like that.  Nobody wants to use the excuse like "the Catholic Church takes the Christ and the Apostles really seriously so I couldn't be married five times and be having an affair with six women and fell good about myself".  People switch churches for a lot of reasons, of course, but a lot of people do so really do so as they want to make life easier for themselves and the Apostolic Churches take the Gospels very seriously. 

Anyhow, seemingly as a reaction to that, or simply even due to polling of parishioners in general, getting into a church in some localities is like being a running back trying to get past a defense line.  You go in and all of a sudden you're going to have to shake somebody's hand and somebody is going to welcome you.

For me, being welcomed at the door is a really odd experience if I'm at a Mass that I'm not usually at.  Catholic Parishes have a lot of members but its very often the case that people tend to go to the same Mass.  It's actually possible for you not to know that somebody who attends the same church you do is a Catholic if they're a casual acquaintance as you don't go to the same Mass, save for the vagabondi who move around.  Given this, you can have the really odd experience of being welcomed by an overenthusiastic greeter who then asks something like "visiting?"

He or she is trying to be friendly, but I'm highly introverted, old and cranky.  I'm just trying to make it into Mass.  So I'm likely to respond "No, I've been coming here since 1963".  Its' rude on my part but for the highly introverted to be flanked by greeters is stress inducing.

Indeed, at the downtown Parish I go in a side door.  That way the only greeter I ever meet is the very nice and very nicely dressed teenage girl who hands out bulletins.  As she recognizes me, all she's going to do is hand me a bulletin.

I was asked, I'd note, to be a greeter at one time. That would be such a nightmare for me, I declined.

One change the new Priest has done downtown is to quit having bulletins available before Mass. That's an interesting change and I don't know why.  There's probably a reason for it.  It's not an accident however.

St. Matthew's Catholic Church, Hulett Wyoming

The church depicted above is St. Matthew's Catholic Church in the small northern Wyoming town of Hulett.  The Church is served by the parish in Newcastle, which while not far away is a substantial drive in the winter.

St. Patrick's Catholic Church, Moorcroft Wyoming

This is St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Moorcroft, Wyoming.  The parish is served by the larger parish in Gillette, Wyoming.

St. Barbara's Catholic Church, Powell Wyoming

This is St. Barbara's Catholic Church in Powell, Wyoming.  This church was built in 1964 on the site of the original St. Barbara's which it replaced.

St. Anthony Catholic Church, Guernsey Wyoming

This modern architecture church is St. Anthony Catholic Church in Guernsey Wyoming, the training headquarters of the Wyoming Army National Guard and a farming, ranching and railroad community.  The church is served by St. Rose of Lima in Torrington, which was posted here just the other day.

There are an unusual number of St. Anthony's Catholic Churches in Wyoming.  I'm not sure how this came about, but there are at least four, including this one.

St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church, Torrington Wyoming

This Romanesque style Catholic Church is St. Rose of Lima in Torrington Wyoming.

St. Anthony's Catholic Church. Upton, Wyoming.

St. Anthony is a very popular patron saint for Catholic Churches in Wyoming for reasons of which I'm not aware. This is one of three churches in the Diocese of Cheyenne which is dedicated to St. Anthony.

This St. Anthony's is the smallest, being in the smallest town. This Prairie Gothic Catholic Church is located in small Upton, Wyoming, near the Black Hills.  It's a mission church of the church in Newcastle.

Stop! Don't change that Church!

A theme, if not always an obvious one, of this blog is architecture.

And  nothing does more violence to traditional, serviceable, and beautiful architecture, than "updating" it for any reason.

Just don't.

A case in point.

The photograph above, unfortunately not entirely in focus and in black and white, dates from November 1958.  It depicts St. Anthony's of Padua Church in Casper Wyoming on the occasion of my parents wedding.

Now, St. Anthony's remains a beautiful church today, but if we had a picture of the interior (which I don't from this angle) and if we had this picture in sharper focus (which it isn't) and in color (which it is not), we'd notice some changes right away.

And they aren't good ones.

The altarpiece and the altar are all still there.  The cross painted on the wall behind the altarpiece is also still there.  But many other things have changed.

Most obvious, the beautiful marble altar rail in this photograph, a gift of the Schulte family when the church was built, is gone.  I was told that a part of it can be found now in a local restaurant, which I hope is not true.  If it is true, I've never seen it, so it must be some place I don't go to.  It's not clear here, but the gate for the altar rail was marble with heavy brass hinges.  A true work of art in every sense.

The heavy brass lanterns hanging from the ceiling are also gone.

What appears to be a marble ambo is gone as well, replaced by a very nice wooden (walnut?) one.

The statute of St. Patrick moved across town to St. Patrick's, which sort of makes sense. The funds to build St. Patrick's came from St. Anthony's donors, many of whom were Irish, to that we'd ultimately send the statute of the Patron Saint of Ireland over there, which we did only fairly recently, does square with the general them there.. The statute of St. Anthony has been moved to a different spot, but it looks good where it is.

I'm not certain what sort of floor covering we're looking at here, probably carpet, and of course we have new carpet.  But what would strike anyone looking at this photo about what is next to the carpet, the pews, is that the pews are now cantered to face towards the center of the alter.

Okay, what's up with all of that, and was it an improvement?

Well, I suppose that's in the eye of the beholder, as all such things are, but in my view, the answer is a very distinct "no".

It's funny how these things work.  I can remember all of the features depicted here, including the altar rail, even though I was very young when at least that feature came out.  But, at the time, I don't think I thought much about it, if I thought about it all.  I don't remember the Mass being in Latin at all, although when I was very, very young, it must have been.  Anyhow, while these things didn't bother me at the time, or the one change that I recall from when I was a bit older, the cantering of the pews, didn't bother me much, now they do.

That may be because I now have a greater appreciation for history and tradition than I did when I was just a boy, although I had a sense of that at the time.

The cocked angle of the pews, remnants of a decision made by a Priest in the 1970s or perhaps early 80s,  has been something I've never liked, even if I understand the intent behind it.  Not visible in this photograph, a row of pews that were in the middle of the church were taken out to facilitate twice as many Communion servers.  It's awkward and always has been and should not have been done.  Indeed, as this was the only Catholic Church in town with it was built, it was probably jam packed nearly every Mass and they seemed to manage to get by just fine. For that matter, I've been in plenty of packed Catholic churches where everyone came up to the front of the church and it always worked just fine as well.  Having said that, changing the angle of the pews didn't do a great disservice to the church even if it didn't really help it any.

Another matter, however, is the altar rail.

Now altar rails turn out to be a surprisingly hot button item to people not familiar with them.

All Latin Rite Catholic Churches and Anglican Churches had altar rails. Chances are very high that other churches close in form to the Catholic Church also had them, I just don't know. Their purposes was to provide a place for communicants to kneel when receiving communion.  Prior to Vatican II (1962 to 1965) all Latin Catholic in modern times received communion on the tongue.  Communicants would kneel at the altar rail and receive communion.

You'd think that finding a public domain photograph of communicants receiving communion at an altar rail would b easy, but it isn't.  This almost illustrates it in a better fashion, however.  British solders lined up, as if there is an altar rail, and receiving communion in teh field in North Africa.  Off hand, I suspect that this is an Anglican service.

Now, before we get too far down this road it should be noted that people can get really up in arms about this in all sorts of ways and some traditionalist will insist that communion can only properly be received kneeling and on the tongue.  This doesn't seem to be true and certainly wasn't universally the case.  Indeed, originally, the very first Christians, received communion in the hand and you can find very early writings that effect.  However, traditionalist will hotly dispute what those writings and the other evidence actually means. Given as I'm not getting into that debate, I'm not going there and that isn't the point of this entry.

What is the point is that altar rails were an integral part of the design of churches for an extremely long time. Take anything out of a well designed building and you risk subtracting from its design. That's exactly what I think occurred here.

Which isn't to say that I feel that St. Anthony's is a bad looking Church now, far from it. It's still a beautiful church. But it was more beautiful before the marble altar rail was taken out.

Indeed, the problem with making alterations to these well designed structures is that any time that this is done it risks giving into a temporary view in favor of a more traditional element that was integral in the design of the structure while doing damage to its appearance.  All Catholic churches up until the id 1960s were designed to have altar rails.  Taking them out may have served what was, and perhaps is, the view of the day in regards to worship, but it also means that a major feature of the interior of the building, to which careful consideration had been given, was now missing.

And it turns out that, contrary to widely held belief, they did not have to be removed.

Most people believe that the altar rails were taken out as it was somehow required post Vatican II.  It wasn't.  Rather, for whatever reason changes in the Mass now allowed them to be.  They didn't have to be.  Theoretically it was apparently up to individual Pastors on whether they thought an altar rail should be removed, but given as in Wyoming they are nearly all missing, it might have been the case that the decision to remove them was made at the Diocesan level.  The motivating thought here was that the altar rail served to act as a sort of barrier to connection between the people and the Offering of the Mass, and those who supported altar rail removal often felt fairly strongly about that (as we'll see below).  This was, I think, part of an overall change in the Mass at that time, when it went from Latin to the local vernacular, as the Celebrant had faced Ad Oreintum while offering the Mass.  That is, the Priest faced his altar, as a rule, with his back to the Congregation.  

Now all of this gets into some fairly complicated symbolic matters.  There's some truth to the view held by those who argued for the new position and removing the altar rails, in at he "we're all one together sense". There a counter point, however, that maybe the Ad Oreintum orientation actually served that better, as the Priest was facing the same direction for significant portions of the Mass that the parishioners were.   That is, by way of a poor example, if somebody faced you in a large group they're more likely to have some elevated authority over you than if somebody has their back to you, in which case they can be argued to be working with you.  Interestingly in recent years there's been a slow return in some areas to the Ad Oreintum orientation, particularly following Cardinal Sarah's suggestion that this was a better form. The Cardinal occupies a high position at the Vatican and therefore his views cannot be easily discounted.  As has been noted in regards to this there's actually never been an official position on which orientation is better, and in some ancient and modern churches the Ad Orientum position is actually impossible.

In any event, what that did was in part to remove an item that was closely connected to the church and hence the parish and the parishioners.  In this case, the altar rail itself had been a gift from a family early in the parish's history.  In Catholic parishes the pastor is usually there for about seven years and bishops can be in office for long or short periods. However, as the parishioners are often there for decades, that means the traditional in which they participated was removed by individuals who were there on a more temporary basis.  It was certainly "legal", if you will, but it might not have been well advised.

The same is true of most, but not all, of the interior changes to the church. A person can debate the aesthetics of the heavy brass lighting, but the church was built with it in mind and the features that once decorated where it attached to the building remain there to this day.  The removal of one confessional, the relocation, in an awkward fashion, of a place for "music ministers" to stand that resulted, and all of that, were done in a heartfelt fashion, but often to the ascetic detriment of the church which was not built with remodels in mind.

This touches, moreover, on the larger topic of church architecture itself, which as been addressed in another one of our rare commentary threads here.  These older churches are better looking as the architecture and design that came in during the 1970s was not as good as earlier architecture, and according to some focused more on the congregation than on the Divine.  This blog was at one time going to avoid all such churches in general, but as time has gone on its put up posts of quite a few.  Many of these churches are just not good looking. By the same token, many alterations to older churches are not good looking either.

As I noted when I started off, a lot of this stuff did not bother me when I was a child and experiencing it, but it does now.  Indeed, the removal of the altar rail in this church frankly makes me mad when I think of it.  I wish it could go back in.  It won't, of course, but the whole thing upsets me.  I'm not alone, I think, on this sort of thinking and I think it reflects a generational befuddlement with the generations immediately preceding us which seems to have had, in many instances, low respect for tradition in general.  In civil society, in terms of structures, this is probably why we now see all sorts of effort to restore the appearance of old buildings whose owners in the 50s, 60s, and 70s didn't give a second thought about making them ugly through renovation. A prime example of that is the Wyoming National Bank building in Casper Wyoming which was made to look hideous by the additional of a weird steel grating in the 1950s to its exterior which was supposed to make it look modern.  It mostly served to house pigeons and was removed in the 2000s when the building was redone and converted to apartments.

Now, not every one feels this way, I should note.  Particularly in regards to churches.  When I posted this same photograph on Facebook, a friend of mine with a few years on me posted this reply (I hadn't commented on the altar rails in my original post):

So happy that the railings have come down and the hats came off! The church is still so beautiful.

I agree that the church remains beautiful, and I agree that the women wearing head coverings is a tradition that I don't miss, but I don't feel that way about the altar rail at all.

I suspect my friends comment goes to a "spirit of Vatican II" feeling that she's old enough to have experienced and which I not only am not, but which I don't really share enthusiasm for.  It's important to note that Vatican II and "the spirit of Vatican II" are not the same thing.  "The spirit" thing was a zeitgeist of the times which took a decidedly more liberal and less traditional view of things, no doubt an "open the windows and doors and let some fresh air in". Some of that was likely needed but as is often the case with people who are in a "let in the fresh air" movement the realization that cold winds high winds can come in through the same windows and doors and do damage is rarely appreciated. 

And its all too easy when traditions which are simply traditions are tossed to begin to toss out with them things that are more than tradition.  I'm not saying that occurred here with altar rails but I will be frankly that the 1970s saw a lot of innovations, some of them very local poorly thought out that were, in some cases, quite problematic. The generation that thought removing the altar rails was a good idea proved willing to entertain a lot of things in this area that turned out to be big problems for everyone else.

Part of that is because traditions are anchors in a way; moorings to the the past.  People of a "fresh air" bent will claim that a person shouldn't be bound by the past. That's true, but tradition is also in some cases the vote, or the expression of experience, of the dead and should not be lightly discounted.  Not only does casting out traditions tend to sever anchors, but all too often the severing simply puts people adrift in seas that they're not well prepared to handle. At its worst, the severing of traditions is a rejection of the long and carefully thought out in favor of the temporarily current and the poorly thought out.

Which is why, for many people of the post Vatican II generation the "Spirit of Vatican II" generation, when moored in their own changes, can seem now old fashioned.  Ironically younger generations have been busy for some time "reforming the reform", which means in the mainstream keeping the reforms that proved worthwhile and reversing those that did not.  Tradition has, in some instances, come back in the opened door after having been swept out it, but with a younger generation.

All of which is well off point on what this thread started out being about.  And I'm not going to start a "restore the altar rail" movement, locally or on the internet.  But I feel it was a shame that it was taken out, and to the extent that alterations that should not have taken place for ascetic reasons in regards to older structures can be repaired, they ought to be.