Old Mass & New Mass?

Let’s hear your two-part captions.

Altar & Picnic Table?

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
This entry was posted in My View, SESSIUNCULA. Bookmark the permalink.

40 Comments

  1. michigancatholic says:

    Just so we don’t wear out the real one? A little overcaution, I think.

  2. Baronius says:

    Hermeneutic of Discontinuity!

    This monstrosity was the idea of Cardinal Knox, the then-Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship. The Chiesa Nuova was his titular church. Cardinal Know wanted to create a model for other churches to copy, and I have been told that Italian priests and seminarians were carried in buses to Rome to this this “solution”. Apparently, the Australian architect who designed this and since then has planned many churches down under, has second thoughts now.

  3. Is that the new Guthrie?

    It looks like a theater, which is, probably, the (lamentable) point.

    Proscenium Stage with Thrust Stage

    I shouldn’t bother since Roman Sacristan’s is better but I can rarely stop
    myself from commenting.

  4. Baronius: I think this was built long after Card. Knox. On the other hand, something similar was built in San Carlo.

    I used to work in theatre. I assure you that everything there can be removed in less than one half hour.

  5. Joe says:

    “I didn’t know Julia Child was coming to church today!”

  6. Visitor says:

    Masterpiece and unfinished canvas

  7. tim says:

    The Altar of God and the table of desolation?

  8. Rob says:

    It’s almost like at a family gathering, where you have the table for the adults
    and then put the kids at a separate table where the grown-ups can watch them.

  9. AM says:

    I see the altar in the background like an old grandmother and the one in the foreground as a teenaged girl dressed in a fashion she thinks is cool: and the grandmother is looking at her and paitiently waiting, biding her time, knowing her grandchild will grow up eventually – and become a grandmother.

  10. Jeff says:

    Rock and Sand

  11. Argent says:

    The Agony and the Ecstasy?

  12. Guido03 says:

    Heavenly feast and gather ’round fellas

  13. Mike says:

    A stumbling block

    “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.”

    m

  14. At the risk of sounding like we’re on the Traditio site, this looks like one of those set pieces wheeled on and off the set of “The Price Is Right.” “Johnny, tell ’em what’s up for bids!” “A NEW ALTAR!!”

  15. Tim Ferguson says:

    I will go up to the altar of the community, which is in somewhat near proximity to the altar of God, to God who giveth joy unto my youth…

  16. Seamas O Dalaigh says:

    Altar and altar. No more, no less.

    James Daly

  17. Jeff Miller says:

    High Altar, Low Altar.

  18. A highly aesthetic altar and a less aesthetic, but still valid and licit, altar.

    BTW, Father Z, being as we were both raised Lutheran before entering the Church, is there anything online about your pre-Catholic experience and etnering the Church?

  19. Brian Day says:

    I like Rob’s description.

    Adult’s alter, children’s alter.

  20. Jeffrey Stuart says:

    The Agony and the Ecstasy?”

    “When will you make it end?”

  21. ignorant-redneck says:

    Ummmm–it”s light years ahead of the card=table looking things I find around here. Whoever has this as their church is lucky–it at least looks like a church

  22. Henry Edwards says:

    “How do you want your altar? With rollers, or without?”

    [I actually know of a pastor with a solid looking butcher-block altar standing like this in front of a beautiful old high altar, already fitted with rollers for the day when.]

  23. Guy Power says:

    Superman and Clark Kent? Altar and altar-ego …. get it?

    Our heavy wooden altar is movable … and is moved on First Fridays for the TLM.

  24. Kenjiro Shoda says:

    Having see the magnificent High Altar, and then gazing at the horrible box like table with the centre
    stage, I can easilly understand why there are almost no vocations to the priesthood.
    After all, I’ve seen very many worse picturess of a once beautiful Catholic Church wreckovated by Vatican II and it is absolutely no surprise that there are not only no youngmen who want to be priests, and hardly anyone going to Mass.
    To go from absolute beauty and magnificence in the worship of God, to the bare-bones worthless expression we have nowis a disgrace which should be rectified by the pope.
    Back to “ad orientam” at the real Catholic altars. I think we’ve ruined the Church enough immitating Anglicans etc.

    *As an aside, I read the statement from the French bishops in Lourdes “inviting” or commanding the SSPX to embrace the Council. They call the “fruits” of Vatican II “Treasures”.
    To use words like that to describe Vatican II makes me think they should all be sacked.

  25. Iacobus says:

    Devotional and Liturgical

    Excise that doublet!

  26. Londiniensis says:

    Be thankful that the original high altar has not been removed, “re-ordered”, or otherwise wrecked, as happened to my childhood parish church – a fine Victorian building – in Yorkshire, UK. As long as this architectural desecration is reversible, we should be glad. Already there are signs that the tide is turning, and that this relentless and uncompromising interpretation of Vatican II – which appears to have more to do with the zeitgeist of “the sixties” than with true reflection – is being resisted by the faithful.

    Were not the august church fathers who were charged with implementing Vatican II mindful of the perceptive quote by an Anglican clergyman, Dean William Inge: “Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next.”

  27. Just noticed which altar gets the red carpet treatment. LOL.

  28. RBrown says:

    I am reminded of a story I heard Cardinal Knox, an Aussie who was made Prefect of Sacraments and Worship. On coming to Rome he decided that his titular church–La Chiesa Nuova–needed to be updated. But very quickly he was informed by the government (the SECULAR government) that the lacked the authority to change it because the Church belonged to the state. He was told to put it back the way it was.

  29. RBrown says:

    “A highly aesthetic altar and a less aesthetic, but still valid and licit, altar.”

    What is a valid altar?

  30. RBrown says:

    FoodTV + Catholic Church = No vocations

  31. Maureen says:

    They both look pretty to me.

  32. Maureen says:

    Btw, why is having two main altars so much odder than having one main altar and a bunch of side altars? Surely there’s not much difference. Maybe it’s only because we’ve grown to see an altar that’s out from the wall as more or less altar-y than the little shelf altars?

    Anyway, at least there’s a dais on a flat floor instead of a bunch of slippy-slidey ramps up to the altar — or a sloped floor designed to make you drop things, which then are bound to roll.

  33. Guelf says:

    The High Altar and the coffee table.

  34. Pete says:

    Only one question: Dear Lord, why must we suffer so much since 1965? Why? Damn it all-we are NOT Protestants!

  35. Wanda says:

    “No, no, dear – just hand in the finished project, and throw away the rough draft.”

  36. commentator says:

    Altar and altered.

  37. echevalier says:

    Stone throne and thrown stone.

Comments are closed.