Posted on 12/12/2025 11:31:46 AM PST by ebb tide
After Charlotte, the war on Altar Rails moves north.
This past June, Rorate reported on a Pennsylvania parish reeling from a persecution of traditional pastors.
The year has not even ended, and the parish (Mary, Queen of Saints, in Aliquippa), under new administration -- now its Novus Ordo will have the use of altar rails banned. You may kneel if you want to (they can't abolish the general law), but without any support.
It's at the newest bulletin online for December 14, page 4.
Dictator Bishops Barf Alert
I will never understand the animosity against altar rails by some bishops and pastors. We have a full length altar rail in our parish (and both of the next nearest parishes to me have at least partial ones). Most people receive kneeling, with only a relatively few wishing to stand. Altar rails don’t keep anybody from standing to receive if they want to, but their absence keeps people from kneeling to receive, particularly if they are old, weak, or infirm.
Altar rails were first targeted, circa 1970 and onward, because the altar rail defined, in part, the sanctuary, from which all women had traditionally been excluded, as well as all the non-ordained other than altar boys.
The idea being to overrun the sanctuary with irreverence, and de-emphasize the elevated status of the male priesthood.
Those altar rails in diocesan parish churches which survived the noted architectural purge in the ‘70s and ‘80s have always appeared as eyesores to those who detest the Vetus Ordo, but were not otherwise being condemned.
This was the situation until, recently, Novus Ordo lay Catholics, becoming convicted by an unshakable belief in the Real Presence, and determined to display appropriate reverence, began (Oh, the horror!) kneeling and receiving the Holy Sacrifice of the Altar on the tongue, as is their inalienable right pursuant to canon law. This despite being discouraged by openly contumelious parish priests, possibly because those same priests suffer from same-sex attraction.
Nailed it! And now days, we see the ‘Eucharettes’ (extraordinary ministers) lining up beside and sometimes behind the alter to receive the elements of the blessed sacrament to hand out to parishioners. So sad to see this happening.
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