[Catholicguy]

In the first sentence St. Charles Borremo Church is mentioned.

St. Charles Borremo himself ordered side altars be removed from a Cathedral. Dang modernist...

[Catholicguy]

Borromeo

[Land of the Irish]

Give it up. Nobody took your bait about side altars. You grasp at straws.

[JNB]

Hey if you want to defend the current state of the liturgy, be my guest, but do not be making any excuses for it by taking things out of context. Removing the side altar from a Cathedral that could be said to have taken away form the main altar is not the same as moving the tabernacle out of the nave, destroying a high altar, having questionable theology and bad quality in the liturgical music, and sloppy rubrics all around.

[Desdemona]

CG, part of the problem here isn't just the changes themselves, it's the tactics used as the congregation finds out about it. Almost exactly this same thing happened at my parents' parish and it left a rift between the liturgy committee and the rest of the parish that may never be healed. They were told this is the way it's going to be and that's it. No discussion, no one could say a word against it without somebody taking offense. There were some things that did need to happen plant wise (the furnace for one) but a lot of extras were thrown out because the parish couldn't afford it and that was after they wiped out the cash reserves.

Part of why a lot of us like the Catholic church and all of her entrapments is the entrapments. The centruries of development are blythely ignored when the puritans redo a church. The beauty starts to disappear. And really, acoustically, the choir and the intruments belong in the rear galleries. Plain and simple, the churches were built for that and it eliminates the need for the big sound systems - good thing, too when the power goes out say at 11:44 pm on Christmas Eve. And yes that has happened at churches where I've been.