Pews

Church pews are the single greatest obstacle to the Eucharistic liturgy as envisioned by the Second Vatican Council.

For the last two or three summers, excepting the Covid-limited years, we friars here at Holy Cross Friary have shared our Eucharist each weekday on the covered patio between the two buildings that make up our friary. Some years ago we bought fifteen or twenty outdoor furniture chairs to accommodate the people that began to join us. We were tired of dragging dinner chairs out of our two houses.

But this past summer even the new chairs were not enough, and we were dragging dinner chairs out again. People say they love sharing the Eucharist with us and with one another in that setting. This is what liturgy should be.

Of course, with the coming of autumn, the weather has driven us indoors, but even more important is our desire to use the University chapel for those weekday Masses so that students might be welcomed. But as soon as we return to the chapel, what happens?

All the congregants scatter. It is like what physicists call “Brownian motion,” where molecules seek the greatest distance from one another in any given space.

I have a dream.

In the dream we would remove all the pews in the chapel and replace them with reasonably comfortable chairs. We would move the altar from its platform and put it down on the floor in the midst of the chairs.

We would have to have enough chairs to accommodate larger groups, but surely that obstacle could be overcome. We would set up enough chairs to seat the number we expect, just as we have done on our patio. If more come, we could easily take some out of the storage space and use them.

Movable chairs would require labor to place them and clean under them. Since a typical weekday Mass draws at most twenty-five people, that would not be a huge project. Even the Sunday Masses draw only fifty or sixty people. It would be a rear occasion when enough chairs would have to be used to fill the chapel.

But the arrangement would place the worshippers within speaking distance from the presider, and close to one another. This is what I think is attractive about our summer patio Masses.

I shudder at the thought of removing those beautiful pews—such fine wood, over a hundred years old.

But does keeping them sacrifice a living liturgy to dead wood? The pews were put there when the couple of hundred students at the College were required to attend Mass, at least on Sundays. The only time I have seen the chapel full in recent years is for special occasions: the night when we bless all the college athletes, and graduation time. This past May the chapel was not full even for the graduation Mass.

But could we afford such a change?

The wood in these pews is magnificent. Maybe we could cover the cost of removing them, re-carpeting the floor, and replacing them with chairs just by selling the wood in the existing pews. Each pew has planks fourteen feet long and some feet wide. Finding a buyer might require patience and widening the search, but when some people are salvaging wood from old barns, others might salvage it from pews.

The Eucharist is a living form of worship. Many beautiful churches in other places have become museums. Ours are headed in that direction.

Beauty is wonderful, but prayer with one another is even more wonderful, and prayer in the Eucharistic presence of Jesus is heavenly.

I would mourn the loss of our pews. But I would mourn more if they were to burn in a church fire, or get eaten by termites in a boarded-up building.

Furniture should serve life, not strangle it.