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.
