Thursday 15 March 2012

Hands off the Altar!

An excellent post from Fr Bede Rowe on why we should not treat the altar as a table, casually resting our hands on it, putting things on it for convenience's sake and so on.

This relates very much to my previous posts (here, and here, and here, for example) on the sanctuary as a holy space.  The altar is a sacred object.  Unless we behave accordingly, we undermine our belief that it is in fact so.

3 comments:

Ttony said...

It's what you think, it's what Fr Rowe thinks, it's certainly what I think, it's what we could show that catholics have always thought: so why isn't it "law"?

Ben Trovato said...

I take it that's a rhetorical question, Ttony?

Mater mari said...

Sadly it probably wouldn't make much difference in some parishes even if it were law. I too thought Fr Bede's piece was excellent.