Q. I was at the retreat house recently and I was wondering, why are there all the altars along the sides of the chapel?
A. A common misconception amongst Catholics is that priests have to celebrate Mass every day. We do not. The only practice that priests promise to do every day is to pray the Liturgy of the Hours.
However, priests are strongly encouraged to celebrate Mass every day, even if members of the faithful cannot be present (CIC c. 904). Given that the Mass should be the centrality of the priest’s relationship with Jesus, for their own spiritual benefit and for the sake of the people they are ordained to serve, priests should say Mass every day unless legitimately impeded.
Because of the importance in the life of a priest to celebrate Mass every day, it was once a matter of necessity in some places to have multiple altars on which priests could celebrate Mass. Although concelebration was practiced in the ancient Church, in the Roman Rite it stopped being practiced (depending on where you were in the West) by or during the Middle Ages, except for at the ordination of a priest or bishop. This continued to be the norm in the West (the Eastern Catholic Rites never stopped, especially on more significant feast days) until the Council Fathers at the Second Vatican Council, seeing in concelebration a manifestation of the unity of the priesthood, restored the practice in the Roman Rite in certain situations (Sacrosanctum Concilium 57).
Prior to this, each priest would say Mass himself and, since it was often necessary for multiple priests to celebrate Mass at the same time, this meant that multiple altars were needed so that each priest could celebrate his own Mass. The norms in force at the time required at least a server be present at the Mass. Priests who were in seminary before the Second Vatican Council tell stories of being assigned to serve for the individual Masses of seminary professors and hoping they would get assigned to the priests who liked to sleep in. Since there was no concelebration, priests could say Mass whenever their schedule allowed for it, rather than concelebrating the community Mass.
Today the need for multiple altars is lessened. While priests are still allowed to celebrate Mass individually, since concelebration is permitted priests in seminaries and monasteries and at large gatherings of priests generally concelebrate a single Mass for the community or gathering as a sign of unity.
When priests gather at our retreat house for the annual priest retreats, a single Mass is offered each day at which the priests concelebrate. By joining together in one celebration, the unity of the priesthood is signified and strengthened. The unity that a single celebration of the Mass can demonstrate and effect is most evident in the Chrism Mass, when the bishop along with the priests of the Diocese and the people of the Diocese gather together to celebrate around the Table of our Lord.
Our Lady of Good Counsel Retreat House near Waverly was built in 1963, before Vatican II restored concelebration. The multiple altars at the retreat house are still used today by the priests of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, as they celebrate the traditional Latin Mass as it was in 1962 and do not concelebrate.
This question was answered by Father Caleb La Rue, chancellor of the Diocese of Lincoln. Write to Ask the Register using our online form, or write to 3700 Sheridan Blvd., Suite 10, Lincoln NE 68506-6100. All questions are subject to editing. Editors decide which questions to publish. Personal questions cannot be answered. People with such questions are urged to take them to their nearest Catholic priest.
