Unfamiliar outsiders are probably bemused to see a subject as ostensibly mundane as a piece of church furniture become a flashpoint. Of course, it is not just about a thigh height wooden or alabaster fence between the sanctuary and the nave. This is the latest battleground in a proxy war over the way the Catholic religion is lived. The little altar rail’s presence, or absence, has an outsized effect on the way we approach our God.
Communion in the hand, a reluctance to encourage the use of the confessional, and a pivot away from the recitation of the Divine Office in regular parishes have all been pursued since the Second Vatican Council with the intention of lightening the burden on the faithful. The disappearance of altar rails was a casualty of this mindset. Yet did the reform minded clerics of the twentieth century stop to consider what happens to bodies and muscles when they are freed of burdens? They become feeble.
