ELIMINATING THE DOUBLE ALTAR LOOK IN AN HISTORIC CHURCH—ONE COMPLETELY DOING SO; THE OTHER A GOOD PARTIAL WAY TO DO SO!

In renovating or restoring a historic Catholic Church, the goal is to eliminate or minimize the double altar look of the post-Vatican II theology.

At the Church of the Most Holy Trinity in Augusta, Georgia, we solved the problem of double altars by slicing the altar part of the once one-piece altar/reredos, away from the reredos. In fact, and this was complicated, there was a great deal of wasted space behind the reredos. Thus the entire altar was dismantled, and the reredos “re-mantled” but pushed back toward the back wall and the altar was sliced away from the reredos with plenty of room between the altar and reredos and also with the option of celebrating Mass easily either ad orientem or facing the nave. 

In fact, I celebrated an ad orientem Bugnini Mass in the 1990’s the first time such was done in the Diocese of Savannah since Vatican II! I was way, way, way ahead of my time!

At Saint Joseph Church in Macon, Georgia, it was not possible to slice the altar-table away from its reredos and pull it forward as was done in Augusta. To do so would have destabilized the reredos possibly causing it to collapse forward and kill yours truly!

So the plan was to minimize the double-altar look. We elevated the entire sanctuary so that the old main altar would not be four steps up from the main floor of the sanctuary, but only one step up. Thus the new main altar is only one step lower than the old main altar, whereas previously the older free-standing altar was four steps below the old high altar. 

What was accomplished by this is that from the nave, the new free standing altar appears to be the only altar and is not overwhelmed by the older altar.

This isn’t the best solution in general, but in this case it was the best and only solution possible to make it look like that there is only one altar when in realty there are two: