NOW, THIS IS THE WAY YOU DO IT, IF I DO SAY SO MYSLEF!

 It is well known that I don’t like intentionally putting two altars, back to back, in churches, especially newly built churches. But that is happening, unfortunately, and decorations are far from art, even bad art. 

These are screen shots of a wedding streamed live today October 17 which I happened to come upon by accident, creating this  “thanks for the memories” moment! My story below all the screenshots:

I was pastor of  the church of these screenshots from 1991 - 2004.

Back in 1996 or so, when I was pastor at the Church of the Most Holy Trinity in Augusta, we did a major renovation and restoration of the building. The major undertaking, among major undertakings, was to dismantle completely the altar you see above in order to separate the altar from the reredos and create enough room for the historic altar of 1863 to become free-standing and to allow for Mass to be celebrated ad orientem or ad populum.

That altar originally was four steps up from where the couple is kneeling. We reduced it to three steps and moved the reredos closer to the back wall. Thus the first step in front of the couple is the historic first step of the altar and the placement of the altar, is basically where it was in 1863, although attached to the reredos. 

Moving the reredos closer to the back wall (there is a door behind it to the sacristy) made all the difference in the world.

However, looking at the entire altar piece from the congregation, it appears that nothing was done!

As you can tell, at the old altar made free-standing, the Mass can be celebrated ad-orientem. I did this based upon my clairvoyance that ad orientem would become more widespread once again in the future. 

However, way ahead of my time, our great choir prepared Latin Masses from the great composers and in the late 90’s and early 2000’s I celebrated those specially scheduled Masses ad orientem! Yes, you read that correctly!

Just as an aside, when the altar and reredos were dismantled, the marble pieces laid on the floor on either side of the altar. And then, our architect/supervisor of renovations had to fire the company he hired to do the work due to some in-house shenanigans. I thought it would never be put together again, but the new company did so marvelously! You’d never know that it was completely taken apart!