God's best friend
Beeck, Frans Jozef van
THE LAST WORP GOD'S BEST FRIEND Frans Jozefvan Beeck We humans practice symbiosis with a vengeance. We cultivate cattle, goats, pigs, ducks, chickens, rabbits, bees, monkeys, birds,...
...Now we know what happens when officialdom enters the picture: function turns into rank...
...Originally designed to keep out dogs and strangers, cancelli came to be used to keep out "the people...
...Even more important, the judges held court there, and no dogs were allowed...
...When we had dogs in our churches, dogs were refused admission near the altar, the font, and the lectern...
...I know how wonderful they are, but they are not part of my academic world...
...I refuse to admit dogs into the classroom...
...What you have just read is a brief history of the "chancel" in Anglican churches and the Communion rail that marks off the sanctuary in Catholic ones...
...At the far end of every ancient pagan basilica there was an elevated area called the bema...
...An unsatisfactory situation...
...their place had been taken by the laity, and the sanctuary was a restricted area, reserved to the ordained...
...The bitter fruit of this seriousness is "real churches"—the kind where you go only to pray, and where the ordained and their companions go about their earnest business way up front...
...Our heads attract lice, our small intestines tapeworms, our houses invite mice, spiders, and cockroaches...
...It was the area for serious business: lobbying, currying favors, conspiring, stitching coalitions together, trading commodities...
...The fence can once again be counted on to do an essential job: protect the ordained from being mistaken for the laity...
...Some animals seek us out...
...People were no longer welcome, except to "attend" religious services...
...While we had dogs in our churches, one thing was clear: the whole church was the sanctuary...
...So we got serious about church buildings...
...You put up wooden latticework fences (cancelli), low brick walls, or even metal grating to separate the court personnel from the crowd and from the dogs that love crowds—an essential requirement for serious business, since dogs are shameless about doing their business in public...
...They were only kept away from the area where we were being serious in church...
...The church embraced the world...
...He kept out strangers and dogs...
...How to manage this efficiently...
...Thank God for the renewal of Vatican II...
...But, apparently, the fence keepers' instincts continue to thrive...
...What continued, though, was the fence keeper's instinct...
...It was the common property of God's people...
...so did church buildings...
...They are our "best friend...
...Shopkeepers, sextons, sacristans, judges, pharmacists, department store managers all agree: No Dogs Allowed...
...Dogs, of course, were gone...
...They can be a bit much...
...Dogs must have disappeared from churches soon after...
...Frans Jozef van Beeck, S.J., is a senior professor of theology at Loyola Chicago...
...We cultivate cattle, goats, pigs, ducks, chickens, rabbits, bees, monkeys, birds, cats, and a wide array of dogs...
...They love us...
...They tell us there are limits to promiscuity and that the bema should be kept for doing serious business...
...Churches were public places and dogs abounded...
...A minor official, the cancellarius, or fence keeper, was stationed at the place of entry...
...I have been a priest for thirty-seven years but I have never been mistaken for a layperson while going about Christ's business in the liturgy...
...That's precisely where my story starts, though...
...Chancellors (often referred to as ushers) saw to it that the Communion rail was a place where order prevailed, and where the nonordained met the priests across the good fences that "make good neighbors...
...They empathize, welcome us beyond the call of duty, console, watch out, defend, finish leftovers, lick our hands...
...They expect our attention even as they glower at us—the scrawny stray, the pockmarked cur, the wide-ranging mutt, the all-purpose trash-can cleaner, the inconvenient public copulator...
...Seriously...
...At that point, the chancel was no longer needed...
...And as for dogs, I must admit that in over half a century of priesthood I have yet to see one of man's best friends in church...
...But when it comes to animals attracted to us, dogs take the cake...
...They were a familiar sight in the Roman basilicas, and still frequented eighteenth-century churches, especially Catholic ones, before pews were adopted to keep the people in their place...
...At least from Roman times, dogs have lived with us in all public places: yards, streets, even temple areas...
...Now, happily, "ordinary" laity are once again where they belong...
...If judges and similar high officials have to stay apart, neither should the ordained join the people, either when preaching to them or (worse) to exchange the kiss of peace...
...Dressed in an unmistakable way, the celebrant doesn't need a Communion rail, and neither does the congregation...
...Chancellors abound...
...And people were proud of it...
...In this case the fence keeper became the "chancellor...
...The kind of church you close and lock when nothing (that is, no service) is going on...
...So it was canonized: it became the Communion rail—an object of devotion, and much later on, of discord between the kneelers and the standers at the banquet of unity...
...they know the difference between kennels that imprison you and friendly, public places where people and dogs expect to see others—and to be seen...
...It gave us the Constitution on the Church (Lumen gentium), which treated the unity of God's people before ever raising the issue of the church's ordained servants...
Vol. 128 • April 2001 • No. 7
