Tacky-nacles
A reader informed in about Ministry & Liturgy magazine which recently had a Visual Arts Award for Devotional Art & Spaces. The below picture is the one that one Best of Show.
Quite beautiful isn't it. Unfortunately I was joking that this is the one that won best of show.
Now that is more like what you would expect a magazine called Ministry & Liturgy to select. This one reminded Andy Kosmowski of a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode called "Allegiance." I would almost be afraid to go in this chapel. It seems like once everyone was seated that the room would start to spin around like a ride in an imagined Catholic theme park. Take a spin in the Blessed Sacrament centrifuge.
Here are some other tabernacles that seem rather odd to me. Possibly this is what Blessed Teresa of Calcutta meant when she said “Each one of them is Jesus in disguise.”
This one is from the Corpus Christi University Parish Facility "features a 13-foot height limestone tabernacle with a bronze cylinder, which hovers over a granite shelf." I think the woman is praying "please don't fall on me"
This is what happens when the parish budget can't afford a gardener.
I can't seem to find the remote control.
Most of the churches in my parish that I have been to have very nice tabernacles. There was only one that looked like it was a white square made of bakelite that really was not pleasing to the eye. I guess I was not the only one who thought so since the last time I went to that parish they replaced it with a much nicer one.
I am also not thrilled with the prevalence of so many Blessed Sacrament Chapels where the tabernacle has been moved from the altar to some lesser place. Though this seems to meet the theology of many churches where Jesus is also removed from the center and the focus turned on the people. I can understand why churches with 24 hour adoration use these chapels since it is much easier to be able to provide security by allowing people with code access to come an pray anytime they want. What really annoys me are these chapels that have a very limited for sitting. For example a large parish that has only two Prie Dieus in the chapel area because the area is so small to begin with.
Known as 
There is a great book out called "Ugly As Sin" by Michael S Rose (try looking on Amazon) - a clarion call for a return to good ecclesiastical architecture
I'm sad to say I've seen much worse. Have you seen the mickey mouse one from Rome?!
"ear-y" tabernacle from Parrocchia di San Giuseppe Moscati, Roma.
The other photos of this parish church are pretty good, too.
Hey, that's my cathedral with the awesome tabernacle!!!!!!! :)
Sadly, that is also the crazy university parish in Toledo...
Jeff, are you from Toledo, or somehow associated therein?
At Our Lady Star of the Sea in Santa Cruz, CA. (gee, what a suprise...) the tabernacle is over behind the people, next to the bathrooms. It looks like an unwanted furnishing stuck off to the side to be out of the way.
Then there is the lovely bamboo rice cooker tabernacle at the new Resurection worship space in neighboring Aptos. It is in a room off to the side, so it won't distract from the true worship. Yes, the Montery Diocese is a spiritual wasteland....
Until recently (last couple years?) Ministry and Liturgy was known as Modern Liturgy - but then they feared losing their au courant status in this post-modern era, so they changed it to Ministry and Liturgy! Either way, it is one publication I do not recommend. One author once wrote an opinion piece (isn't that really the entire "modern" liturgical establishment) suggesting that Communion under only one species could be construed as a "liturgical abuse" Interesting.
Our poor dear Lord emptied Himself and became man being born in a stable. Now he's housed in something less than a stable. Some of those things look like they come from the junk yard.
Gerald has two cool ones also - check out the Mickey Mouse Tabernacle, which I had mentioned was commissioned for the new Disney chapels in Orlando and Anaheim, and the Three Headed Tabernacle at the LA Cathedral (Gerald calls that place the "Taj Mahony", I call it the "LA housing project").
BMP
Fr. Totton, I agree with you on the M&L rag, despite my regularly posting on their boards. I also feel the same about the NPM rag (Pastoral Music).
As for the Communion under one species - very rare do I see Communion given under both species. I have, however, had my fill of that watching my kids at First Communion practices. The CCD leaders taught them like receiving in the hand was the ONLY option. Now THAT I would have considered abuse.
BMP
I found the scene from "Allegiance"!
I know the altar-tree-thing! It's from my late grandparents' parish of St. Francis de Sales in McAfee, NJ. I've actually prayed before the Blessed Sacrament at that altar.
By the by, don't judge a church by its altar--the parish is very good (24 hour Adoration, etc.) and the rest of the church's architecture is very nice. Honestly, I never thought that this altar--in the side chapel--was all that bad. I remember thinking it kind of neat when I was a kid
Saw one in Las Vegas, can't remember the name of the church, that was at the back of the church. Packed ash Wed. mass but the place felt lonely...
Mea Culpa but, the first thing I thought of when I saw the granite and limestone "tabernacle" at Corpus Christi was rather irreverent. A look at the base immediately put me in mind of the 18" high stonehenge in the movie Spinal Tap.
We were visiting an unfamiliar Catholic Church that was doing an ecumenical Lenten program. I pointed out to my 12 year old son that even if our Protestant friends did not acknowledge the real presence, he should. He was irritated when I told him that he might not recognize the tabernacle, but I warned him about cases like this. We looked up a lot of pictures like this on the internet. How nice to have them all in one place. Thanks!
At Our Lady of Miracles parish in Brooklyn, NY, they re-did their entire church one year while I was in college. I returned to find myself staring at a strange metallic object which they assured me was the tabernacle.
My boyfriend at the time said of it, "It's like praying to R2D2."
Someone should come up with a blog for the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Catholic churces. We need the Good to balance it out and give us hope...
They don't even put sanctuary lamps beside the tabernacles?
"Take a spin in the Blessed Sacrament centrifuge...Please don't fall on me...Can't seem to find the remote control..." Had me laughing out loud, Curt Jester! I think Mother Teresa's line was actually about Christ in *distressing* disguise. Distressing, all right!!
Wow, that one on bottom looks strangely like my old Dell 486 . . . except my house never had windows that ugly.
We spent some time in late 2005 in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
This is an area which suffered a lot and had most of its Catholic churches damaged or destroyed.
The Cathedral was almost unscathed. When I first went into it, I looked for the tabernacle to venerate. My dh pointed to the side wall. On it was something that looked rather like an overgrown Christmas ornament; spherical and golden. There was no sanctuary lamp...but then, it wasn't in the sanctuary.
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