Are Pews in Churches a Problem—and, If So, How Much of a Problem?

This article may be considered a continuation of the one entitled “Should the Postures of the Laity at the TLM Be Regulated, Legislated, or Revised?,” which generated such lively dialogue.

A reader once sent me the following letter:

I would like to ask you what is your take on church pews, their place (or lack thereof) in the Traditional Roman Rite and what the Traditionalist movement should do about them. Almost unknown in the East, they have become the norm in the Western Church in the last centuries. There are informal (sometimes odd) ‘rubrics,’ with wide variations from place to place, that direct the faithful to stand, sit, or kneel at different parts of the Mass.
          A priest from the Institute of the Good Shepherd, who is also very familiar with the Byzantine Liturgy, instructing some of us about the Mass and the real meaning of ‘active participation,’ said we ought not to worry about when to sit, kneel, or stand in Mass, as long as we remain standing for the Gospel and kneeling during the Consecration. As to anything else, his advice was simply to follow the local custom. His reason was that pews in the church are a rather recent phenomenon that has never been officially incorporated into the rubrics for the usus antiquior, and that before the introduction of pews the faithful used to remain standing, or would sometimes walk in the church during Mass, as the faithful still do in the Eastern Rites.
          Also, from my own research, I discovered that pews are mostly a Protestant invention. The Protestants emphasized the pastor’s preaching as the most important part of the Liturgy and understood the church to be some sort of ‘school,’ where the ‘students’ had to be able to sit to learn the Bible from their pastor. It was also a way to raise money via pew rents.
          The more I attend the Traditional Latin Mass (which hopefully will recover its rightful place as the sole ‘Ordinary Form’ of the Roman Rite), the more I am uncomfortable with the pews and the mechanical, sometimes almost nonsensical, ‘novus-ordoish’ sequence of standing-kneeling-sitting-standing-etc. during Mass. The pew feels almost like a ‘cage.’
          Do you hold a similar stance? Are pews a good or a bad thing? Should we accept them as a fact, as a good ‘organic development’ like the shortened Roman chasuble, or should traditional Catholics recognize them as foreign to the Roman Rite and start using their wood for a better purpose, like keeping the church and rectory warm in the winter?

I find this reader’s note admirable in its directness. The question of pews is indeed an interesting one. I am convinced it was not a good idea to introduce pews into Catholic churches, in imitation of the Protestants, for all the reasons mentioned. An Eastern Orthodox writer offers a vigorous set of arguments in “A Call For the Removal of Pews in Orthodox Churches,” the main contentions of which are summarized by Richard Chonak:

• pews make the laity into passive observers;
• pews teach us to want Christian life to be without inconvenience;
• pews remove the freedom to engage in devotional acts such as lighting a candle during the liturgy;
• pews make the processions overly regimented;
• pews particularly isolate young children from the liturgy.

Chonak continues: “Going without pews would be a bigger deal for us Latin Catholics in the US than for Orthodox, since a fair number of their churches already lack pews, so that their faithful would have experienced worshipping without them. Most US Catholics won’t have seen a Catholic church without pews unless they have visited one of the medieval cathedrals.” As far as I can tell, no one advocates abolishing all seating, since there are nursing mothers and elderly folk (among others) who will need places to rest. It is more a question of opening up the space in the nave of the church.

George Rutler addressed the question in a 2015 article “The Problem with Pews,” saying, inter alia:

For most of the Christian ages, there were no pews, or much seating of any sort. There were proper accommodations for the aged (fewer then than now) and for the infirm (probably more then than now) but churches were temples and not theatres.  One need only look at the Orthodox churches (except where decadence has crept in) or the mosques whose architectural eclecticism echoes their religion’s origin as a desiccated offshoot of Christianity, to see what churches were meant to look like.  The word “pew” comes from the same root as podium, or platform for the privileged, indicating that if there were any pews in the Temple of Jerusalem they were those of the Pharisees who enjoyed “seats in high places.” The first intrusion of pews into Christian churches was around the twelfth century and they were rare, and mostly suited to the use of choir monks in their long Offices. But filling churches with pews was chiefly the invention of the later Protestant revolution that replaced adoration with edification.

Racks, Butchers, and Choirstalls

According to Dr. John Pepino, the term “pew” appears in an official Vatican document for the first time in 1969, in the Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani promulgated together with the Novus Ordo Mass (link)—the first time in Catholic history that the laity’s postures were dictated to them in the same way that ministerial rubrics were dictated:

VIII. De locis fidelium
273. Loca fidelium congrua cura disponantur, ut ipsi oculis et animo sacras celebrationes debite participare possint. Expedit ut de more scamna seu sedilia ad eorum usum ponantur. Consuetudo tamen personis quibusdam privatis sedes reservandi reprobanda est. Sedilia autem seu scamna ita disponantur, ut fideles corporis habitus a diversis celebrationis partibus requisitos facile sumere possint et expedite ad sacram Communionem recipiendam accedere valeant. Caveatur ut fideles sive sacerdotem sive alios ministros non tantum videre, sed etiam, hodiernis instrumentis technicis adhibitis, commode audire valeant.

In the 2002 edition of the IGMR, this text was slightly modified, to privilege the word scamna:

311. Loca fidelium congrua cura disponantur, ut ipsi oculis et animo sacras celebrationes debite participare possint. Expedit ut de more scamna seu sedilia ad eorum usum ponantur. Consuetudo tamen personis quibusdam privatis sedes reservandi reprobanda est. Scamna autem seu sedilia, præsertim in ecclesiis noviter exstructis, ita disponantur, ut fideles corporis habitus a diversis celebrationis partibus requisitos facile sumere possint et expedite ad sacram Communionem recipiendam accedere valeant. Caveatur ut fideles sive sacerdotem sive diaconum et lectores non tantum videre, sed etiam, hodiernis instrumentis technicis adhibitis, commode audire valeant.

The USCCB translation of the latest version of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal renders the passage thus:

Places for the faithful should be arranged with appropriate care so that they are able to participate in the sacred celebrations, duly following them with their eyes and their attention. It is desirable that benches or seating usually should be provided for their use. However, the custom of reserving seats for private persons is to be reprobated. Moreover, benches or seating should be so arranged, especially in newly built churches, that the faithful can easily take up the bodily postures required for the different parts of the celebration and can have easy access for the reception of Holy Communion. Care should be taken to ensure that the faithful be able not only to see the Priest, the Deacon, and the readers but also, with the aid of modern technical means, to hear them without difficulty.

Note the word used in Latin, scamnum (stool, step, bench), a word with an interesting history. In the Salic Law, 5th cent., it means “the rack,” for the torture of slaves (Lex Salica tit. 42. §1: Servus super Scamnum tensus; ibid. §8: Et qui repetit, virgas paratas habere debet, quæ in similitudinem minimi digiti grossitudinem habeant, et Scamnum paratum habere debet, ubi versum ipsum tendere possit). How suggestive of the experiences of many Catholics with the postconciliar liturgy! According to a Latin dictionary, the word also signified a butcher’s display table, which prompts comparisons with extemporaneous liturgical creativity. By the 12th century, the term had acquired the meaning of “choirstall” (ad vesperas monachos in scannis residentes se vidisse palam asseruit: Ordericus Vitalis, Historia ecclesiastica III 13, p. 138).

The compilers of the IGMR might equally well have chosen the Latin term transtrum, or rower’s bench, which makes for an equally suggestive image: the faithful confined to their benches, heave-hoing in unison as they labor to propel forward the ship of the Church! Smelling of tar and sweat, the term would have been appropriate for the workerism that was substituted for the contemplative engagement in which participatio actuosa finds its summit.

The Relation between Pews and Postures

Nevertheless, the question of the postures of the faithful is somewhat independent of the question of pews, for the faithful would have stood, knelt, and quite possibly sat ad libitum in open churches long before the advent of pews. The key question here is whether or not the postures of the laity should be regimented. Prior to 1969, the postures of the faithful were never officially regulated in the traditional Mass. They varied by custom, and even then, there was not the same sense of obligation as we have now. If a person felt sick or tired, he could sit; if someone felt especially fervent in prayer, he could kneel the whole time. In my book Noble Beauty, Transcendent Holiness, I gave the following description:

None of these bodily actions is scripted in the sense that a rubric requires the people to do them, since the usus antiquior is blessedly free of rubrics dictating how the people are (or are not) to participate at every moment. As a result, different people at worship do some or all of these actions, according to their knowledge or inclination, or even what they happen to notice as the Mass progresses, and no one minds this diversity. There is a healthy sense of freedom of movement a little reminiscent of what one may find among the Eastern Orthodox who may walk about during the liturgy lighting candles and venerating icons. The Novus Ordo, on the contrary, perversely takes for granted the Protestant innovation of cluttering open sacred space with benches or pews and turns sitting on them into a scripted pseudo-sacred action befitting its wordy worship. (p. 202, note 24)

The regimentation of lay posture occurred, as we have seen, in 1969 with the Novus Ordo, which enforces specified moments of sitting, standing, kneeling, speaking, singing, or exchanging a sign of peace (though this particular routine has fallen out of fashion nowadays).

But shouldn’t we, in good Thomistic fashion, allow the other side to have its say, too?

A Modest Defense of Pews for the TLM

Pews can be helpful in several ways. First, they are like an extended prie-dieu, making it easier to kneel for long stretches—and this, to my mind, is a good thing. Not many people are ready yet to kneel for an hour or more on a marble floor without a prop to support them. The usus antiquior already requires more asceticism; it seems counterproductive, at this early stage in its restoration, to demand in everyone a footsoldier’s capacity for discipline.

Second, pews seem to foster a more focused and leisurely contemplation of the unfolding ceremonies of the Mass; one can too easily imagine how a group of people amassed in an open space could be disorderly, particularly if a large number of small children were escaping from their families and causing distraction to many.

Third, since we live in a literate age and have grown accustomed to reading our missals at certain points during Mass, it is convenient to have a place to put down and pick up one’s book. The use of a daily missal has permitted me to memorize large parts of the Mass and to meditate on them. It has familiarized me with the calendar of seasons and saints. This is not incompatible with a lack of pews, but I very much doubt it would work as well.

Fourth, until the usus antiquior is again the norm in every church for every Mass, most Catholic families have to deal with inconvenient times of Mass, and it can be a great relief to let the small child sleep in the pew if Mass happens to be very early in the morning or in the mid-afternoon.

One can admit that comfort-seeking is a spiritual error and danger for the Church—the carpeted, air-conditioned churches of suburbia are, in fact, deadly for the spirit of prayer—while not writing off completely the modest convenience of a pew, which might be compared with heating in the winter or electric fans and short-sleeve shirts in the summer.

Such are my thoughts. The great handicap is that it is so rare to have the experience of a Catholic church without pews. One can still see them in Europe, but seldom are traditional Latin Masses held without at least folding chairs being placed out. The closest thing in my experience has been attending silent Low Masses at monastery side chapels, where often there is no seating; one simply kneels near the entrance to the chapel. I would relish the opportunity to worship for a year in a church without pews, and then revisit the subject with the benefit of extended experience.

This church cries out to have (at least some of) its pews removed

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Should the Postures of the Laity at the Traditional Latin Mass Be Regulated, Legislated, or Revised?

One plan; not the only plan.

Over the years, I have noticed an interesting group of people who are passionate on the subject of the postures of the laity at the traditional Latin Mass. They sometimes have the zeal of crusaders warring against a stubborn enemy, be it Indifference (laity who couldn’t bother to care who’s kneeling or standing or sitting, when, or why), Diversity (varying customs from country to country or even church to church), or Disorderliness (lack of uniformity at the same Mass). To them, it is very important that a consistent rubric derived from custom or argument be created and implemented.

One can, after all, sympathize with them. We all know about the mayhem that can occur inside a church when the congregation is made up of a mix of regular attendees and newbies who are clueless about what’s going on in the TLM. At various moments, certain decisive individuals kneel decisively, and people look around sheepishly as if to figure out what they’re supposed to do. Sometimes you have a visiting European, or perhaps an American who intensively studies Liturgical Movement brochures, who follows a different set of customs; the confusion multiplies. One can understand, from a purely pragmatic point of view, why a common rubric might be helpful.

This is the perspective offered by a friend who sent me the following letter:

Ever since I started attending the Latin Mass last year, I have wondered about the physical gestures done by those around me. For example, making the sign of the cross during the prayer after the Confiteor, during the Gloria, and during the Sanctus, as well as striking the breast during the consecration. I am not sure if I am supposed to be doing all these or not (or even what all of them are—is there a list somewhere?).
       Having grown up in the Novus Ordo, I have been accustomed to seeing people all doing the same thing, and I had always been told that it was wrong when certain individuals did their own thing (e.g., kneeling during the Agnus Dei), on the basis that “since the Church doesn’t say we’re supposed to do these gestures, we’re not supposed to do them.” Am I mistaken in thinking that a gesture of the people must be approved or instructed to be done by the GIRM? Would this assumption only apply to the Mass of Paul VI?
       I suppose my inclination toward uniformity in gestures comes from a desire to have the “say the black, do the red” consistency of the Tridentine Mass equally present for both the priest and the people. I want to go to Mass and (as you said in this article) “know what I am going to see and hear. The same texts, the same gestures, the same ethos, the same Catholic religion.” Am I misguided in desiring that consistency among the congregation?
       In one way, I lean toward desiring to perform more gestures as a layperson. I’m not sure why, but it seems like a more wholly immersive experience if my arms are symbolizing a truth of the liturgy in addition to my legs (kneeling and standing). On the other hand, my desire to “do” more might just be the permeation of the faulty desire of the late Liturgical Movement to create more opportunities for “active participation,” as if my standing there in reverent, attentive participation isn’t enough. I am torn and don’t know what to do, in both the old and new Mass.

IKEA’s worship aid. (This version is missing the other 67 languages.)

My response was as follows.

You raise a great question about bodily participation. The wonderful thing about the old Mass is that the laity’s bodily postures and actions were never regulated. For nearly 2,000 years, and even now, there are no rubrics that govern what the laity do. Whether they stand, sit, kneel, beat their breasts, make the sign of the cross — all of this is up to them.

The liturgical reformers, who were generally of a bureaucratic and even fascist mentality, were disturbed about this lack of uniformity, which struck them as devotionalistic if not dissolute, and succeeded in creating, in the Novus Ordo, a totally regulated set of actions for the congregation. The problem is, what they agreed on is rather minimalistic, so that one ends up with the surprising paradox that the old rite tended, in the customs that grew up around it, to promote more bodily activity during the Mass, while the new rite tends to encourage something more rationalistic and passive. In this article (which became a chapter in this book), I document the wide variety of actions that are often seen at the TLM (note: as customs, not as requirements).

I suggest that you relinquish the very modern idea that everyone should be doing the same thing at the same time. It may be fitting to make certain physical gestures, but they simply can’t be imposed or demanded. It seems better that books (or occasionally homilies) should explain to the faithful how their discreet imitation of some of the priest’s gestures can be a way to make their prayer more holistic, more “whole-person,” and more likely to elicit real prayer—without any of it being required. Basically, if it helps, do it; if it doesn’t, no bother.

To my mind there is a judgment call with the Novus Ordo. If one attempts to do all of the old gestures at it, one will probably become a distraction to others, and perhaps to oneself. If, on the other hand, no one is likely to notice you, why not do some of the same gestures that one would do during the old Mass? It may be a form of “mutual enrichment,” such as Benedict XVI called for. When I was still attending the Novus Ordo, I found myself making all sorts of “extra-rubrical” signs of the cross, kneeling when I wasn’t “supposed” to, and so forth. I could get away with it easily enough because I basically lived in the choir loft!

Has our thinking become permeated with the GIRM?

To this, my intrepid friend responded:

The article you linked from 1P5 does a good job clarifying that active participation is more perfectly present in the TLM, a point I remember reading about in Resurgent too. I am, however, still left with some confusion.
       You said that I should relinquish the modern idea that everyone should be doing the same thing. I can see why this idea is wrong when it is motivated by bureaucratic and fascist intentions, but I do not understand what could be wrong with it when it springs from an authentic desire for liturgical unity among the laity, consistent with the precise liturgical unity demanded of priests during the Mass. If it is demanded down to the last detail that the priest have specific physical gestures, why is it unreasonable to similarly demand specific physical gestures from the laity?
       It seems like such a demand would promote the liturgical unity and consistency you so often extol. I remember you telling me once about why the rubrics of the traditional Latin Mass were originally “nailed down”: years of regional liturgical variances had resulted in a certain anarchy within Catholic worship. To recover liturgical unity in the face of the Protestants, the Church demanded that priests adhere to the rubrics she put forth, which were not novel but had organically developed through the centuries.
       The situation with the laity seems similar to me. Even if distraction by what others are idiosyncratically doing during Mass is the sole detrimental result of the lack of gestural unity, that lack itself seems to contradict the marvelously regimented spirit of the old Mass. Would it not be helpful for the Church to put forth a set of TLM rubrics that definitively list the physical gestures she wants the people to follow, as long as the gestures on the list are the ones that have organically developed throughout the centuries of tradition?
       Perhaps I am misunderstanding the shortcomings of a regulated set of actions created by the liturgical reformers. In order to avoid the danger of minimalism, doesn’t it seem better to establish a more thorough and rightly-ordered rubric?
       Your advocacy of “extra-rubrical” gestures in the Novus Ordo surprises me, considering what GIRM 42 says (2011 ed., USA): The gestures and bodily posture of both the Priest, the Deacon, and the ministers, and also of the people, must be conducive to making the entire celebration resplendent with beauty and noble simplicity, to making clear the true and full meaning of its different parts, and to fostering the participation of all. Attention must therefore be paid to what is determined by this General Instruction and by the traditional practice of the Roman Rite and to what serves the common spiritual good of the People of God, rather than private inclination or arbitrary choice. A common bodily posture, to be observed by all those taking part, is a sign of the unity of the members of the Christian community gathered together for the Sacred Liturgy, for it expresses the intentions and spiritual attitude of the participants and also fosters them.”
       The part I put into italics sounds reasonable to me; am I barking up the wrong tree?

In response, I wrote:

There is something indescribably beautiful about people being allowed to pray in their own way, and peacefully. Now, obviously, some large-scale postures can be expected of everyone: this is consistent with piety, and who would complain? We all stand at both Gospels (the Gospel of the day and the Last Gospel); we all kneel at the “Et incarnatus est” and during the Canon. There are some other widespread customs.

But the moment one tries to legislate details such as “everyone makes the sign of the cross at these eight times, and everyone beats their breast at these four times, and everyone should bow their heads at these five times,” etc., it becames extremely difficult to implement and enforce, and also turns into an occasion for policing and hectoring. It’s too complicated to ask it of everyone all the time. Heck, I don’t even do quite the same thing each time I attend Mass. It partly depends on how slowly or quickly the priest is celebrating it, or how well one can hear the priest and servers! [1]

To achieve total uniformity, one would have to “put people through their paces,” like a marching band or a squadron of soldiers. In addition, one would be forced to simplify to a minimalist extent, as has indeed occurred with N.O. rubrics for the laity. The very thought of it makes me cringe. I honestly don’t think it’s either possible or desirable. It is good to have some broad agreement on major postures and then broad latitude about everything else.

Even with the major postures, customs differ from country to country. Why should the bishops or liturgists of the USA or Canada, the United Kingdom or Ireland, Poland or Germany, etc., get to be the ones who decide how the rest of the world will behave?

Jacques and Raïssa Maritain were convinced that Rome was the friend of liberty in this regard — even as late as the years just before the Second Vatican Council; and perhaps, indeed, she once was. Here is what they say in a book published in French in 1959 and in English in 1960:

Against the pseudo-liturgical exaggerations it behooves one to defend the liberty of souls. . . . Rome has always been vigilant in opposing any attempt to regiment souls. She knows that the spirit of the liturgy requires respect for the Gospel liberty proper to the New Law. On the contrary, in holding as valid one single form of piety, that in which each one acts in common with the others, and in demanding of all that by word and gesture they obey the liturgical forms with a military precision; in challenging or putting in question private devotions, nay even the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament outside of Mass, those who confuse liturgy and pseudo-liturgy impose on souls rigid frameworks and burden them with external obligations which are of the same type as the observances of the Old Law. [2] 

The Maritains, earlier in their career

So, in a truly Catholic spirit, we should let the Irish kneel throughout High Mass if that is how they pray best, and let Americans stand a lot instead; we should let some countries or parishes make all the Mass responses, and others say a few or none. Catholicity involves both holding the most important things in common, and having a wide variation and flexibility in how things that are not matters of natural or divine law are conducted. I am reminded of the old saying, which is no less true for being vague and overused: “In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas” — in necessary matters, unity; in doubtful matters, liberty; in everything, charity. I think one would be extremely hard-pressed to argue successfully that a regulated uniformity of lay postures and gestures during Mass is something essential to our fruitful participation in the liturgy.

As Michael Fiedrowicz writes:

In typical Catholic vastness, a great variety of individual possibilities for participation accompany the rubrical strictness of the rite that do not need to be regulated in any way, but should be respected. Even being silently present and merely watching do not necessarily indicate a lack of interior involvement. The very act of listening, be it with the ears or with the heart, is assuredly a form of active participation. (The Traditional Mass: History, Form, and Theology of the Classical Roman Rite [Brooklyn, NY: Angelico Press, 2020], 228)

I would hazard to guess that most traditional Catholics prefer it when everyone is doing the same things in regard to the major actions of standing, sitting, and kneeling, as it removes occasions of confusion and distraction and assists in prayerful engagement with the liturgy. But this much has become clear to me from my travels: whenever I am somewhere unfamiliar, I don’t sit in the front row but rather towards the back, and, keeping my wits about me, I look at what the majority are doing, and follow the local custom, as St. Augustine recommended long ago in his Letter 54 to Januarius. Few things are worse than the stranger who acts like an angel sent by God to correct singlehandedly the waywardness of backwater yokels. If it matters much to you to keep your own postures, be sure to sit far in the back where you won’t be a bother to the rest. (Fr. Z offers similar advice.)

There is but one further angle to examine: the Problem of Pews. Since nearly every Catholic church in the West is now equipped with pews, usually bolted down for permanence, the topic is far more speculative than what we have discussed heretofore, and deserving of a separate treatment.

NOTES

[1] I recommend two articles for further reading: “ASK FATHER: Excessive pious gestures during Mass”; “Is Passivity Mistaken for Piety? On the Perils and Pitfalls of Participation.” Concerning the GIRM, this article discusses two different approaches to rubrics in the Novus Ordo.

[2] Liturgy and Contemplation, trans. Joseph W. Evans (New York: P.J. Kennedy & Sons, 1960), 88–90.

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