Before a Secondhand Altar

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Adding Ambience
Across the country, changing Catholic demographics have caused scores of new churches to be built, many with stained glass, altars and other ornaments rescued from churches in closing parishes.

Early Catholic immigrants built Baroque or Gothic churches to mirror the ones they left in Europe. Amid their crowded, working-class tenements, they incorporated the finest artwork so that on Sundays they could leave the factories behind and spend a few hours in heaven, Saunders said.

In the 1960s, the Second Vatican Council, initiated by Pope John XXIII to modernize the church, decided that excessive decoration could be distracting. This ruling, along with contemporary trends toward spare and energy-efficient design, led to experiments with churches in the round or plain, box-like buildings.

Many Catholics who grew up in "churchnasiums" are now pushing back, longing for the art and ambience of their ancestors.

Saunders says the Vatican's counsel has been misinterpreted: "We're people of senses. We're body and soul. Devotional objects, like stained glass and statues, help us focus our spirituality."

With the resurgence of more traditional architecture, a growing number of businesses have emerged with a ready supply of secondhand art and furnishings.

The Boston-based Organ Clearing House, for instance, sells and installs pipe organs that "already know the hymns" for tens of thousands of dollars. And King Richard's Religious Artifacts, which nets up to $3 million a year, advertises a full inventory of pulpits and pews on its Web site, along with a line of "Altar Ware," including an antique traveling chalice with metal case, priced at $100.

Some peddlers hawk tabernacles on eBay to the highest bidder; others market themselves as specialists in finding sacred destinations for sacred art -- promising churches that their statues won't wind up in antique shop windows or restaurant lobbies.

For many Catholics, it's painful to lose the church in which they were married or their parents were baptized, not to mention the objects inside, many imbued with more than sentimental meaning.

In the sacrament of the Eucharist, wine and bread are turned into the blood and body of Christ on an altar, and many Catholics would rather not see it used as a dining room table, said Monsignor Brian Ferme, dean of the school of canon law at Catholic University.

Canon law specifies that items used in religious ceremony must be deconsecrated if put to secular use, and anything with potential historical or artistic value should be cleared with the Holy See, he said.

But some dioceses have gone further, establishing guidelines to keep artwork within the diocese or another Catholic church. Many parishes are willing to give their art away or charge only a nominal fee if it stays within the faith.

Saunders said Our Lady of Hope spent $200,000 on stained-glass windows that were appraised at $2 million. The hand-carved marble altar from the Philadelphia Archdiocese cost $500, but he estimated that a new one like it would have been a thousand times more expensive. Many of the marble statues were free.