Plans to re-order the interior of St Colman's Cathedral, Cobh, aim to encourage the congregation's full participation in the Mass in keeping with the thinking of the Second Vatican Council, a Bord Pleanála oral hearing into the proposed changes heard yesterday.
Architect for the cathedral trustees, Prof Cathal O'Neill, said the present separation of the sacristy from the general assembly in St Colman's did not facilitate the laity's full participation.
"The separation of the chancel from the nave was designed for a monastic-style liturgy in which members of the congregation were the silent spectators of the liturgy performed in the sanctuary," Prof O'Neill told the third and final day of the hearing in Midleton.
He said Vatican II changed this traditional separation and the existing sanctuary with its temporary altar was not spacious enough for great liturgical celebrations such as the ordination of a bishop as envisaged by Vatican II.
Outlining the brief given to him by the trustees, Prof O'Neill said the re-ordering was to extend the sanctuary area forward into the nave and create a permanent altar on the extended sanctuary as the present temporary moveable altar was inappropriate for a heritage cathedral.
The brief also involved positioning a new cathedra - or bishop's chair - facing the congregation as the cathedra was not visible to the congregation in its present position while it also proposed the use of the cathedral's Pieta Chapel as a mortuary chapel, said Prof O'Neill.
He said there had been highly successful re-orderings of sanctuary areas in the past decade in cathedrals in Padua, Milan and Notre Dame de Paris.