"They've replaced the Body of Christ with a plant!"

A few months ago, I was at Mass with a good friend of mine in Lexington, KY. About halfway through the Mass, my friend turned to me with an incredulous look on his face and says, "Look, they've replaced the Body of Christ with a plant!" Confused, I laughed quietly and resumed singing. "No, no look!" he says, "they replaced the Body of Christ!" Sure enough, as I looked to the still-standing high altar, I saw a large plant awkwardly filling the spot from which the tabernacle had been removed. My feeble mind has, of yet, failed to grasp the purpose behind moving the tabernacle, and therefore Christ Himself, away from the altar and off to the side of the Church (I mean, for goodness' sake, why in the world would we want to look at the place Christ reposes while worshipping!?), and I was left particularly dumbfounded by the replacement of Christ with an ugly fake plant, most likely purchased at the world-famous Catholic goods store we all know as Walmart. I tried to imagine the conversation: "So, we need to move the Tabernacle away from the middle of the altar. People are focusing way too much on Christ; let's move it to the side of the Church." "Wow, what an excellent idea! But what will we use to fill this unsightly space? Perhaps we should use a tree, to show people how we venerate Mother Earth..." Hmmm.

I soon realized that the whole plant fiasco was not unique to this particular Church, but was actually quite a la mode. Another Church, this one in Owingsville, KY, had one-upped the Lexington Church and replaced the whole high altar with trees. "Ha! We'll show them! We won't have any problems with an awkward space on our altar... we'll just demolish the whole thing!" Brilliant. Why celebrate the sacrifice of the Mass at all when you can gaze at faux foliage?

I decided to do some serious research into the origins of this phenomenon. I turned to Wikipedia. When I searched for "high altar plant," I was directed to the article on altars. From this article I learned that the practice of putting plants on altars comes from as far back as the 17th century. I was impressed. Maybe my original skepticism about plants instead of tabernacles and altars was misplaced. After all, neo-druids have been placing plants on their altars for centuries!

Replacing Christ with dusty, potted plants is an excellent idea; it's right up there ordaining females, clapping during the Mass and eschewing the posture of kneeling. Why isn't this practice more widely encouraged?