GOD'S BEST FRIEND.

We humans practice symbiosis with a vengeance. We cultivate cattle, goats, pigs, ducks, chickens, rabbits, bees, monkeys, birds, cats, and a wide array of dogs. Some animals seek us out. Our heads attract lice, our small intestines tapeworms, our houses invite mice, spiders, and cockroaches. But when it comes to animals attracted to us, dogs take the cake. They are our "best friend." They empathize, welcome us beyond the call of duty, console, watch out, defend, finish leftovers, lick our hands. They love us. They expect our attention even as they glower at us--the scrawny stray, the pockmarked cur, the wide-ranging mutt, the all-purpose trash-can cleaner, the inconvenient public copulator. They can be a bit much.

I refuse to admit dogs into the classroom; I know how wonderful they are, but they are not part of my academic world. Shopkeepers, sextons, sacristans, judges, pharmacists, department store managers all agree: No Dogs Allowed. That's precisely where my story starts, though.

At least from Roman times, dogs have lived with us in all public places: yards, streets, even temple areas. They were a familiar sight in the Roman basilicas, and still frequented eighteenth-century churches, especially Catholic ones, before pews were adopted to keep the people in their place. (Dogs must have disappeared from churches soon after; they know the difference between kennels that imprison you and friendly, public places where people and dogs expect to see others--and to be seen.)

At the far end of every ancient pagan basilica there was an elevated area called the bema. It was the area for serious business: lobbying, currying favors, conspiring, stitching coalitions together, trading commodities. Even more important, the judges held court there, and no dogs were allowed. How to manage this efficiently? You put up wooden latticework fences (cancelli), low brick walls, or even metal grating to separate the court personnel from the crowd and from the dogs that love crowds--an essential requirement for serious business, since dogs are shameless about doing their business in public. A minor official, the cancellarius, or fence keeper, was stationed at the place of entry. He kept out strangers and dogs. Now we know what happens when officialdom enters the picture: function turns into rank. In this case the fence keeper became the "chancellor."

What you have just read is a brief history of the "chancel" in Anglican churches and the Communion rail that marks off the sanctuary in Catholic ones. Originally designed to keep out dogs and strangers, cancelli came to be used to keep out "the people." When we had dogs in our churches, dogs were refused admission near the altar, the font, and the lectern.

While we had dogs in our churches, one thing was clear: the whole church was the sanctuary. It was the common property of God's people. And people were proud of it. The church embraced the world; so did church buildings. Churches were public places and dogs abounded. They were only kept away from the area where we were being serious in church. An unsatisfactory situation. Seriously. So we got serious about church buildings.

The bitter fruit of this seriousness is "real churches"--the kind where you go only to pray, and where the ordained and their companions go about their earnest business way up front. The kind of church you close and lock when nothing (that is, no service) is going on. People were no longer welcome, except to "attend" religious services. At that point, the chancel was no longer needed. So it was canonized: it became the Communion rail--an object of devotion, and much later on, of discord between the kneelers and the standers at the banquet of unity.

What continued, though, was the fence keeper's instinct. Chancellors (often referred to as ushers) saw to it that the Communion rail was a place where order prevailed, and where the nonordained met the priests across the good fences that "make good neighbors." Dogs, of course, were gone; their place had been taken by the laity, and the sanctuary was a restricted area, reserved to the ordained. Thank God for the renewal of Vatican II. It gave us the Constitution on the Church (Lumen gentium), which treated the unity of God's people before ever raising the issue of the church's ordained servants. Now, happily, "ordinary" laity are once again where they belong.

But, apparently, the fence keepers' instincts continue to thrive. Chancellors abound. They tell us there are limits to promiscuity and that the bema should be kept for doing serious business. If judges and similar high officials have to stay apart, neither should the ordained join the people, either when preaching to them or (worse) to exchange the kiss of peace. The fence can once again be counted on to do an essential job: protect the ordained from being mistaken for the laity.

I have been a priest for thirty-seven years but I have never been mistaken for a layperson while going about Christ's business in the liturgy. Dressed in an unmistakable way, the celebrant doesn't need a Communion rail, and neither does the congregation. And as for dogs, I must admit that in over half a century of priesthood I have yet to see one of man's best friends in church.

Frans Jozef van Beeck, S.J., is a senior professor of theology at Loyola Chicago.