Friday, April 06, 2007
Good Friday
A practical aspect of Roman Catholicism I admire is its catholicism, or universality. Its essentials - the sacraments - are the same no matter you go, although the ritual trappings may be unfamiliar. Catholics who make an effort to attend mass weekly & on Holy Days simply find an RC church & go. I knew a punk Catholic girl who sampled various downtown Manhattan churches on Saturday evenings before heading over to the legendary CBGB's club on the east side. With frizzed up purple hair & multiple piercings, including about 20 thingies embedded & dangling around her ears. She said the regulars usually stared at her for a few minutes & then lost interest. On our annual overnights to see the Radio City Christmas Show, my grandmother brought me to St. Patrick's Cathedral on Sunday morning before we took the bus home. Her instructions to me were always, "Just do what I do, you don't have pretend to recite anything." Most of the people in our pews toward the rear of the huge, ornate space were also sight-seers. Binoculars would have helped. Many Roman Catholic churches on the Jersey shore would go broke without the summer vacationer trade. Diocsean Catholic Churches have parish communities with their unique characteristics, but inside the Eucharist Mass the personal identity of the priest, the building, & the locality, are irrelevant.
By contrast, a small or medium sized protestant church's congregation & pastor - the social & organizational unit - comprise most of the church's "personality," which may have familiar attributes to the outsider - a traditional "order of worship," the music, the sanctuary design, but is very localized. So when one walks into that church, one enters a gathering of strangers, however welcoming they are. In fact, the more welcoming they are, the more uncomfortable one might become. Anonymity is impossible. The pastor always greets congregants at the door following the service, & people tend to mill around outside. One might even be strongly encouraged to attend a "social hour." It's easier to be a shy Catholic.
I was staying with my best friend's grandparents in Pennsylvania, dairy farm country near Honesdale. They were all church folk up there & I figured them to drag us off to a dull service on Sunday. Instead, they deposited us in the Sunday School of a rural Methodist church, this was unheard of! It was one of the longest hours of my childhood, stuck with a bunch of hick kids & a strange teacher, expected to participate in the Bible lesson activities, when the real topic of the day was us, genuine curiosities on display. One time I wished I was Catholic.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
By contrast, a small or medium sized protestant church's congregation & pastor - the social & organizational unit - comprise most of the church's "personality," which may have familiar attributes to the outsider - a traditional "order of worship," the music, the sanctuary design, but is very localized. So when one walks into that church, one enters a gathering of strangers, however welcoming they are. In fact, the more welcoming they are, the more uncomfortable one might become. Anonymity is impossible. The pastor always greets congregants at the door following the service, & people tend to mill around outside. One might even be strongly encouraged to attend a "social hour." It's easier to be a shy Catholic.
I was staying with my best friend's grandparents in Pennsylvania, dairy farm country near Honesdale. They were all church folk up there & I figured them to drag us off to a dull service on Sunday. Instead, they deposited us in the Sunday School of a rural Methodist church, this was unheard of! It was one of the longest hours of my childhood, stuck with a bunch of hick kids & a strange teacher, expected to participate in the Bible lesson activities, when the real topic of the day was us, genuine curiosities on display. One time I wished I was Catholic.
Labels: blogging against theocracy, growing up, religion
