The Ark and The Dove

The parish system and its importance

I promised a friend a post like this half a week ago, but that's how things go on the blog, seeing as how it's not my job, but just a spare-time pursuit.

It seems to me that a lot of young people who are very devoted to the Church have a defective sense of belonging to their geographical parish.  Some even seem surprised that I insist that there is any importance attached to one's parish. 

I think this partly is due to the contrast between how well we have been treated by Pope John Paul II and how shoddily we have been treated by our parishes.  Older Catholics, if they have a problem in this area, it is more frequently an overattachment to an individual parish at the expense of the universal Church.  I am guessing that they grew up feeling close to their pastor and parish community and distant from the far-off authority in Rome.  These are the people you hear about in Boston holding sit-ins to try to stop the diocese from closing their parish or even going so far as apostasizing to keep from being consolidated with another parish.  With us it is exactly the opposite.  When so many of our parishes wussed out of handing on the Church's traditions in their integrity, Pope John Paul stepped into the breach as chief youth pastor and catechist of the entire world.  As a result we tend to feel much more of a personal connection with the pope and have a lot more respect for and loyalty directly to him, and more cynicism towards the local levels, which is the part that to us seems more like the distant, heartless obfuscatory bureaucracy.  Add to this the fact that we were blessed with a pope who was an exceedingly virtuous and holy man, tirelessly and fearlessly dedicated to the Church and the Gospel, who was also very wise and intelligent, with great communication skills, and even really good priests have a hard time measuring up.

So perhaps you can see how it might come about that we have a laudable loyalty to the universal Church, but a defective respect for parishes.  But parishes exist for a spiritual reason, not just for administrative convenience.

Your parish is like your immeidate family.  You don't get to pick them, really.  You are thrown together by lot and you have to deal with all sorts of different people.  Given the choice people tend to segregate themselves into groups of similar and like-minded individuals, because that's easier.  If you went to Maryland, you have no doubt observed how "diversity" works there (I presume it is the same elsewhere because people are people everywhere).  This really isn't how it should be in a catholic church; it takes all kinds to make a Catholic Church.  The parish system helps to counteract this, so that the particular Church is more of a microcosm of the universal Church. 

Another chief vice of modern people with regards to religion is the thing where you "church-shop," tailoring your religion to your personal preferences and prejudices rather than tailoring yourself to the truth of religion.  Now, obviously you can't "religion-shop" for radically different things (one hopes) by going from one Catholic parish to the other, but you can see that there is something analogous that could occur within the bounds of the Faith, and it is still not the best practice.  Of course a Catholic can go to Mass anywhere, but I am told that in days gone by, if a priest caught you habitually deserting your parish to "church-shop" at his, he would tell you to stop it and go back to your own parish.

Now of course we live in a more mobile society these days, but there is still a virtue in respecting your parish, going there regularly unless there is a serious reason not to.  And you know I am not just saying this idly because my geographic parish (while by no means a bad parish) is not my favorite one of the over forty Catholic churches within ten miles of my house.

If any priests read this and want to comment, your insights on this are most welcome.

Singing the Mass

I think that because what people are most accustomed to is a spoken Mass as opposed to a chanted Mass, they assume that this is the "basic" form, and singing is a later imposition, like maybe a later accretion or something.

But actually it's more the other way around.  Which is more natural?  To sing alleluia, or to say it like you're reading a telephone book?

Parish life

So at my digs I've been to my geographic parish for a couple of Sunday Masses so far.  I've been to the ones at different times, and I haven't been to the noon one, but so far it seems like I have the choice, musically speaking, of Haugen/Haas and similar performed by a kind of quasi-aging-hippies folk group choir at the one, and the early Mass which has no music at all.

So which one do I do, if there's no other reason to prefer one to the other?  Here're the pros and cons.

At the one, most of the songs are going to be (it seems) the sort of songs that I was complaining about earlier, where to make it sound halfway decent you have to sound all emotional-like.  Which I hate, because for one thing, like many people I am usually pretty reserved, and also like many people I am somewhat discomfited by mandatory big emotional displays in Church.  So, do I fake it (dreadful and weird in Church since God knows the heart), sing it in a neutral voice (so it sounds like I'm mocking the song), or not sing?  And if I do one of the latter two, then I might set a bad example because I might look like it's out of contempt for the Church or Mass, which I don't want.  What a bother, especially since it's not like that stuff is the Church's actual sacred music.

Now, many people would say "better no music at all than bad music" or music that makes the Mass look silly.  In a way I can agree with this, but cantare amantis est.  A spoken Mass with hymns added (instead of chanting the Mass itself) is non-ideal enough, but no singing at all on Sunday is all but inexcusable.  So on Sunday I'd have the lowest of low Mass you can get really - Mass spoken in English in a chatty tone with no singing and no other efforts at solemnity.

I think what I have described in the above paragraphs might be the typically Italian-model lazy-liturgy bad habits in the former and the typically Irish in the latter.  But I really don't have that much sympathy with either one.

St. Cecilia, ora pro nobis

If I had been on the ball, I would have done a novena for the renewal of sacred music, but that doesn't mean we can't pray about it.

Not elephants?

Going around the internet lately has been news of some splendid new in-utero photos of different animals.  Jimmy Akin exposes the hypocrisy of newspapers who have no problems acknowledging that these animals are in fact what kind of animal they are when they are in their mothers' wombs, yet refuse to do the same for baby humans.

Pray for Turkey This Thanksgiving

And pray for the Pope, who's visiting the country.

Extremists

It's nice to see somebody, even if it's not a mainstream news outlet, turn the tables of the conventions the papers usually use onto someone who really deserves it.  Anti-religious extremist Dawkins advocates discredited eugenics. 

Chesterton observes that eugenics can only really be practiced on a weak and inferior people.  Perhaps Richard Dawkins would submit to being bred like an animal, but supposing eugenics did succeed in producing a superior class of people, the first thing they would do would be to smash the "scientific" marriages and marry whom they will.

Great Moments In Guy History

In Dave Barry's "Complete Guide to Guys," under the category of "men" is Christopher Columbus; in "guys," "whichever astronaut hit the golf balls on the moon."  Alan Shepard, for the record.

A cosmonaut has recently followed in Alan Shepard's footsteps, hitting a golf ball from space towards earth.

Authentic liturgy

Amy Welborn, with an important observation:

Jesting, feasting, frolicing, festivals, masque, joyous, earthy music and raucousness are all very Catholic. Jansenists and a few others excepted.

But not during Mass.

Dear Secret Rapture Crazy Alien Spaceman Jesus Guy

Thank you for commenting on my blog and sharing your opinions.  However, I really cannot endorse or agree with much of anything you say.

May I offer some observations?  Of course, since this is my blog.

1.) I am sorry to hear that you have never even set foot in a Catholic church.  You know you are always welcome to come to Mass or any other service.  The Catholic Church is for everyone - that is why she is called Catholic.  Only please remember that it is not appropriate to receive Holy Communion until you are in fact in full communion with the Church and spiritually prepared.

2.) I commiserate with you about your distress at the widespread commonness of gross immorality.  From the Bible we know that there will be a great tribulation and apostasy before the Second Coming of Jesus, as you correctly observe.  It is also a good observation that the signs of the End Times that Jesus named started right away (just like He said they would).  It would be entirely legitimate to say that we have been living in the End Times since our Lord was last here on earth.

3.) Perhaps you actually like being regarded as crazy or mad, but I suppose it does make it more difficult to get your message out.  If you are open to suggestions, part of the problem must be your blatant disregard for sound reason.  Most people can actually deal with a fair amount of illogic and unsound reason in their religion - in fact it can be uncomfortable to deal with a religion such as Catholicism that forces you to confront the inconsistencies and faults in your life and to grow into an integral person rather continuing to wallow in the easy have-it-both-ways hypocrisy we are all all too comfortable with.  Nevertheless, people have a limit, and you seem to reach and exceed it almost immediately.  For instance, in the beginning of your "inaugural address," you propose that the fact that people don't like you proves that you are a prophet, since (as Jesus observed) all true prophets are rejected by the people.  This is an incredibly elementary logical gaffe, and the rest of the work (which I looked over out of courtesy) is in the main worse, not better.  In fact, I rather think you would have difficulty "wiping out" anybody in a debate (except relatively speaking, if your debate was in front of an audience composed of highly illogical and bigoted people, or you could somehow manage to find someone less capable than yourself of composing a reasonable argument).  In fact, by writing this much already I have already given your writing much more attention than it deserves, except that I sometimes like to post about bizarre things.

4.) Perhaps another reason that people doubt your sanity is that you seem to insist on comparing yourself to Jesus, in fact insisting that you are God.  I rather expect that they are giving you the benefit of the doubt, preferring to suppose (in the absence of hard evidence) that you are merely a harmless kook who doesn't quite realize what he is saying rather than an unfathomably arrogant blasphemer.  For the reasons addressed above it is difficult for people to take you seriously enough to consider you a legitimate antichrist.

5.) The whole "pre-" vs. "post-" thing is not something that Catholics really bother with.  In terms of these Protestant categories, I think the Catholic Church would register as "pre-tribulation amillenialist."  I urge you to recall that in Biblical usage numbers are typically symbolic, even when talking about actual amounts of things, a feature of language we don't use all that often in modern languages (for instance "seven" can mean "a large indeterminate number" as in "the just man falls seven times a day," or completeness, and "a thousand" "a very large indeterminate number."  Therefore I urge you not to take the "thousand years" in Revelation in an artificially literal way not intended by the sacred author.  It may surprise you to learn that the Church considers that this "thousand"-year reign is being accomplished right now and for the last 2,000 years through the Catholic Church itself, because the Church is not merely a sort of Jesus Fan Club but the visible sacrament (so to speak) of God's reign on earth.

6.) One of my biggest heroes is a man who dedicated himself to the extermination of a poisonous and diabolical sect devoted to the ultimate extinction of humanity through childlessness.

7.) I know that probably feels special to feel like the originator of a religious system, but this is nothing compared to the joy to be found in the actual Church God gave to us, the Catholic Church, which I urge you to find out more about.

In Christ,
Thomas