Becoming Catholic:
Making It Hard
Part II: From Despair to...Worship
By now the darkness in my soul was hardening into cynicism as I contemplated the irony and just plain absurdity of my situation: who would have thought my problem with Roman Catholicism would be its seeming lack of reverence for tradition?
I now wondered if the people leading and participating in Catholic worship actually believed what the Church taught.
The informality and anthropocentricity of religious folk music help create an atmosphere in which the questioning of tradition and authority seems only natural.
In the context of the modern Mass led by Father "I am just like you," the all-male priesthood and even the liturgy of the Eucharist itself can seem strangely out of place.
Since much of Catholic worship has ceased to reflect the mystery, splendor, and otherworldliness of the Church, it is hardly surprising that Catholics begin to wonder why the Church cannot reflect more of the surrounding culture.
Most of the problems with worship, both Catholic and Protestant, stem from attempts to adapt worship to a therapeutic culture in which the individual reigns supreme.
Pastors cater to the perceived needs and feelings of their parishioners.
I know; I did it as a pastor when I gave warm-up monologues to put myself and the congregation at ease and when I made cute little remarks, especially during that new center of mainline Protestant worship, the children's sermon.
I have a friend who happily described the way in which her priest combined her daughter's first communion with a pizza party in order to make the whole process "no big deal" and something "she could feel good about."
Most of the pastors I know are not on ego trips, but they are under great pressure to make worship relevant and meaningful for people such as my friend.
That is not all bad: liturgy must connect with the lives of worshipers, as the Second Vatican Council rightly acknowledged.
However, the accommodation of Christian beliefs and practices to a culture fundamentally opposed to Christianity has gone too far.
As Cardinal Ratzinger says in Salt of the Earth, "An awareness needs to develop that in fact to a large extent we [Christians] no longer know Christianity at all."
By now, the over-accommodation of Catholic worship to modern culture - the hijacking of the good intentions of Vatican II by liberal liturgists - has been well-documented. This recognition, and the efforts of societies dedicated to liturgical renewal such as Adoremus and the Society for Catholic Liturgy offer hope that "reform of the reform" is on the way. In the meantime, I still faced the problem of finding a way to live with the present reality of worship within the Church.
The answer finally came after I resolved to speak to a visiting priest at the church where I attend daily Mass.
I told him I was a Lutheran pastor who wanted to become Roman Catholic but couldn't find a place to worship.
Did he know of a traditional parish without guitar music?
He looked at me as if I resided on another planet.
"Can I ask you something?" he asked. "Why do you want to become Catholic?"
He asked the question in a tone that suggested, Why would you want to do a thing like that? I mumbled something about the problems in the ELCA and my belief that the Catholic Church is the fullest, most rightly ordered manifestation of the Church on earth.
"Oh," he replied. "In that case you want to go to Holy Rosary.
It's an Italian parish with a beautiful sanctuary and traditional music and liturgy."
I have attended Holy Rosary ever since.
There are no guitars or missalettes.
The organist and choir are first rate; the organist even plays Bach and the choir often sings in Latin.
More importantly, the parishioners have an attitude of quiet piety and profound reverence for the liturgy that is quite moving.
They observe the muscular prayers of kneeling, genuflecting, and crossing themselves.
The monsignor never begins Mass with "good morning," offers no explanations, does the Canon with great dignity and reverence.
Unlike other parishes I have attended, Holy Rosary offers a seemingly endless variety of distinctively Catholic devotions - prayer hours, rosaries, novenas, Fatima devotions, Divine Mercy Masses, and nocturnal adorations.
I feel I have entered a world with endless layers of meaning with the mystery of Christ in the Eucharist at its center.
Here at last the Truth has become manifest.
Maybe I am not part of a Protestant-type church family, but I am part of something far bigger and more important - the community that traces its history back to the apostles and their living testimony of the Risen Christ.
On Corpus Christi Sunday, I was received into full communion with that cloud of witnesses.
Holy Rosary's sexton, who left his neighboring parish when the guitars were moved to the front of the sanctuary, tells me some people travel up to an hour to attend a traditional Mass at Holy Rosary.
Though I admire their devotion, I still must ask - should it really be that hard?
Copyright © 1998 First Things 89 (January 1999): 9-12.
Jennifer Mehl Ferrara is a writer and mother living in Fleetwood PA.
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