My brain is so very empty

Last night at my church meeting I learned about the Pope's new letter and the Tridentine Mass. Right now Arwen is hissing, "Don't go there, Maggie, do you WANT me to bust out the red pen?" But people! This is fascinating! The priest gave us a mini lecture on the subject since the folks on my particular committee should know what's going on (again, WHY am I on this committee?) and I just sat there ENTHRALLED. I need to read some books. I have a college education grounded entirely in how to write angsty adolescent poetry and how to act like your adolescent angsty poetry is better than everyone else's, and also how to write a feminist critique of every single Victorian novel in existence. The 19-year-old me was working her butt off to pay for this kind of education, but the 28-year-old me would sometimes like to give the 19-year-old me a good kick in the pants and say, "Self! What the hell are you thinking!" and then sign 19-year-old me up for some history classes. Maybe some art history and religion classes for good measure. (But no math. The 28-year-old me is still extremely proud of graduating from college without having taken a single math class.)

ANYWAY. I find this sort of thing intellectually delicious. Right after we got through discussing the Mel Gibson branch of Catholicism, someone flew off on a tangent about a Catholic-but-drop-the-Roman church in our area with (gasp) married clergy! Women priests! Gays with partners! And there were a few people on our commission who were just scandalized. SCANDALIZED! (Not our priest. Our priest was all, "If you ever go there one Sunday let me know what it's like!")

I shouldn't be this way, but I find the scandalized people nearly as entertaining. This is probably because I am not terribly hung up on The Rules. I know I probably should be, but I'd rather watch TV. (Wanna come over to my house Sunday night for the Emmys? I'm stocking the bar and drycleaning my spangly dress!)

I've been trying to write a post for, uh, months now, about the Catholic liturgy and why everyone seems to be very passionate about it except for me. And I thought this whole Tridentine Mass discussion was a perfect segue into exploring the abyss of my cloudy thinking on this topic. But see, you have already fallen asleep and started drooling on the nice fresh pillowcases.

I'll just say that I would LIKE to be passionate! I would LIKE to love the Mass and the rituals and all the different THINGS that Catholics do, I just don't know why or how. I've started a second book in my endeavor to embrace the religion I've always had, although this one looks to take the same assumption as the first, which is that whoever is reading already loves the liturgy and just wants more detail.

I think my third book is going to be one of those "Why I Drop Kicked The Evangelicals And Started Chilling With The Papists" books. I've got a couple lying around my house, leftovers from a friend who briefly entertained switching sides, and maybe that'll give me something to chew on. I don't know. I am firmly unequivocally most assuredly Catholic. I've already gone through my maybe-I-should-be-something-else phase. I am not Catholic because I think everyone else is wrong, I'm Catholic because I am absolutely positive that God wants me (and Phillip) to be Catholic. So. That being said, WHY IS THAT, GOD?

Like always, I blame the Non-Denominational Christian Fellowship for mucking everything up. If it hadn't been for them I wouldn't be having this existential crisis. When you feel you've grown the most in your faith during your stint in a Protestant youth environment, it makes figuring out how to be a grown up Catholic a little confusing.

And yet, Catholic I must be! Bring on the books!

For all of you who have no interest in reading anything Catholic- or religious- or God-related and are ferverntly hoping I get rid of the 'Faith' category altogether, I offer a super cute baby picture as a peace offering.

[HERE IS WHERE THE SUPER CUTE BABY PICTURE WOULD GO IF SOMEONE HADN'T DISCONNECTED ME FROM THE COMPUTER THAT STORES THE PICTURES. CURSE, SWEAR, SPIT, WAVE GOODBYE TO MY THREE READERS AND THAT INCLUDES MY MOTHER BECAUSE WHAT IS WITH NO BABY PICTURES?!]

Thus I rend all faith discussion irrelevant as I must now go commit hara kiri on my IT administrator.

Comments

[Jennifer]

Have I mentioned that you are hilarious? HILARIOUS.

I don't know why you should love it/be passionate about it--except to say that I am.

And of course, that means, you know. You SHOULD be.

;) Dominoes no biscuits, anyone?

[Maggie]

Hilarious, as always (although I was sad about the baby picture)! My first thought is that you should start a youth group at your parish, because I firmly believe that providing an alternative to Non-Denominational Let's Play Basketball And Listen To Some Relient K Time is one of the Church's most pressing concerns when it comes to young people. Secondly, I don't know what you're reading or have read, but I would highly recommend Karl Keating as a source for some profound but approachable thought on the Catholic Church--both "Catholicism and Fundamentalism" and "What Catholics Really Believe" are fantastic. (Of course, you should ask Arwen--she's the theology major in our midst. I, while a Catholic liberal arts student, am a lowly politics major and thusly concerned primarily with the "city of man," tee hee.)

[el-e-e]

Maggie, I'd LOVE to read more on this subject from you. I had a simlilar Protestant-youth-life-enriching period of time. :) You're not alone. And I love your line, "I'd rather watch TV." HAHAAHA! Moi aussi.

[Atlantic]

OK, I've been lurking here for ages, since what do I know about babies? Love them, want one (OK, more than one), but have nothing to contribute to a discussion about them.

Liturgy, on the other hand...

One: the typical Catholic liturgy on offer in your typical parish is a real Mass, yes, but it is also a pale shadow of what Mass is really supposed to be like. Never even mind the Tridentine Mass. The actual document of Vatican II on liturgy is so far from what we have it's not funny.

Two: it does take time to get used to different styles of liturgy. When we moved to a parish with a reverent, sung-Gregorian-chant-in-Latin new Mass (NOT the Tridentine) my DH took over a year to get used to it. (Within another year, he turned into the sort of person who can find his way through a Latin breviary and complains about how the beauty and mystery of the liturgy has been gutted in the Church as a whole. :) )

Three: Spoken Latin Tridentine Masses ("Low Masses") can be BORING. The ideal Mass - this goes for both the old and new forms - is SUNG. All the way through. Pretty much everything except the homily. Or, as Amy Welborn once described it:

"It's more...'You chant' 'Now we chant' 'Now you chant again.' 'Chant!' 'You! Chant!' 'Your turn to chant "Lord Have Mercy"! A lot of times!'"

Do you want some links?

[annie]

Oh no! I just wrote you a great (if I do say so myself) comment and now it's gone. Oh dear. To sum up:

elee - great comment. thorough and good. :-) Amy Welborn's a rockstar.

Maggie - Great post. Good for you, being involved in your parish. What committee are you on? (there tends to be a lot of them, I know.) My husband is super into Liturgy. He's well-read, passionate, and knowledgeable. I appreciate this - my businessy husband who knows more Catholic theology than I do with my theology degree. It's humbling.

Anyway, good books - Rome Sweet Home by Scott Hahn. He's one of those "protestant pastors who set out to prove the Church wrong and came to conversion and full union in the process." Once you start paying attention to things, you hear this story a lot. So I admit that I have not read this book, but Hahn was one of my professors in college so I figure I got most of the story by default. Oh, and he's a super light writer so it's not all deep and theological.

I'd also recommend Deus Caritas Est. This is B-16's first encyclical. Don't shy away just because he's the pope - it actually reads very well. Before he was pope he wrote super-heavy theological stuff, but now he's much more pastoral and easy to deal with. And, of course, anything by Pope JPII. You may enjoy "On the dignity of women," based on part of your post above. JPII's stuff isn't super easy to get through, but if you've got more than 15 minutes at a time, you can really get into it. He's absolutely phenomenal.

[ashley]

oooh my gosh! fascinating. it's so nice to hear honesty and from someone who's completely easy to relate to!! i second the recommendation for "home sweet rome" it really helped me get more out of mass...although i TOTALLY struggle with that sometimes...

[Salome Ellen]

Whew! You are so funny! But i hate to break it to you, you can't commit hara-kiri on somebody. You have to force them to do it themself. A close translation is "honorable suicide".

[el-e-e]

Oh, no, I can't take credit -- it was Atlantic who left the very thoughtful comment about Amy Wellborn. :)

However, I also have read Rome Sweet Home and loved it.

[Atlantic]

There's also Scott Hahn's _The Lamb's Supper_ which is all about the Mass. Here's a link to his lecture of the same title:

http://zuserver2.star.ucl.ac.uk/~vgg/rc/aplgtc/hahn/m5/lmbsp.html

[rosie_kate]

I would like to humbly offer this: instead of focusing on books (word of man), read the Bible (Word of God) and see what He has to say about worship and doctrine. You say God wants you to be Roman Catholic? How do you know? Every thing God says is in accordance with Sripture. If He wants you to be Catholic, there will be something to that effect in His Word. So, perhaps you need to see if Catholicism is according to God's Word.

[rosie_kate]

Oh, and I'm very sad about the missing cute baby picture! :-)

[Atlantic]

"So, perhaps you need to see if Catholicism is according to God's Word."

Indeed it is! The Catholic Church is the church founded by Jesus Christ and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it (Matt 16:18). It preserves the faith delivered once and for all to the saints (Jude 1:3), through its traditions passed on by both word of mouth and letter (2 Thess 2:15).

There are a lot of misunderstandings and untruths circulated about the Church - the authors Karl Keating and Scott Hahn, as well as Jimmy Akin and several others are very good places to start reading about these things and how Scripture points to Christ and His Body the Catholic Church.

[annie]

Amen, Atlantic.

[Rosie_Kate]

The Bible teaches salvation by faith alone. "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast." Eph. 2:8 Does the Roman Catholic church teach that? This teaching was the crux of the Reformation. From the Catholic church. Which did not teach most basic doctrine.

[Rosie_Kate]

opps, sorry, that was supposed to be "THIS most basic doctrine."

[Rosemary]

Hi Rosie Kate - That's a really complicated question! A lot of ink (and blood I fear?) has been spilled over the faith and works, faith vs. works question. Yes we Catholics believe that we are saved through faith in Jesus Christ. But if we call it faith and do not have the works, then it is not true faith. We believe that faith and good works go hand in hand. I guess that's not the clearest way of putting it. I'm not theologian. Maye this will help: This Catholic who studies such matters named Jimmy Akin puts Catholic teaching this way:

"Thus if one uses the language of the Bible, one would say that "a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law . . . not by faith alone . . . for faith apart from works is dead . . . but faith working through love" (Rom. 3:28, Jas. 2:24, 26, Gal. 5:6).

You quote important words from Paul on the subject, and Paul's words combined with James' words and Jesus' on the subject (along with many other ideas on the matter threaded throughout the Old and New Testament) inform Catholic teaching on the matter.

When we look at James 2:14-26, he has something more to say about the question of faith and works:

(This is from the King James):

[14] What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him?
[15] If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food,
[16] And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?
[17] Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.
[18] Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works.
[19] Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.
[20] But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?
[21] Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar?
[22] Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect?
[23] And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God.
[24] Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.
[25] Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, when she had received the messengers, and had sent them out another way?
[26] For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.

Also, we remember Jesus' words on this matter, when he spoke about the last judgment, separating the sheep from the goats. He explains that the reason some will go to eternal fire is because they did not perform the good works required of them:

(This quote is from the New American Bible, from Matthew 25):

14 "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne,
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and all the nations 15 will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.
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He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
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Then the king will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
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For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me,
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naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.'
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Then the righteous 16 will answer him and say, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?
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When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you?
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When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?'
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And the king will say to them in reply, 'Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.'
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17 Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
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For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,
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a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.'
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18 Then they will answer and say, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?'
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He will answer them, 'Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.'
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And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."

I just found an article about what Catholics believe and it's scriptural basis. I think maybe the tone of it is a little irritating (Catholics vs. Protestants stuff) in places, but it really lays out why Catholics believe what they do pretty well: http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1999/9909chap.asp

Hope this helps to give you a little insight into the Catholic thinking on these things. God bless.

[Rosemary]

Whoa! Sorry for the super long commnent Maggie and everyone. It was the Scripture that did it! Can you really complain? :)

Rosie Kate, I wanted to add one more thing - I'm not saying that individual Catholics haven't had a misunderstanding of the Catholic Church's teaching over the centuries, emphasizing a works-based justification that was not in line with what the true church teaching, which is not "faith alone" but is rather "faith working through love" (Gal. 5:6). Jimmy Akin quoted Gal. 5:6; I hadn't know that one.

[Atlantic]

I’m sorry, Rosie Kate, but this is exactly the sort of thing that I meant above, about misunderstandings and untruths circulating about the Church.

1. The Bible most assuredly does not teach salvation by faith alone. The phrase “faith alone” is found in the Bible only once – and is rejected (James 2:24).

2. However, contrary to what some people say, the Church does not and has never taught works-salvation. In fact, the very first canon of the relevant session of the Council of Trent states, “If any one saith that man may be justified before God by his own works, whether done through the teaching of human nature, or that of the law, without the grace of God through Jesus Christ, let him by anathema.”

[Sean]

Hey Mags, I have Rome Sweet Home (to which Annie above referred) if you'd like to borrow it. Got it from Catholic Grandma Jeanne a few years ago in her concern for my choice of Protestantism over Catholicism. Being my usual self I've not yet gotten to reading it, and so it's collected a thick layer of dust. Just say the word and it'll be in your hands shortly.