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March 12, 2005

Far Be It from Me...

... to judge the religion practiced by my co-religionists, but there's something I just can't fathom: Every Sunday, people around the world shuffle into Catholic Masses. They sit at the pews, listen to the homilies, and participate in the rituals. All of this is done, in most cases, with a statue, picture, frieze — something — with the image of the founder of the Church, the man whom we are to emulate in life, the God whom we are to love, Jesus Christ, hanging from a cross, having been tortured, scorned, and ultimately murdered in an excruciating way.

Now, I know this is hardly a rare perspective, but that knowledge makes it no easier to understand how folks can sit in those pews with this mindset:

I go to mass not to have to deal with problems, but to get a respite from them, so with the friction... it doesn't really make me feel on Sunday morning like getting up and going.
Posted by Justin Katz at March 12, 2005 7:18 PM
Religion
Comments

Justin, we all have these kinds of lapses. Of course. I understand the tenacity of sin, and how it is possible that we can know the truth about Christ, and still offend Him. What I can never comprehend is exactly what you describe--a mindset. That is, an insouciance that is so at odds with any real faith that it causes me to doubt the seriousness with which people hold their beliefs.

While we're all hypocrites in one way or other, what I often see is an unimaginably wide gulf between any inkling about such things as the Real Presence and the utter disinterest on the part of Catholics of living a deeply Christian life. A person who actually believes that the Mass is what it claims to be simply could never sincerely utter the quote you've exerpted. At least, not without a dissonance bordering on insanity.

Posted by: Sage at March 12, 2005 7:35 PM

I agree ... it's a rather petulant attitude for that "devout" Catholic. Someone called him out for publically opposing fundamental Church teaching, and now he doesn't really feel like getting up on Sundays.

I'm no saint -- in particular when it comes to Mass I often find it difficult to concentrate ... I think CS Lewis suggested it's right at the times that you should be praying and most focusing on Christ that sinful inattention will creep in. Still, I hope that I don't ever take the attitude that church is there to always make me feel complacent and just good about myself, instead of challenging me to "call to mind [my] sins" and be a better disciple.

Posted by: Kimberly at March 12, 2005 9:21 PM