Hazards of Catholic Worship

Back last fall, during the Great Midwestern Blogger Get-Together, Molly and I went to Sunday Mass with Therese and RS. As it turned out, the church we went to was being remodeled, so Mass was held in the church basement, instead. While we sat quietly, waiting for Mass to begin, we noticed that several people had brought foam seat-pads with them - the kind that folks will take to football games, so they get a little more padding than just sitting on bare bleachers. I thought that was passing curious, and wondered what was going on.

Until it came to that portion of the Mass where the congregation kneels. It being the church basement, we had only the hard cement floor, covered with a thin layer of floor tiles, upon which to kneel. And this was a Latin High Mass (a very cool experience in and of itself), so the 'kneeling parts' were a fair bit longer than what I'm used to in my home parish, besides the fact that we were kneeling on concrete. So, when it was time to kneel, the 'locals' tossed their foam pads onto the floor, as a sort-of 'roll-your-own' kneeler, and saved themselves a half-hour's wear-and-tear on their kneecaps. For my part, when Mass was over, I hobbled down the aisle, and up the stairs, like a man much older than I already am.

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The Catholic Mass, along with the Orthodox Liturgy, and a few other 'high church' liturgies, contains a series of shifting body positions, in the course of a normal worship service. Some clever types have referred to this as 'Catholic Calisthenics' - stand, kneel, sit, repeat as necessary. It can be a little bewildering the first time a visitor attends a Mass. My family is not Catholic (I converted when I was in college), and I once caused a minor scene at a cousin's Catholic wedding, by whispering 'Catholic Calisthenics' to my sister, during one of the stand-kneel-sit cycles, which caused her to burst out laughing. And generally speaking, there are no good times to burst out laughing during Mass. In case anyone was wondering.

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So, last week, 6F graduated from 8th grade at Tiny Catholic School, and, as Catholics are wont to do, they celebrated the auspicious occasion with a Mass. The liturgy moved into the Eucharistic Prayers, which is where most of the kneeling happens.

Now, in 35 years of being Catholic, I've become fairly adept at flipping the kneeler down into position with my toe. Molly used to admonish me that that's a minor breach of Catholic etiquette, that the proper form is to sit, and put the kneeler down with one's hand, but I can always plead my convert status, that I was never properly taught the subtle fine points of Mass etiquette. So, I'm a shameless toe-flipper of the kneelers. And she has mostly given up on the admonishments.

I don't know what-all, exactly, I had distracting me during 6F's graduation Mass, but, having flipped the kneeler up during one of the 'standing parts', I forgot to flip it back down when the next 'kneeling part' came around. So that, when I went to kneel, expecting the kneeler to be in place, I continued downward with some degree of force, catching myself on the pew in front of me, with the bottom of my rib cage. Which hurt like hell crazy, and I ended up with some bruised ribs for my trouble. And the next day, when I got out of bed, I discovered that I'd pulled a muscle in my side, to boot. Which doesn't really affect much, other than getting out of bed, or rolling over. It's also allergy season for me, which means I sneeze a lot more often than I do other times of the year. Which, if you've ever had bruised ribs, becomes a much, um, 'ouchier' proposition than if you don't.


Not that any of this is really so terribly debilitating, or anything. But I do get a certain wry amusement from the fact that, twice in the past seven months, I've managed to mildly injure myself just from going to Mass. As Carla from Cheers once said (in one of the great bits of dialogue ever in a TV show), "Catholicism is not a religion for wusses."

A Few Questions From a Friend

One of my blog-friends asked me a few questions, which I believe will help you all understand me better (and I'm just vain enough to think that you would want to). So, forthwith. . .

- What moved you to embrace Catholicism?

This demands a bit of a complex answer; you would be very kind to bear with me. I’ve posted about it, way back when, but perhaps I can expand a bit here.

I suppose it started the first time I went to a Catholic Mass, when I was in high school. My Jesus-freak buddy and I took on a project of visiting as many different kinds of churches as we could find. When we visited the Catholic church in town, I was very surprised by how much scripture was woven into the liturgy (I’d been told that Catholics just didn’t ‘do’ scripture), and how prayerful it was. So, my first impression was, “hey, this is a lot cooler than I expected it to be.”

When I went away to college, I was sort of ‘rootless’ in a church sense. I went to the college-town church of my ‘home denomination’ once, and was quite underwhelmed. I started going to a charismatic prayer meeting, and felt immediately at home. I took up with a young lady, who happened to be Catholic, and she began regularly inviting me to go to mass with her. Which I did, quite a lot, and it mainly reinforced my first impression.

At the same time, I took up an independent study of Church history – I was interested in what had happened to Christianity in the generations immediately following Jesus and the Apostles – how the second generation of Christians received the gospel from the Apostles, and how they, in turn, passed it on to the third – and I wondered how it had gotten from Bible days to my own. I don’t say that such a project would affect everyone the same way it affected me, but I came to see Catholicism (and Orthodoxy) as being in historical continuity with the first Christians, and if I wanted to be in that kind of ‘spiritual continuity’, I had to at least deal with that question.

I undertook to be received into the Catholic Church when I thought that the young lady (GF2, if you recall her) and I would get married, but for various reasons, we broke off our romantic relationship while I was in instruction (we are good friends today, tho). By then, though, I was already thinking of the Catholic Church as my spiritual ‘home’, and I completed my instruction on my own initiative, and was received into the Catholic Church.

Once I was safely Catholic, a few things sort of ‘cemented’ my conversion. Catholic sacramental life turned out to be a good deal richer than I’d anticipated. I recall hearing a Pentecostal preacher talking about a trip he’d taken to Poland, and he drew a fascinating parallel between communion and an altar call – “people standing in line to receive Jesus”. That thought has never left me, and to this day, I will often quietly hum ‘Just As I Am’ in the communion line.

I also discovered what I’ll call the ‘Catholic Intellectual Tradition’ – Thomas Aquinas, John Henry Newman, GK Chesterton, the whole Natural Law tradition – and I was instantly smitten. This was only reinforced when John Paul II became pope. I had never encountered anything quite like it (aside from CS Lewis, I suppose, and to a lesser extent, Francis Schaeffer).

- If you could change one thing about yourself what would it be?

I wish I weren’t so selfish. It is altogether too easy for me to go through life thinking about myself and my interests and what I want/need, when Molly and the kids need more of my ‘brain space’. I can do OK where Molly is concerned, especially when I’m feeling horny. But I really need to give more of my thoughts and attention to the kids. It’s altogether too easy for me to retreat into my ‘private world’ and tune them out. And that is not unrelated to the troubles that a couple of them have had. . .

- What is the best and worst thing about having a large family?

I want to say that they’re the same thing – you’re rarely alone. There’s never a dull moment, for sure. It’s very gratifying to see the relationships they have with each other – much as they bicker with each other, as they grow up their relationships really do develop some depth and affection. With eight kids, that’s 28 separate relationships of the kids with each other (45, if you throw Molly and me into the mix). And, as the kids get older, it’s very gratifying to see them cultivating a ‘family identity’ – all that shared experience has started being a ‘bonding’ thing. And, I’ve definitely improved my odds of having grandchildren. . . ;)

But, the bickering can reach truly epic proportions, and sometimes I just want to lock them all in the basement and let them have at each other, and then we’ll just go on with the survivors. I’m also a guy who seems to have a more-than-average felt need for some low-key solitude, and that just doesn’t happen very often. And I won’t even get into the grocery bills. . .

There has been a certain good-news/bad-news aspect when it comes to the troubles we’ve had with 1F and 3M – in the course of dealing with those situations, there are six other kids who get sort of short-changed in the process. But, they can also soften the grief for us, if we’re paying attention. . .


So, there you have it. I'll gladly entertain any follow-up questions any of you might have.

I enjoyed this; I hope you all enjoyed it, too. . .

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Holy Family

This past Sunday was the Feast of the Holy Family on the Catholic liturgical calendar. In recent years, Molly and I have taken on a certain 'devotion' to the Holy Family. I mean, on a completely basic level, we aspire to holiness for our own family, so there's a certain 'identification' there - here's a holy family; we want our family to be holy; let's pay attention to them. I mean, if you can't take some lessons on family life from Jesus, Mary and Joseph, whatcha gonna do?

Our priest, in his homily Sunday, made what I thought was a very rich, deep point - that, when Christ came to earth in human flesh, he didn't fall out of the sky in armor, riding on a horse; he didn't duck into a nearby phone booth, like Superman; he was born. Born of a woman, and, more to the point for the feast at hand, born into a family. The Incarnation itself happened in the context of a human family. . .

. . . It can seem a bit daunting to measure our family against the standard of Jesus, Mary and Joseph - we aren't saints (and, if you lived with us, you would know just how saintly we really aren't). When I look at our family, the whole concept of 'holy family' and what it might look like applied to us, can become painfully, almost mockingly, abstract. It's hard to see it happening in any kind of 'concrete' way, and sometimes I come close to despair that 'holy' and 'my family' would be utterly oxymoronic if referred to each other.

And yet, even Jesus, Mary and Joseph were fully and completely human, with human lives and human challenges, and their sanctity - their holiness - lies in how they met the challenges they faced, not in the absence of challenges.

And so, for me, might it be that holiness lies not in living so virtuously that nothing bad ever happens to me or my children, but rather in responding virtuously - with goodness and truth - to the things, both good and bad, that do happen to me? And in loving my children when they screw up (like Jesus, who 'while we were still sinners, died for us'). That is holiness on a very earthy, down-and-dirty level. But more and more, it seems to me that that's the holiness I need to pursue.

Lord, have mercy.

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All Saints' Day

On the traditional Christian calendar, today is All Saints' Day. For Catholics in the United States, it is a 'Holy Day of Obligation', and mass attendance is mandatory. It is one of my favorite Holy Days, evoking memories of all the godly, holy, heroic men and women who have gone before me in the faith. It is a day for all the un-named 'saints', the 'every-Christians' who lived the Christian life faithfully and sometimes heroically - grandparents, neighbors, friends, whoever - who never captured popular attention so as to be canonized, but who yet were faithful and godly Christians. So, I have always loved All Saints' Day.

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In recent years, though, the day has taken on a darker significance in Molly's family. Today is also the second anniversary of Molly's sister's suicide.

G and Molly were barely a year apart in age, but temperamentally as different as two sisters could be. Molly is bright, cheerful and sanguine; G was brooding, angry and rebellious. Being as close in age as they were, the two girls developed an intense sibling rivalry. Molly tended to be more favored by her parents; G was more popular at school. She ran away from home when she was 16 (to California; where else?).

In the course of time, she married her English professor and bore four children by him. She seemed to settle down into wifedom and motherhood, and her relationships with the rest of the family improved, either due to her forming her own separate identity, or to her living far away and only seeing us seldom, or both.

A few years ago, though, she called to tell us that she had left her husband. She seemed very eager to get Molly's approval for it. But Molly could only, in good conscience, tell her, "You're my sister and I love you," stopping short of fully accepting what G had done. And that caused some friction between the two of them. G's children grew up and left home, and she lived an increasingly carefree (or maybe aimless?) life as she passed through her middle-, and into her late-40s. It came as a shock when we heard she had ended her life.

In retrospect, I suppose we can see the seeds of it - her children were grown, she had left her husband; she was getting old enough that the young and exciting men were looking elsewhere than at her, and I'm sure that, on the most visceral level, she was lonely.

And yet, there was always something stubborn in G, to the effect that, 'if the world isn't going to be the way I want it to be, then too bad for the world'. It is entirely possible to see her suicide as the grand, final 'Screw You' to the Universe.

And, there seems to be something significant to the fact that she chose All Saints' Day for the end of her life. She and her husband had often traveled in Mexico, and she was very fond of Mexican culture; in Mexico, tomorrow, All Souls' Day, is called 'Dia del Muerte' - the Day of the Dead.

I don't really know why I'm so reflective on G's death this year; life goes on, and I never really knew her all that well. But I liked her, hard as she tried to make herself unlikable; she was sort of like Molly's 'dark twin' - alike, and so very different. I wish she could have been happier; I wish she were still here today. She should still be here today. And that's the tragedy.

I still love All Saints' Day, and all that it means in the Christian context. But it will never be quite the same. . .

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How I Got This Way - My Spiritual Journey

It seems the time is ripe for me to lay down for blogging posterity the salient features of my own spiritual journey. It’s a fairly long, convoluted story, but I’ll try to beat it down to manageable proportions for your edification and enjoyment. . .

I grew up in a pretty plain-vanilla mainline-Protestant church; I suppose it would be called ‘theologically liberal’, but of course as a kid growing up, that label wouldn’t have meant much to me. We heard all the usual Bible stories, and about the life of Jesus. Looking back, it laid a good foundation on which to build, but at the time, it was mostly just ‘cultural background’, sort of on the order of Beethoven’s symphonies.

When I was in high school, I began to wrestle with the ‘big questions’ – does God exist? What’s the meaning of life? How should I live? Why? Or why not? And such as those.

Our church had an active and engaging high school youth group, and several of my closest friends also belonged. We did a lot of interesting activities together – service projects, plays, and all manner of things – but, when it came to the ‘big questions’, the answers I was given were oddly unsatisfying. “Be nice to people”; “Serve your fellow man”; and things of that order. Fine things, all of them, but they didn’t really get at the questions I was asking.

The summer I was 14, I went to a church camp sponsored by the state conference of our church. There I had what I can only describe as a personal experience of God. Suddenly, all the Bible stories, everything I’d heard over the years – it all made sense. This was it! Once I came to know in person the God who was behind it all, everything fell into place for me, and all the ‘big questions’ were getting suitable answers as well. Does God exist? – well, having experienced him personally, the answer seemed kind of obvious. What’s the meaning of life? – well, if God exists, that answer would seem rather self-explanatory. How should I live? – again, having met God personally, it was clear that I should live my life in accordance with the God of the Universe.

And it was also clear that this God had revealed himself concretely in the person of Jesus Christ. Suddenly I understood that Jesus wasn’t just a ‘great teacher’ – he was God-in-human-flesh. I didn’t have any idea of the ‘theology’ involved, but I understood in a deep way that it was True. And I understood from my own experience that God had sent the Holy Spirit – who I had previously thought of in only the vaguest, most abstract terms – to live within me in some mysterious and exciting way. I didn’t know any of this from being taught in a sermon – I knew it from my own direct, personal experience of it.

And I went through high school living this newfound Christian life as best I could, sometimes struggling, sometimes thriving, but always fortified by the knowledge of what I had experienced of Jesus and the Holy Spirit in my life. Every summer, I went back to camp, and got my ‘batteries recharged’.

When I went to college, there was, as there is for most college students, a major discontinuity in the circumstances of my life - I didn’t have the familiar surroundings that I’d grown up with. In particular, when Sunday morning rolled around, I didn’t really have any place to go. I knew that I wanted to continue with my Christian life, but it was not at all clear how I would go about doing that in my new context. I ran into some of my ‘camp friends’ who went to the same school, and they told me about a really cool prayer meeting, and so I went, and I came into contact with the Christian community that sponsored the prayer meeting. But there was a whole Christian ‘life-together’ behind it all, and I was immediately attracted to such an intense way of pursuing the Christian life. As soon as I could, I joined the community, and in one way or another, I’ve belonged to it ever since.

Around the same time, I started dating a girl (not Molly). She was Catholic, and she often invited me to come to Mass with her. I had no place better to be, and besides, I kinda liked hanging around her, so I usually went along. My first few masses were real eye-opening. I’d been prepared for the Mass to be really dead and boring, and barely Christian (such were the portrayals of Catholicism that I’d acquired in my life), but instead, I found it full of prayer, and Scripture was woven all through it. I was actually quite favorably impressed.

I also began my own study on the history of Christianity – I wanted to know more about how this living faith I’d acquired had gotten all the way from Bible times to me. Our community aspired to live a Christian life as much like what we saw in the Bible as we could manage, and I was fascinated by the question of how the ‘second generation’ of Christians had received the faith from the apostles, and how they carried it forward in their own day. I read the early church Fathers, and various histories by authors I respected. And as I did, I became more impressed by the notion that the Catholic church was probably the best I could do as far as being in continuity with all of Christian history.

The girl and I eventually broke up, but by that time, I was already thinking of Catholicism as ‘home’, and in the fullness of time, I was received into the Catholic church.

Since then, my Christian faith has become deeper, stronger and (I hope) more mature. I've discovered the Catholic 'philosophical tradition', and grown in my appreciation of the sacramental life of the Church, but it all comes from a living, personal experience of Christ in my life; take that away, and the whole thing falls.

And really, that’s where I’m at, down to the present day. I’m still Catholic (well, duh – eight kids), and still, with Molly, part of the ‘ecumenical’ lay community I joined when I was in college. Perhaps this will help you all understand a little bit better where I’m coming from, and where I’ve been. . .

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With My Body, I Thee Worship

A while back, a phrase came into my mind (phrases do that to me, from time to time; it's my cross to bear), and it hasn’t left me alone ever since. I think it’s from an old form of the Anglican wedding service (incredibly geeky, I know, but what can I do?). Anyway, at one point during the vows, the bridegroom says to the bride: “With my body, I thee worship.”

With my body, I thee worship.

There is a real depth there, a real richness, that goes beyond merely “I love you,” or even, “I want to have a life and a family with you,” although those things are certainly included in it. It captures very well how I feel about my wife, and how I aspire to have my life be joined to hers.

On multiple levels, sex is an act of worship – Catholics would invoke the grace of the sacrament of Matrimony. But in a simpler, earthy sense, I can simply say that I mean to worship Molly. Not, obviously, in the same sense in which I worship God – I would mean something like ‘reverence’, or ‘venerate’, or ‘honor’ or ‘esteem’, but none of those words capture the full sense of what I mean the way that ‘worship’ does. Molly is worthy of veneration, just like, say, Catholic theology would say the saints are worthy of veneration, but she is the saint whose life is bound up with mine.

GK Chesterton wrote that being constrained to one woman was a small price to pay for the privilege of having even one woman, and that sense of reverential gratitude resonates deeply with me. Getting to know Molly – really know her – is like being let in on a great mystery. As a Christian, I want to go “further up and further in” – grow deeper in my love of God, and give myself more fully to Him. In an analogous way, I want to ‘go deeper’ in our marriage, and the life we have together. I want to know her better, be known better by her, give my life more fully to her, and that begins to get at the ‘worship’ I aim to give her.

In Holy Communion, Catholics believe that we receive Christ directly into our bodies (there is a very earthy aspect to Catholic theology that I find immensely appealing). In an analogous way, we give ourselves, and receive each other, directly into our bodies when we make love, under the covering of the sacrament of Matrimony. It’s all so rich, I can scarcely say what I really mean.

With my body, I thee worship.

Awesome.

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HOW Many Kids?

"So, are you guys Catholic or Mormon?"

That's a typical question that Molly and I get whenever someone hears for the first time that we're the parents of eight (count 'em) children.

"Why yes, we're Catholic, how did you know?"

I was actually surprised at how low the 'Catholic threshold' can be nowadays. When our third child was born, I took a box of candy to work, along with a brief birth announcement, and left them by the coffee station. One of my co-workers dropped by my cubicle later, and asked how many kids we had now. I told her this was our third.

"THREE KIDS!" she sputtered. "Are you guys Catholic?"

So now, you get the Catholic jokes with three kids? Sheesh.

One time Molly was grocery shopping with whichever of the kids was the youngest at the time. Another woman, noticing the exceptional cuteness of the baby, approached her to chat. "Is he your first?" Informed that, no indeed, he was the youngest of whatever large number was current at the time, the woman stepped back with a look of shocked horror. "How could you have so many?" she gasped. Molly smiled sweetly, leaned in conspiratorially, and whispered, "We REALLY like sex!"

I love my wife.

I actually came across a snappy comeback a while ago, that I'm just waiting for an opportunity to use - "Eight kids? How many are you planning to have?" "Who knows, we're only halfway through the Kama Sutra."

Heh, heh, heh. . .

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