The welcoming arms of St. Peter’s at sunset
Posted on 05/04/2013 1:39:01 PM PDT by NYer
It took me fifty years to find my way home (to the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church), though only twenty-three to get pointed in the right general direction. This is my tenth year “inside,” corresponding thus to my sixtieth biological. My question for today: What takes people so long?
One begins, naturally, by answering for oneself. But I can’t coherently answer. Starting just after my Christian conversion, then moving forward patiently through memory, I recall many occasions when the idea of being received into the Catholic Church occurred to me. Several of these were somewhat dramatic.
But the drama was for quitting something else. It came to nothing in each case.
To start, as a sudden Christian convert, in England back in 1976, I actually first went looking for a Catholic priest, for it seemed to me then that the Church of Rome must offer Christianity, par excellence. Without invidiously naming names or places, I was sharply turned off, however. I was given a “Dutch catechism” to read, and other hints that the Church, then and in England, had gone New Age Marxist. Perhaps papism was dead.
A literary type, familiar with T.S. Eliot, and to some degree also with, e.g., Lancelot Andrewes, Richard Hooker, Jeremy Taylor, and Tracts for the Times, I soon found myself soused in High Anglicanism. The liturgy was impressive, the people seemed to take their faith seriously, and they called themselves “catholic.”
As a King James Bible reader, too – even though I’d long been reading it “as literature” rather than as Scripture; and similarly the Book of Common Prayer – I was “conditioned” by the poetry in them.
I know this marks me out as an “aesthete.” But in my experience, whether or not it is acknowledged, the beauty of language, music, gesture, architecture, and art play an important, often-crucial role in drawing people to the Church. Such things testify to the Gloria. They tell us God is large, not small; that the argument of the soul is not with something shallow, mean, and strident.
But even at the level of “mere reason,” the argument for the authority of the Catholic Church was unanswerable. It wasn’t a syllogism, or other formula. It was too obvious for that.
For in the view over twenty centuries of Christian history, how could “Rome” not be Christ’s Church? The question had only to be asked to see the answer. Of course, she was in every generation flawed, as every institution involving humans. But on this scale of history, the agitprop of a Luther or a Calvin became a farce. These were obsessions from some narrow place and time.
The welcoming arms of St. Peter’s at sunset
One may see this, and yet not act. For years I avoided reading Newman – for instance – because I knew he would rub my nose in this reality. I knew I couldn’t stand up to him. Ditto with so many other saints and scholars of the Church. They would endanger my comfortable Protestant affiliation. Yet I did not consider myself Protestant; and was consistently well disposed towards the Roman fold.
Here’s the thing. I cannot explain to myself, today, why it took me so long to become a Catholic. I want to know, because if I could understand it, I could help so many other people who are making my old mistake. I would know what to say to them, beyond what I have written above.
Partly it may be an eccentricity, but I have long been nearly allergic to most uses of the word, “new.” I can cope with New Testament, but an expression like “the new evangelization” leaves me cold. Further, I suspect this holds true for many others, who have long stood at the periphery of the true Catholic faith. Naturally attracted to the Catholic Church myself, I was discouraged by attempts to present something “new” in it, by many of its (arguably) well-meaning representatives.
For two generations now, it has seemed to me, the attempt to repackage the faith in a more attractive way to a contemporary audience has been, quite obviously, self-defeating. For me, at least, the very attraction of the Church, and the best argument against the competition, was that it remained the opposite of “new.” People like me – admittedly, a reactionary – are drawn to the Church not by the scent of fashion, but instead by the promise of “Eternity.”
They are sick, sick at heart, with the spirit of innovation. It is the very thing they are trying to escape, as they approach the divine. The secular environments from which they are escaping are rancid with the “new and improved.” They have tired of salesmanship. More than tired: they are repelled by the slick and shiny. Christ, to them, is the opposite of that.
Though mostly free of liturgical learning and sophistication, I have noticed that the younger Catholics attending the Latin Mass, high or low, are riveted by its solemnity. I have seen this in many subtle but unmistakable facts. For instance, small children their parents had not tried very hard to control at Novus Ordo Masses, are now carefully controlled; and the children themselves seem to attune to the atmosphere of reverence.
Some come because they’ve made the Old Mass a hobbyhorse. Some of those seem ever to be egging for a fight; and as a person of my age, I think that I understand why. For mostly, those are older people, with accumulated grievances. As I look to the future I consider instead the people arriving after the grievances, who only hunger and thirst.
“Old” wouldn’t necessarily appeal to them, either. They might not be reactionaries like me, or rather, might not yet realize that they are. I would not even say Eternity is “uncool.” It is right off the scale from what is available in the world, and you wouldn
Welcome Home, ping!
The author is undoubtedly hearing mass in a traditional, Latin, Roman Catholic church or chapel.
In the Novus Ordo churches, where the new religion is practiced, one could hardly be impressed by the beauty of languages, music, gesture or architecture. Especially if the architecture is represented by one of the new edifices that resemble aircraft hangars. All the things that made a Catholic church Catholic have been, by and large over the past century, tossed out and in place of those ancient sacred items are sterile, protestantized gathering halls where one is hard pressed to find a tabernacle, votive lights, confessionals or pictures and statues.
**new religion **
Hate to tell you this, but a Novus Ordo Mass is still a Catholic Mass last time I checked.
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Maybe Dave, you suddenly realized you are getting old and you have confronted the thought of your frailty as a human being,and you would like to have someplace to go after you expire. Good luck and Godspeed.
Good for him. People who leave the Church leave it because it is a pre-Medieval institution and those who come to the Church come for that very reason.
For we have not by following artificial fables, made known to you the power, and presence of our Lord Jesus Christ; but we were eyewitnesses of his greatness (2 Peter 1:16)
Our music will soon improve at all the Masses. One Mass is already beautiful.
It does take patience, though.
Have you discovered a way to have guitar spring snap in the shadow of the altar?
bttt
“Our music will soon improve at all the Masses”
Good luck with that, I’ve been waiting, how many years?
Truck out the good old stuff, I mean really old, Handel, etc.
Clearly there were many big mistakes made in the late 20th century. Vatican Council II was one of them.
It would be fitting and proper if the RC Church took a lead in finding the way back.
Handel, BTW, was a German Protestant employed by a English Protestant King, so I'm not sure I'd be too hasty to associate his very fine music with the Catholic tradition.
. THE HOUND OF HEAVEN Francis Thompson I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears I hid from Him, and under running laughter. Up vistaed hopes I sped; And shot, precipitated, Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears, From those strong Feet that followed, followed after. But with unhurrying chase, And unperturbèd pace, Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, They beat—and a Voice beat More instant than the Feet— 'All things betray thee, who betrayest Me'. ......................................... 'Strange, piteous, futile thing! Wherefore should any set thee love apart? Seeing none but I makes much of naught' (He said), 'And human love needs human meriting: How hast thou merited— Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot? Alack, thou knowest not How little worthy of any love thou art! Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee, Save Me, save only Me? All which I took from thee I did but take, Not for thy harms, But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms. All which thy child's mistake Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home: Rise, clasp My hand, and come!' Halts by me that footfall: Is my gloom, after all, Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly? 'Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest, I am He Whom thou seekest! Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.'
I know this marks me out as an “aesthete.” But in my experience, whether or not it is acknowledged, the beauty of language, music, gesture, architecture, and art play an important, often-crucial role in drawing people to the Church.
That's the difference between being a Catholic and a Christian...Language, music, gesture, architecture, art and pomp and the view of scripture as nothing more than literature makes one a Catholic...
The 'literature' of the scriptures warns against all these things...
Those who strive for a personal relationship with the author of that 'literature' are the real Christians...And thank God, there are far more people who have found or are searching for that relationship who have left and are leaving the Catholic Religon that are moving to it...
One would do well to notice that there is no mention of 'Jesus' in this testimony of a 'come home Catholic'...Should tell everyone everything they need to know about these 'come home' stories...
gads remember those awful guitar masses with the priests wearing burlap bags instead of gorgeous vestments?
sorry, but you are deceived...........
by whom??? Did God tell me to heed the words of God in the scriptures, or was it the devil???
As hubby says: ISC (I stand corrected!)
Thanks, but of course we still love Handel.
You are a Catholic doubter and that is too bad
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