Faith In Exile, Part II

To continue…

I began searching out and reading Catholic blogs and websites, and was soon dismayed at what I read. Well, let me clarify that. I was dismayed at what the articles pointed me towards. All the time I had been circling Catholicism, thinking in terms of doctrine and authority and salvation, I had managed to somehow ignore the fact that I was contemplating the Catholic church during a time of great upheaval. I found myself confronted with scism and sexual scandal and allegations of cover-ups and Vatican II this and sedevacantist that and vacant seats and impious popes and illicit popes and illegitimate popes and angry laypeople and apathetic leadership and goofy circus Masses and host-in-the-hand and priests saying the Mass in English while facing their yawning followers. I had no idea what to make of it. I had no idea how to proceed.

So I wrote to some of the Catholics whose writings I had found online, expressed my discomfort, and asked for some friendly advice. Is it okay to attend the Novus Ordo Mass? Is Francis a legitimate pope? Do the sedevacantists have a good point?

Almost every Catholic who answered me had a different take on the issues I raised. Some said attending the “new” Mass is fine, because the main thing is to go to Mass, Christ being present in the Eucharist. Others advised that to touch anything post-Vatican IIish is to commit sin, since the Novus Ordo is not real Catholicism.

I began to get the same feeling that had long troubled me among the Presbyterian/Reformed crowd, who are notoriously and aptly called “the split P’s,” for their penchant to split into micro-denominations over disagreements over things like total alcohol abstinence, exclusive psalmody in worship, the Regulative Principle of Worship, etc. The responses I received led me to read even more blogs and books, and I became dizzy from all the name-calling and accusations. The now-trite phrase “holiness spiral” began to take on new meaning.

While puzzling all this out, I bought a St. Andrews missal, a breviary, and a Douay-Rheims bible on the advice of several of my online acquaintences and began poring over them every day. I also got a rosary and taught myself to say it, and began doing so regularly. I also started watching Mass online via some trad websites and trying in vain to follow along in my missal.

Finally, I decided to attend Mass at one of two local Catholic churches, this one a tiny rural parish. I went on a rainy Sunday morning and was greeted by a kindly gray priest wearing blue tennis shoes beneath his green vestments. I explained that I had never attended a Mass before, and the priest got me settled in a pew about halfway back (“So you can watch what the others are doing and imitate them”) and showed me the paperback missal. Others began to drift in, and before long the small church was nearly full…which meant about two dozen souls were present. My brief interactions with some of them gave me the impression that they were good country people, plain and unpretentious.

The service was fast and bland, notable for the recorded praise & worship-style music. About ten minutes in, I stopped trying to keep up in the missal and just watched everyone else, singing when I could find the place and kneeling when the others knelt. During the communion, an older man with a face that looked like it had been carved by strokes from a machete leaned over and patted my shoulder, whispering, “If you’re not a Catholic, you can go up with the rest of us and just cross your arms over your chest. Father ___ will give you a blessing instead of giving you the bread.” I did as he suggested, figuring I’d be foolish to pass up a blessing. If the blessing was legitimate. And if the priest was licit. And if…if…if….and the doubts and questions started clamoring in my head again.

After the Mass, the elderly priest, hobbit-like with his open face and warm demeanor, chatted with me for a minute while everyone else made beelines for their cars. I drove home and divulged the intel I’d gathered to my wife, who listened in fascination. She smiled and said, “I’m glad you went. You’ve been needing to do this.”

The next week, I started to drive to the other Catholic church, one town over (about a half-hour drive), for the 8:00 am Mass. But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. While the first Mass had not been overtly unpleasant, I was troubled by the casual, thrown-together atmosphere (a reaction doubtless brought about by my watching impressive, immaculate Latin Masses online). The other church is much larger, situated in a metropolitan area, and seems from what I have gathered to serve a much more affluent demographic. I simply could not bear the prospect of sitting through some improvised, irreverent performance…not with all my questions and concerns still clattering around in my mind. So I stayed home and read the Bible and some St. Thomas Aquinas and my breviary.

And now the season of Lent is here, and I am adrift.

To be continued…

~ S.K. Orr