North of the Shire

Because of circumstances, mostly of my own making, I ended up going to an evening Mass in a local parish Church I had never been into before. Over the recent years I have heard rumors and characterizations of this parish and had been told by some that “I wouldn’t like it.” This not as a particular point about me, so much as a generalization about how different that Church is compared to my regular parish.

I had taken them at their word up till now, and had been confirmed on occasion, such as seeing a banner one day several years ago at the parish, advertising the ALPHA course.

Even the design of the Church building, besides being well, ugly, from the outside, (there is no other way to say it), gives the impression of a way of thinking that I have heard much about and had experienced long ago as a Protestant.

However, I thought that any space can be made to honour God in worship if there is a commitment to do so. How many parishes have started in schools or halls before they had their own building? Although, the building is eventually a part of the parish worship and is consecrated space so when actually designing and constructing a Church building which will stand for many years to come, the understanding of the sacred is critical to how it is designed, and in the case of a Catholic Church, the understanding of the liturgy is also vital.

Having all this in the back of mind, I still went in with the commitment to be objective, knowing that every parish you go to has its own peculiarities and it is important not to be thrown by them. Besides, it was the last Mass available anywhere on the Sunday and so I was committed in any event, unless I wished to enter into mortal sin by missing my Sunday obligation.

The interior design was as the outside suggested, the semi-circle radiating outward motif which I am not generally fond of except for concerts and such, and perhaps interactive study or praise type sessions, but not for Mass. Part of the design, the intention of this semi-circle arrangement is to create the effect, which it does very well I might add, of the involvement of the people. In fact, because of simply one’s peripheral vision, it is inescapable to the point of giving one a completely different atmosphere, much like a live theatre venue. However, the difference is that in a theatre there is a performance (more on that) which focuses the attention and usually the lights are turned low to enhance that centre focus. As well, in a theatre, the stage is raised high enough to also accentuate the focus toward the performance.

In this case, the platform on which the altar is placed is raised only by two steps, perhaps three, a maximum of 27 inches, as it appeared to me. So, with the lights bright and the altar low, relatively speaking, the semi-circle remains strong, and psychologically it has, at least for me, the effect of detracting from the sacred, of taking away from worship and replacing that with heightened peripheral awareness. To complete this, also likely by design, there was no high altar at the wall behind the priest and no tabernacle. Neither was there a central crucifix. The tabernacle was off to the side and a lay-person took charge of retrieving and replacing the blessed sacrament from it. (After communion he put the sacrament in the tabernacle, closed it up, bowed and then proceeded to hitch up his pants. I sometimes require the same adjustment, but it seems that kind of thing could be avoided at that particular time by the simple expedient of the priest himself doing the honours, dressed as he is in the proper vestments. But that is an aside.)

However, with concentration I was able to follow the Mass and come to a prayerful mode before the King, although seeing three obvious liturgical abuses, long since abrogated in the rubrics by the Holy Father, made such concentration difficult. The music was provided by a piano player and singer, quite talented, with a professional sounding style of perhaps a lounge-singer, at least by the type of music selected for the Mass. It was all of that modern style, much of which I had not heard before, not particularly offensive or doctrinally unsound but all, with hardly an exception, like much Protestant Christian contemporary music, focusing on us as contrasted with traditional Mass music that focuses on God and doesn’t talk about us worshiping him but actually worships him, if you see the difference. But this is clearly in keeping with the effect of the design and decor, a decided shifting from the vertical dimension to the horizontal dimension, a trend that the Holy father specifically speaks against in his discussions of liturgy.

To cap this, at the end of the Mass, after Father had processed out and the final musical selection was completed with a singing crescendo by the pianist characterized by an upward octave finale, guess what? A round of applause. So it was a performance after all.

However, after all of this, and a firm purpose in my own mind of not returning, I was reading the bulletin and came across a notice that I thought I had seen earlier. A seminar of sorts on “centering prayer.” Theologically speaking, this was the capper to everything that I had felt liturgically up to that point. Here’s why;

Centering prayer differs from Christian prayer in that the intent of the technique is to bring the practitioner to the center of his own being. There he is, supposedly, to experience the presence of the God who indwells him. Christian prayer, on the contrary, centers upon God in a relational way, as someone apart from oneself. The Christian knows a God who is personal, yet who, as Creator, infinitely transcends his creature. God is wholly other than man. It is also crucial to Christian prayer that God engages man’s whole being in response, not just his interior life. In the view of centering prayer, the immanence of God somehow makes the transcendence of God available to human techniques and experience.

That is from an article entitled “The Danger of Centering Prayer” by Rev. John D. Dreher.

Essentially then, it conforms beautifully with everthing else that I had being sensing, such that the focus of faith of the parish, or at least some of the leadership, re-enforced by even the architecture, has become much like many of the Protestant denominations and sects, focusing on we or me and what we can get out of faith or religion, how it can enhance our lives here, rather than focusing on our relationship with that one other, the God that is the source and summit of our being, without whom we would not exist in the first place and without whom we will exist in complete darkness and horror, excepting that we follow him who he has sent, in obedience, not as Judas Iscariot, looking for the main chance, the material or other life enhancement, but rather in repentance, in humility, giving up ourselves for his sake.

All said, I am glad I went, for now I know for sure what I had pieced together here and there over the years.