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go here to buy my stock photography Alan Creech
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aaron klinefelter
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  I love a quiet, stripped-down Mass. If I go to daily Mass it's usually there on the right - St. Peter's downtown. Usually not more than 20 people there at Noon. Very quiet, no singing, sometimes no homily, simple Mass. I like that a lot. I like singing too. It would seem that a lot of Catholic parish members do not, since they don't. Of course my kids don't either - I don't get it.Where we typically go to Mass is on the left - Christ the King, the Cathedral for the Lexington Diocese. 2,700 families it is said - families. Talk about a megachurch. Not nearly all of these "members" show up ever. If they did, they'd have to tack on 15 more Masses on the weekends. As it is, there are 5, including the Vigil on Saturday. We have become Sunday at 5pm folks. This is a Mass that many traditionalists would love to hate, I imagine. It's the LifeTeen Mass. For some of my Protestant friends, it's much like a Catholic Mass and a Vineyard service had a baby. Let me tell you something - I like it. Now, if you don't, well go to the 8:45am Mass. There's a very good choir, very traditional music, etc. Guess what? I like that too. I find no reason to pit one against the other. At the center, both are the Mass. There is a worshipful reverence at/in both. The Catholic Church is, after all, said to be the Church of the great both/and. That's a good thing if you ask me, which perhaps you didn't but oh well, there's a free one for you. Agnus dei, qui tollis pecata mundi, misserere nobis. Agnus dei, qui tollis pecata mundi, misserere nobis. Agnus dei, qui tollis pecata mundi, dona nobis pacem. We actually hear and pray this, in a certain form, at the Mass we attend. My kids love to kid, "Ray Ray was there tonight." They know what it means. I've made sure of that. And I like that. I like a bit of Latin every now and then. If I know what it means, it works. If not, from my heart, it's kind of pointless. Even though it has a sort of culturo-sentimental tug in my emotional area, I have no illusion that Latin is some kind of inherently holy language given by God. Of course, language in general was given by God, in a sense, as a way for us to communicate. Latin happened to develop in the Italian region in a certain time period, long before the Church was around, from other languages I'm sure. Same with Greek and even Hebrew and Aramaic. Under it all, they're just languages that people speak, or did speak, in certain areas of the world. Latin was sort of adopted by the Church for practical reasons at the time, since it was the common language that tied together most of the European known world at the time. This was so because of oppresive Roman conquest - imperialist expansion - so the reason that Latin was common was certainly not "holy" by any stretch of the imagination. It was simply baptized like many other things, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's smart actually. To hold on to it, or yearn for it as if it's an angelic tongue, though, is another thing. Not sure that's really something we need to be doing. I like guitars too, even when played in the Mass - oh my. Guitars are musical instruments, developed from other musical instruments that mankind has used over the millenia for entertainment, worship, etc. They are much like organs, instruments, except much more ancient, along with their forebears, the lute. Some like organs, some like guitars, some like banjos or fiddles (violins if you prefer, depends on how you play them). I'm not sure our time and energy is best spent trying to make cases about which one is somehow (and how this is done is beyond me and I'm pretty damn smart) more inherently "reverent" or condusive to worship than another. Let's stick with the great both/and and get on with it. Please. I could go on and on - and on, but I'll lose steam after a bit. Holding hands is good, for instance, but I don't prefer to do it when I'm praying the Our Father in Mass. You will find my hands raised in the Orans position though. What I also don't do is gaze around to see all the other hand-holders while grinding about how somehow horrible that is in my heart - while praying the Our Father. OK, that really is it for today. It's a fine soft day out there, as they say in Ireland. We have a constant fine mist of rain blowing around today - just like Erin. The garden will love that. Pax vobiscum. Labels: catholic, church, liturgy :::
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three quotes |:: "Then, if we cannot as yet think alike in all things, at least we may love alike. Herein we cannot possibly do amiss." "Keep your eyes on the crucifix, for Jesus without the cross
is a man without a mission, and the cross without Jesus
is a burden without a reliever." "...I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be
completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self."
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