Welcome to (Your) Church

I was visiting my aunt in Philadelphia this weekend after a long week in our nation's capital. We found time on Saturday night to attend Mass at Old St. Joseph's Church, the oldest urban Catholic Church in America. It's hidden in an alley; a throwback to the days when Catholics in America were decried as a fifth column and regularly attacked. It's a sweet little building, too - the interior design is OLD and good.

So we went through the motions and ritual of the Mass, the way I've been doing since I was a wee babe, and then we came to the priest's final blessing. He gave a few announcements and bade us all to leave in peace. But then he did something very, very strange (for me, at least). He asked if any of us were visitors to Old St. Joseph's. I didn't know what to do. Both my aunt and I had never been there before, of course, but the very fact that he asked was completely foreign to me in the context of a Catholic Mass.

I've been to a LOT of different houses of worship, not just Catholic churches, since I started down the path of interfaith dialogue. I try to visit a new one every Sunday/Saturday/Friday/Tuesday/whateverday. One of the things that I noticed was that after or even before every service, visitors would be asked to identify themselves. There would always be someone afterwards who would chase me down and ask me who I was and why I was visiting. Sometimes I'd even receive small gifts! The imam at my local mosque regularly pointed me out in the back of the room as an "honored guest." This has never happened to me at a Catholic Church, and it is one of the criticisms that I have of my religion - it is sometimes quite insular and cold.

Now maybe I've simply been going to all the "non-welcoming" Catholic churches, something I doubt, and hearing a priest ask for visitors was such a shock that it took me a few seconds to stand. But stand I did, and I smiled while rising. He welcomed us, and expressed his desire that we return to share in faith and fellowship. I sat back down.

For the first time in my life, someone was welcoming me to my own church.

interfaith, catholicism

Jack O' Lanterns and Jesus Christ

For some strange reason, I felt it necessary to attend 6:30 a.m. Mass this morning at the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception here in Denver. It's a beautiful place, and I don't stop by often enough. The crowd was sparse, as many early services tend to be, and was largely populated with the "older set," i.e. I was probably one of about 5 under the age of 25.

The usual rituals ensued, and continued up to the homily. The priest began by relating an archbishop's recent statements concerning the PAGAN FESTIVAL OF HALLOWEEN. It was the typical rehash of why it's really a hollow holiday, and should always, always be relegated to American "civil religion." Now the funny part: He contrasted it with today's celebration (All Souls Day) and how this is a day that, like Halloween, we are to honor our friends and relatives who have passed on. I forget exactly what differences he was pointing out. All Souls Day, like All Saints Day on November 1st, didn't happen by chance.

I giggled because I feel that the priest may have been willfully ignoring the ways in which pagan/nature holidays have informed, almost exactly, the calendar of the Catholic Church (and Christianity in general). All Souls and All Saints line up with Halloween, Christmas trees and Christmas time have their roots in Germanic myth, and the very word "Easter" may have been named after an old goddess figure. There are also a variety of ways in which Christian holidays fit in with the holidays of their Jewish ancestors. Many of them line up, in one way or another, with the observances of other faiths.

As I sat pondering all of this gobbledigook, the priest moved on to speak of Purgatory, and how we ought to be helping those friends and family who are waiting there. And how do we do this? The priest said, "Almsgiving, prayer, and fasting." Of course, as he spoke it, I was reciting the analogous terms in Islam: zakat, salat, sawm.

I left the church reminded again of the relative ease with which we can find points of convergence between and among our traditions, provided we are on the lookout for them. Happy Belated Halloween.

Religion and Politics Roundtable - A Long Post

The Center for Religious Services hosted a "Religion and Politics Roundtable" last night. The idea was to get a representative panel together, have them give different perspectives on the role of religion in political life or vice versa, then have Q&A time. We had a good crowd. The University Chaplain opened it up by explaining a bit about the contemporary American religio-political scene.

The first speaker was an organizer with the Navigators, an interdenominational Christian ministry. He started out with Matthew 22 and Leviticus 19 which state, respectively, "love the Lord your God with all your heart," and "love thy neighbor." His view was that Christians who held these passages close to them ought to care deeply about our election process, since the elections will affect the lives of all people. He mentioned how the Bible doesn't explicitly talk about every political issue, but it can help to provide us with a normative moral framework to figure it out. He also spoke to the dangerous ways in which politicians claim God to be on their side during elections, something that seems against the idea of the Kingdom of Heaven not being on earth.

The next speaker was a representative of FOCUS (Fellowship Of Catholic University Students), and he began with the distinction between himself and his parents, who he referred to as an "older generation" of Catholics. This older generation was still concerned, as it always had been, with things like civil liberties and worker's movements. In his mind, younger Catholics have become concerned more with issues of LIFE, and the sanctity thereof. In one sly turn of phrase, he was stating that workers have a voice, while the unborn lack that luxury. It was very curious and clever.

Next up was a member of our faculty who happened to be a Turkish Muslim. He spoke about Turkey's secular nature and the mandatory nature of their elections, i.e. you have to vote. Turkey's ruling party is the AK (Justice and Development), a slightly Islamic party. He noted that the President and the Prime Minister are both "practicing" Muslims. But he was also quick to note that the Quran deals overwhelmingly not with political life, but with the life of the individual, and about how to be a good person. This was what he saw Islam meaning for political life - making decisions, even in elections, that help us be good people.

Our rabbi from Chabad rounded out the panel by explaining a large part of Jewish history - the Chaplain had to eventually cut him off. But the gist was that for the fifteen centuries after Moses had been given the LAW, Jews had ruled themselves by Divine Governance, although there had been kings who slipped. But then the Babylonian Captivity began, and the Jews found themselves under the control of someone who did not share their faith. The question became - How do we keep the faith when our system of law and our truth are not running the show? He explained that since then it has been a waiting game. The Messiah will eventually come back and restore the original plan. But he was very clear in pointing out that the quietist version of Judaism has been in effect since the destruction of the Second Temple. Jews were faced with a bit of a "Hobbes' Dilemma." It was better to have a repressive government than complete anarchy. This was, however, beginning to change as Jews came into their own in the political life of America.

After that we went to Q&A. People asked about the tide of secularism in Europe and America and what it meant for us. The Catholic fellow pointed out that Catholics were called by Scripture to spread the Gospel, and that no matter how secular the world got, they would always have that responsibility. The rabbi pointed out that European Jews used to have to wait until a major Christian holiday to get beaten up (har har), but that both Jews and Muslims were being discriminated in Europe nowadays by "religious bigots without faith." It was a very keen reading of what's been going on on the Continent since the end of World War II.

The Catholic fellow mentioned seeing New Jersey Governor John Corzine (who he referred to as pro-abortion) in the office of a local bishop. He confronted the man of the cloth and asked him what on earth the two men could have possibly been talking about. The bishop replied, "Oh you know, the things we have in common - our common concerns, like the poor and civil liberties." He admitted that as people of faith, we can pick and choose when the times demand it.

With the exception of a few more forays into the "abortion issue," the whole thing went quite well. And it ended with a very prescient observation on behalf of the Muslim professor, who said, "Of course, you don't have to vote the same way each time. Every four years you vote again, so if something isn't working, you can change it."