gimme that old time religion... well, maybe not

I went to mass. It was the most austere and conservative mass I think I have ever attended. What a total drag. No music, no homily, no smiles or handshakes during the sign of peace (only nervous nods), the church was full but you could have heard a pin drop. I saw only one other person who looked like she was of European descent, but I didn’t get a chance to say hello to her or anything. This was a very sober affair, and a glaring reminder of why people sometimes refer to themselves as "recovering Catholics." I think it is what mass must have been like decades ago. Nobody made eye contact going in or coming out. Outside I looked for a friendly face. Some people wandered to a courtyard in the back where they knelt on the cement and prayed in front of a statue of Mary. There was no church bulletin. Finally I went up to a lady and asked her if she spoke English. She did. I asked her if the service was typical for the cathedral. No music, no homily? She looked at me with disapproval, as if I had asked why there weren’t dancing girls and a disco ball. But at least she gave me an explanation of sorts. Though Catholics can fulfill their obligation to attend mass any day after Thursday (special rule in place here since Sunday is a work day) some masses are big masses and some are small daily masses. Even thought the church had been full, the one I had attended was a daily mass.

Ironically, the gospel reading had been about the parable of the talents. The servant who didn’t take any risks made no profit for his master, and he was sent away with nothing. To me, the spiritual lesson is so obvious. How can people read scripture and miss the whole point? I guess they’ve been doing it forever, focusing on prescriptions and rules. To see the these poor Asian immigrants, driven by poverty to leave their homes and take jobs in this cruel, hot city… they flock to church for hope and spiritual encouragement, and what do they get? A dry religious exercise. Maybe the eucharist is enough for them, but I think they could be given so much more. It reminds me of a movie I went to see with my dad when I was a little kid. “The Poseidon Adventure,” about a huge cruise ship that struck by a tidal wave. There were two priests in the story, one progressive and provocative, the other traditional and devout. The traditional priest was with the sick people in the infirmary when the tragedy struck. They all started shuffling their way to the upper levels of the ship. Meanwhile, the progressive priest was in the company of a group of survivors who figured out that the ship was filling with water and was going to flip completely upside down. They knew that the best chance for survival was to get to the bottom of the ship so that they would be on top when it flipped around, and they were actually working their way down instead of up. When the two parties crossed paths, the priests exchanged words. The young modern-thinking priest begged the other priest to bring his people and follow them, but even after the older priest understood that he was leading them the wrong way, he refused to change courses. He said that the sick people would never make it anyhow, so he was going to accompany them to their deaths. It seems saintly, somehow, to join the hopeless, but the lie in that is that people are indeed hopeless. I don’t believe they are. There has got to be a little more brightness to the message. Maybe it's there and I just missed it today. Maybe I’ll go back one more time for a big mass and see if they bring out the dancing girls and disco balls.