Bellarmine Chapel @ Xavier Univ.

Two weeks in a row now, I’ve attended a Catholic Mass. This is pretty much the longest streak of Mass-going I’ve been on for a good long time, but I don’t really plan on it extending to three. The Motherhouse, the scene of some crazy existential crisis for myself, seemed so far away and so different from what Bellarmine Chapel seemed to offer, so I really didn’t mind going to the same kind of service two weeks straight.

To be honest, there really wasn’t all that much similar about the Motherhouse and Bellarmine. The Motherhouse was a very conservative service, just a priest preaching to a big group of retired nuns. The service on Sunday had a very open feel to it: there was some insane woman handing out fliers in a shark hat and crazy flashing glasses, a priest who cracked jokes, a roving band of guitar playing church-hippies, and of all the things to start Mass with, an introductory handshake. The difference between the two venues could be seen just by walking in: the Motherhouse chapel is a huge, expansive, breathtaking thing with opulent paintings, marble all over the place, and beautiful stained glass…which blows away Xavier’s hyperbolic parabola with a pretty cool looking cross and some tiny stained glass windows. The layouts were also very different. in the Motherhouse’s chapel, the pews and chairs are aligned in straight lines. You’re looking at the backs of people’s heads. The pews in Bellarmine were in an arc, and unless somebody was sitting behind you, you could see a good majority of the faces in the room. I found this much more open and welcoming than most Catholic churches I have stepped into and found it to reinforce the early Catholic focus on community, which was something I’ve found to be lacking elsewhere.

It’s kind of hard for me to explain how a Catholic Mass goes: part of me thinks that this is just the way a Celebration of the Lord is, and that explaining it really isn’t necessary. I know too much about it. I’ve been to way to many of these things. Basically, it starts off with opening prayers, the readings, the Gospel (which is more important than the Old Testamen/Letters/Acts that are read before), the homily, the presentation of Gifts, more prayer interspersed through all of this (including the Creed, Our Father, Amen, and some variation on Christ has died/risen/will come again…), Communion, and then you go home. There’s also singing. At this place, there was a lot of singing. There was too much singing, but that’s mostly because I don’t think the Our Father is meant to sound like a folk ballad. That’s just me.

Dr. Fisher cracked a joke during his presentation when I was talking about my guilt over the Catholic Church and my desire to leave it by saying that they raised me well, and after sitting through a real Mass, they really did. Within the first minute, I was reciting the audience’s part in prayer, singing the songs I knew (and I know a lot by heart), even saying the Creed (where you affirm your belief in the Catholic Church, in all its Apostolic Holiness), and holding hands to join in with the Our Father. What I didn’t do was go up for communion, which now kind of strikes me as odd. I know that actions are perceived to be more meaningful than words, and I know that old habits are kind of hard to break, but it seems as though there’s a kind of hypocrisy within me that allows me to say words that hold such gravity without really meaning them. I think this is where Abbie’s argument about people going through the motions during mass comes into play for me…and I guess I’ll attempt to defend myself against an observation that wasn’t really made about me.

The Catholic Church was, for me, home for a great number of years. I don’t mean home as in what church I celebrated at, but I mean home. It was comfort, security, safety; I thrived in the environment and soaked everything up that I could. There was a period of time in my life when there was absolutely nothing right, but Chruch/Sunday School centered me. I think it was a big reason why I chose to go to a Catholic high school an hour away from my home instead of going to school 10 minutes away with the friends I already had. I think it may have also had a very small part of why I chose to come to the Mount. I found solace in my beliefs, and I knew what I was doing. It got to the point where I silently mouthed the priest’s part of Mass and could recite my favorite passages from the Bible near verbatim. It was kinda scary, but it was a weekend gig. It centered me.

Going back for a full mass for the first time in a long time was like sending a recovering alcoholic to a bar: it wasn’t so much a question of how well I was going to hold up, but when I was going to fall back into old habits. I don’t really think it mattered though. I may be a slight hypocrite, but who isn’t?

Overall, I see where the observations of the Church being too constrained and conservative come from: going to Mass with a bunch of liberal Protestants (I never thought I’d type that) was more eye opening than visiting old roots. What I wasn’t prepared to see was the Anointing of the Sick, which I’d always thought was an extremely private service. It would have been beautiful, if not for the priest cracking an odd joke about having already read some passage and the loud, zombie like “THE LORD HEALS US IN OUR FAITH” that followed every pause. I think I would have preferred it to be a private thing, but the standing that this Chapel has is that the community is a part of the healing process, which is pretty liberal-minded and old school at the same time, so it was pretty cool.

I can’t really rate the experience, and I can’t really count this as an “outside” anything, I just figured that since I went, I may as well write two pages about the service instead of doing the other work I have. Still, I had about as good a time as one could when going to Mass. And Jim’s car is awesome. Just thought I’d throw that out there.