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| Sunday, May 5, 2013 |
1) Denomination
- Christian: Catholic
2) Building Type
- A tall, traditional New England brick building with stained glass windows, a lovely white (& wood) vestibule, and two wings at the front nearest the stage.
3) Ambience
- While beautiful, the interior was dimly lit. A high ceiling with white banners hanging down. The color scheme is dark brown and white. Straight ahead of you as you enter is a large crucified Christ. The church had a hushed and somber feel to it.
4) Demographics
- About two hundred people. Though a church in a college town, the college-aged kids were the least-represented age-group in the congregation. As Catholic services don't provide childcare services, there were a number of small children in addition to the slightly older kids. The white-haired folk were out in significant force.
5) Nature of Service
- The highly-stylized nature of a Catholic mass will make your head spin. One giant, elaborate dance consisting of numerous little rituals all stitched together…It is now apparent to me why Catholic children have to take classes instructing them how to be Catholics.
- The priest carries out a variety of inscrutable little rituals and throughout the service, the congregation will, as a unit, respond with the proper word or phrase to something that the priest says or does while performing these little rituals.
- Additionally, the interior is heavy on the religious imagery and symbolism. The back wall is dominated with a large crucified Christ, the windows are all stained-glass and most contain Christian imagery, and there are numerous wall-hangings of saints and such.
- The service was preceded by a confusing song sung in English and featuring the accompaniment of a single acoustic guitar. It was confusing because it was clearly an attempt at modernizing Catholic music, but it retained the old, doomy feel of classic Catholicism. While this song was being played, the priest (in full vestments) threw holy water on everyone. He then gave an opening prayer with a fantastic quasi-homosexual Bostonian accent. Next was a solo-prayer with piano music. After a few readings by a little gay teen, the priest mic'd up and began strolling the aisles and speaking casually, making light jokes and such. He spoke from the heart and was so bold as to make claims such as "Any living body, such as the church, must change" and how he struggled with the fear mongering of religion, such as the teaching from his youth that you will go to Hell if you eat meat on Fridays. He then engaged in a strange dance zig-zagging around the stage while holding a Bible in front of his face. At the end of this dance, he stood at the podium and began preaching about this week's message (Love Each Other). When this concluded, we recited the Apostles' Creed and then prayers were said for local and global people. Hymns were sung. A round of "peace be with you" handshakes. Announcement time for other events. Communion.*
*Out of respect, I did not partake in the sacrament.
6) Orientation to Newcomers
- No one in the congregation took the initiative to greet me or to chat with me in any capacity. The highly-ritualized nature of the service made the newcomer stick out like a sore thumb and very little was done to remedy this.
7) Sincerity
- Members of the church seemed to be here out of a looming sense of duty, rather than out of an inspired desire. I was given the impression that they were here for a presentation or for something being given to them by some third party. The vibe was more individualistic, less communal, and less convivial. It did not feel like a community of seekers working together toward a common goal.
8) Community Strength
- As mentioned above, the community seemed cold and out of touch with each other. While there were several upcoming events outside of the standard church service, they were all seasonal ritual celebrations with intense Catholic-y names, rather than being community gatherings, per se.
9) Oddities
- The priest threw water at us.
- At one point, the priest did this very strange zig-zag walk around the stage and between podiums, all the while holding what was presumably a large Bible adorned with shiny pastel designs reminiscent of something you might see in the Tate Modern in front of his face.
- At seemingly random intervals, the audience will collectively respond to something apparently innocuous (to the outsider) that the priest has done or said.
10) "Cultiness"
- 7/10
- It seems to me that a Catholic mass is the perfect candidate for a perfect or near-perfect score on the "cultiness" meter. However, this particular priest went out of his way to critical examine traditional Catholicism and to make his message--and the church--relevant to the contemporary world. He was accessible and friendly.
Final Impression:
Not a good place to go if you're just having a bad week.
While the service felt doom-and-gloomy and failed to leave me feeling "spiritually nourished", as it were, I was a bit impressed by the apparent modernization of Catholicism. As mentioned above, the priest addressed issues such as the Church's reluctance to grow and adapt and the issue that Catholicism long relied on fear. I was further impressed when the Bangladeshi factory accident was addressed during the global & regional prayer portion of the service, and the congregation was called to question the desire for cheap clothing.
