I've listened twice now to a great lecture by Terry Mattingly, delivered a couple of years ago to an audience of Orthodox priests and laymen. It's title: "So What Do the Converts Want?" It's about and meant for Orthodox believers, but most of it could apply to Catholic churches too, I would say. You can hear it for yourself by going here, then clicking on the "Present, STate and Future of Orthodoxy in America" link, which will take you to MP3 files of several lectures. There will Terry's be. If you're a Catholic or Orthodox layman or cleric, I strongly encourage you to download it and listen to it).
Terry, who is a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy, offers a perspective on what converts to Orthodoxy are looking for. He says they want beauty. They want a stable tradition that can give them solid answers without ignoring the realities of what it means to live in the world today. They want to worship -- they don't want to cut down on all the distinctly Orthodox liturgical and sacramental things in an effort to make the liturgy shorter, or more like contemporary mainstream worship trends. In many cases, they are running away from that!
In short, they don't want less Orthodoxy, they want more Orthodoxy. Listening to Terry explain this, I thought that that's exactly what most converts to Catholicism want, at least in my experience: not a watered-down, assimilated form of the faith, but the real thing, in its fullness, with joy and without apology.
Terry, who teaches journalism, says that newspapers today are trying to create newspapers for people who don't like to read. Similarly, he said, too many churches are trying to create worship for people who don't like to worship. That's not the way to go.
He also said from his experience as finance chief in his Southern Baptist parish, he can tell that the overwhelming majority of a church's funding comes from a small minority of really committed parishioners -- not the wealthiest ones either. Terry said an Orthodox bishop told him it's true for Orthodoxy too -- that the people who are the heart and soul of a parish, in terms of giving time and service, are those who come to confession and Vespers.
Finally, Terry said converts are looking for a church that will be a good place to raise kids in, such that the kids will stand a good chance of holding on to the faith as adults. This is a very important point, as I discovered in my faith journey. And it has very little to do with youth programs and midnight bowling, I think.
I'd like to ask readers of this blog who are converts to a liturgical church -- or for that matter, to any church: So what do you want?
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Subscribe
Yes! Give me reverence! The Catholic Church drew me in through her history, her unchanging (yet living) moral and theological teaching, and her teaching that our ultimate purpose is union with God (something I had never heard put in that way before...spousal union with God? Incredible!). What "sealed the deal", if you will, was learning about and then actually experiencing the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. If the Church, had Jesus, how could I turn away?
And if Jesus is really present in the Mass--the Sacrifice of the Mass--should we not treat this meeting of the divine and the mundane, of Heaven and earth as the truly holy and sublime experience that it is, with appropriately reverent music, prayer, dress, and action? So no, Senescent, we aren't just looking for some "smelly, belly, dusty religion". We've found Jesus, our High Priest, who presents His sacrifice of love to the Father on our behalf every single day in the Mass, and we want to honor Him by setting everything we do in the liturgy apart from our "profane" lives (ie, the Precious Blood belongs in a gold or silver chalice, not a clay cup that my two-year-old cousin could make or a mug from Walmart, because we are putting the body of our King in the best and most beautiful raiment we have to offer).
So give me chant, give me Latin, give me silence--all of these are sufficiently "other" that they allow God to speak through all the noise of my daily life (and the hated tambourine...).
I could slip back into my zealot phase and tell you about my conversion from Catholicism to Orthodoxy, but it is very similar to everyone elses. I won't tell you about how I was one of the o"rthodox Catholics and how I looked down my nose on all the liberal Catholics who wouldn't take the time to learn their Baltimore catechism and how I personally corrected Scott Hahn on the many flaws in his books. I could tell you how elated I was to discover Orthodoxy and found the "true and ancient faith" and how I beat up all of my "o"rthodox Catholic ex-friends about not converting with me.
I could tell you about how I moved 100 miles back to my hometown and how frustrated I was leaving my EOC-Antiochian parish to a small GOA parish where the ethnics knew very little about their faith and never showed up on time. Especially the other choir members with their beautiful voices. I could tell you about my losing my business and then my divorce and then all my possessions in Katrina and how humbled I was. Then I could tell you how I found out how hard it was for me to stay on the path and how it led me to understand human frailty.
I now live in a town in Mississippi 100 miles away from the nearest Orthodox church and I am married to a Southern Baptist. We attend a Disciples of Christ Church most Sundays when we don't travel to the Orthodox church, which is unfortunately rare. The people at the DOC church are truly wonderful Christians and the pastor is a better orator than almost any Orthodox priest I have listened to. But the liturgists are Episcopal wannabe's and I just want to tell them that if they want true litury to skip the Anglicanism and Catholicism and go to Orthodoxy. But I truly enjoy the company of these people.
My wife and I listen to a lot of Thomas Hopko CD's and she has never found a point that he makes with which she can disagree. We read from the OS Bible and she never disagrees with any of the comments. She agreed to have a big fat Greek wedding in my hometown. I have had many people in my new city who have heard of the Orthodox church and have told me they wish they had a little bit of Orthodoxy in their churches. Especially the ones who have left their churches and no longer attend. My dream is to start a mission church in my new hometown, but having previously been a high brow Christian who towed the line and was pretty pissed at anyone else who couldn't fall in line, and now a still repentent humble backslider after my divorce, I don't feel worthy of starting one. I wish I could convince one of the "o"rthodox Protestant pastors I have me to check out the AOC Western Rite.
An interesting observation: My DOC church led a mission team to refurbish a DOC church in the 9th Ward in New Orleans. The pastor of the Black church, in his 60's, and his wife and a few parishoners came to my DOC church and joined us for the worship service. The choir director chose Kum By Yah as one of the songs. None of 9th Warders were familiar with the words or the tune. They led our congregation in one of their spiritual hymns. After about five minutes they stopped singing and jokingly said they weren't near finished but they understood that we couldn't keep up with them much longer.
God. And with Him, all good things.
I think different converts are looking for different things. Take you for example, Rod. Given all the trolling of liberal Catholicism you've been doing lately, I'd say you're looking for Lefebvrism, except without all the paranoia and high camp.
What TMatt said in his talk - I'm on of those people looking for more than a rock concert and a plasma screen on Sunday mornings.
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.