Recently I’ve started going to Mass again. I was born and raised Catholic and attended Catechism every week, but my family never went to Mass religiously, pardon the pun. But now that I’m going to Mass again, something is different. I used to listen to the gospel fully and never questioned it. I may not have understood everything that was being said, but I was a kid. Show me a kid that says that they fully understand every single gospel that is told on Sunday’s and I’ll show you a liar.
But this time is different. I find myself questioning things during Mass. It's never the gospel or any of the readings that are taken out of the bible, it’s the way the Mass is presented. I’m having problems with the priests. For example, the last two masses I’ve gone to, I couldn’t help but notice that the priests seemed to be making Mass into a show where they get to be the stars. That’s not what religion is about to me. It’s about faith. And it’s not just one church, I’ve gone to three different churches this semester and I’m having the same problem everywhere I go.
The best example of this that I can give of this came from the most recent mass I attended. It was the third Sunday of Lent and the gospel was the story of Jesus asking the Samaritan woman to help him get water. This might be one of the most well known passages and is a great representation of the power that Jesus had. He convinced a woman of an opposing faith that he was the Son of God and that he needed her help. It’s a passage about the how even the Son of God had to ask for help sometimes, so we shouldn’t be afraid to also.
But instead of just letting us think about his passage from the Gospel on our own, the priest decided that he was going to put on a show and have someone dress up as the Samaritan and give out water to the rest of the parishioners and I. Meanwhile he is providing commentary like a professional wrestling announcer who was shocked by something. This priest wanted Mass to be his show, his spectacle. And that’s where I have a problem.
Mass isn’t supposed to be a show. It’s a weekly celebration of faith where we all come together to pray and hear the teachings of Jesus. We shouldn’t have to sit and watch the priest act like a game show host.
So I have hit a cross roads in my faith and I am faced with a question: is it possible for me to believe in the exact same things that the Roman Catholic Church believes in, but not believe in the Roman Catholic Church? I think it is possible, but it’s going to be difficult.
My whole life the teachings of Jesus and Catholic Church have basically been one in the same, but now I’m going to have to separate them. So I probably won’t be attending Mass weekly or even once a month. But I’ll probably go every once in a while with family or when I think that I want to pray with other people. And in the weeks that I don’t go to Mass, I’ll spend an hour on Sunday reading the bible and praying on my own, because that is the same level of faith.
