Attending Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral
This was from a friend of mine
So on Sunday as a gesture to Mary Ellen who is nominally Catholic, and to Cory we attended mass at the magnificent (usually) St. Patrick's cathedral.
Mass was poorly attended and the entire of the interior of the cathedral was a huge mass of scaffolding. Here is symbolic point number 1: the work is presumably being done to repair the crumbling structure of the church building having not been maintained for many decades. I.e., I don't think they are doing this to create some incredible new vision of the cathedral. The sermon was very hard to follow due to the poor sound system and the priest was at the altar that seemed to be a mile away. The cathedral was slightly cool and dark and it was bright and hot outside. Probably close to the experience by a typical medieval mass goer. Believe it or not the sermon as best as I could make out was that we shouldn't concentrate on the seen, but that would should concentrate on the unseen and the life hereafter. That's what really counts. There were two collections and so I dropped a 20 for each collection. Here is the kicker - get ready for it. I didn't feel anything particularly one way or the other and as we sauntered out the bright sunlight hit me full force and what did I see right in front of me in all of its glory? The statue of Atlas boom right in front of me! I thought that that was so shocking and such a contrast to the whole mass experience that I just had to share it with you. I will leave it to you to connect the dots and write an essay about it and let me know what it all means if you ever feel like it.
So on Sunday as a gesture to Mary Ellen who is nominally Catholic, and to Cory we attended mass at the magnificent (usually) St. Patrick's cathedral.
Mass was poorly attended and the entire of the interior of the cathedral was a huge mass of scaffolding. Here is symbolic point number 1: the work is presumably being done to repair the crumbling structure of the church building having not been maintained for many decades. I.e., I don't think they are doing this to create some incredible new vision of the cathedral. The sermon was very hard to follow due to the poor sound system and the priest was at the altar that seemed to be a mile away. The cathedral was slightly cool and dark and it was bright and hot outside. Probably close to the experience by a typical medieval mass goer. Believe it or not the sermon as best as I could make out was that we shouldn't concentrate on the seen, but that would should concentrate on the unseen and the life hereafter. That's what really counts. There were two collections and so I dropped a 20 for each collection. Here is the kicker - get ready for it. I didn't feel anything particularly one way or the other and as we sauntered out the bright sunlight hit me full force and what did I see right in front of me in all of its glory? The statue of Atlas boom right in front of me! I thought that that was so shocking and such a contrast to the whole mass experience that I just had to share it with you. I will leave it to you to connect the dots and write an essay about it and let me know what it all means if you ever feel like it.
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' Given that poorly defined and enforced property rights lie at the heart of so many environmental problems, especially in poor countries, this whole area is a big omission from this encyclical. ' from
http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commenta...
The UK's Lord Monckton, a real climate expert, is a staunch Catholic, I wonder if he will comment.
If you want to see Medieval, attend a Catholic funeral mass, which is not as extremely ritualistic as I recall a regular daily Catholic mass to be.
I with family attended my father's Catholic funeral this month after his body had to be transported from another state to Alabama to be buried beside my mother.
Among those viewing the mass were my adopted daughter and her brand new husband both with Protestant childhood backgrounds.
My son had seen my mother's funeral mass but I had to remind him that the "smelly smoking stuff" was called incense.
Off and on, the swings of an incense burner was paraded up and down and also so were the sprinkles of holy water.
When my dad's coffin received a healthy walk-around sprinkle of holy water, I could not help but think, "That should keep away the evil spirits after Dad's been dead a whole week."
Guess modern Catholics would just call that a purification rite and say no more.
After the mass, I remarked to my daughter and her husband, "Bet you never saw anything like that."
The hubby just somberly nodded and nicely asked if they could skip the graveside service.
I graciously told them that everything was cool. "Be safe."
Both my parents now lie side-by-side after receiving the all the Catholic rituals and rites they wanted. That's all that matters.
Friendships are valuable and to support our friends we join them in rituals they find important tho' are without meaning to us. This should be seen only for what it is, friendship and not support of the ideology behind the ritual.
There are two religious events I have attended in recent years, one was unpleasant from start to finish, in the other I felt ok at the time but looking back, I have some disquiet.