Episcopalian Considering Conversion

[RNRobert]

I feel for you and I completely understand where you are coming from, but we must remember…the purpose of going to Church is to worship and honor God, not for us to be entertained to the point that we feel warm fuzzies all the time. The validity of the Mass is not contigent on your feeling spiritually awaken every Sunday.

Good luck on your journey!

AMEN! I attended a Baptist church for a while, then a non-denom founded when the pastor left. I heard great preaching, and good singing ('tho personally I would have less singing and more preaching), but I felt like something was missing, like I wasn’t really worshipping. It wasn’t until I became Catholic and partook of the Eucharist that I really felt like I was truly engaged in worship. I’ve been in a number of Catholic churches in the country and heard great homilies, poor homilies, as well as good and bad singing. But I think what many people are looking for sometimes with regard to singing and preaching is simply to get some ‘experience’ which seems to be nothing more than entertainment, I’m reminded of something C.S. Lewis wrote in the Screwtape Letters (Screwtape was a senior devil writing to a junior devil on how to tempt people and lead them away from God)- he was an Anglican but what he wrote could apply equally to many Catholic parishes:

One of our greatest allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me.I do not mean the Church as we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible wirh these humans. All your patient sees is the half-finished, sham Gothic erection on the new building estate. When he goes inside, he sees the local grocer with rather an oily complexion on his face bustling up to offer him one shiny little book containing a liturgy which neither of them understands, and one shabby little book containing corrupt texts of a number of religious lyrics, mostly bad and in very small print. When he gets to his pew and looks round him he sees just that selection of his neighbors who he has hitherto avoided.

 

[DL82]

Congratulations on coming to believe in the Catholic Faith. That’s the rock! Whatever problems you might find in your local parish, and there will be problems because the Church is made up of fallen human beings like you and me, you need to build your faith upon the rock, and the rock is the infallible teaching, and unity with St Peter and his successors, the linchpin of the Church in heaven, earth and purgatory. Keep holding to that.

As a convert, I’ve experienced the same kind of thing you talk about, though I’ve always been lucky enough to live close to at least one Catholic church which had real reverential worship. The witness of converts really encourages so many Catholic friends of mine, and I think you have a real part to play in building up the Church where you are. Keep at it.

Don’t forget as well, when you go to Mass, you come to the sacrifice of Calvary, you don’t go in thinking what you’ll ‘get out of it’ in terms of how it makes you feel, but putting into it everything you can. Focus on that sacrifice, and develop a real hunger for the Blessed Sacrament - believe me, when you finally get to receive Jesus Christ, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in that Sacrament, you’ll see that all the singing and incense and vestments in the world are just window-dressing in comparison!

In the meantime, if the liturgical side of things is starting to get you down, maybe there’s something you can do as a family, like praying morning and evening prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours together, or praying the Rosary as a family, thus you can at least instil some reverence for the liturgy in your own domestic church while you wait to be brought into full communion.

If you have the time and money for a family holiday, you could always go to Rome and see how it’s meant to be done! And if not, maybe make a retreat to a monastic community that has a healthy and reverential liturgical life.

Have you signed up for RCIA yet? If not, do it now! Go get yourself Catholicized - then you can put “Tiber Swim Team 2010” on your signature

Good luck.

 

[chris_molter]

I second what Contarini and Gurney have said.

Take heart since you’re definitely not the only convert to have this kind of issue. I’m certainly in that boat with you!

Another thing to look at is that the trend right now is towards a greater depth in preaching/homiletics and a recapturing of the sense of the sacred in our Liturgy. H.H. Pope Benedict has helped slowly turn the ship towards this direction and many clergy and laity have taken up the task to restore some of what had been lost in the liturgical upheavals following Vatican II.

 

[almightyservant]

I attend the Mass (ordinary fom) at my parish for many years. Throughout the years, there have been priests with good homilies and many with poor homilies. But I still go to the Mass because I get a chance to receive the Eucharist or just be there to worship Jesus.

But here’s a way of experiencing the Mass that could help you over come the unmoving homilies. I linked a blog post, because I like the comments. However, a direct link to the article is there. It’s about a Baptist ministers experience with an ancient Liturgy. In this case the ancient Liturgy is Orthodox, but the same experience could be had with the Traditional Latin Mass.