Last week’s discussion of an article in First Things brought up a topic I have increasingly reflected on over the years – the gulf between the effort required by Protestant denominations vs the Catholic Church.
My paternal grandparents were United Methodists, and very much into their faith. They were the quintessential “church people,” hosting coffee and donuts, going to Bible study, and their home was littered with magazines and prayer books.
They were about as high-end as one could be in terms of involvement, yet the core requirements to be in “good standing” were pretty easy: an hour of church a week and some donations. No need to confess sins, no dietary restrictions or fasting requirement, no extra days of obligation other than Christmas and Easter, just a pretty relaxed time of singing and inspirations speeches.
As I bounced among denominations, I found they were very much alike in that sense. Baptists of course go longer in terms of Bible study, and their sermons are rhetorical works of art, but it was otherwise a permissive environment. I was a Lutheran for a few years, with similar time commitments. The Sunday service was similar to the Mass, and Christmas was spectacular, but it was pretty low key.
When I explored Catholicism, the requirements were daunting. Going to Mass was not even the baseline – there were Holy Days of Obligation, obligatory fasts, obligatory Reconciliation, plus a dizzying array of worship and prayer options.
I’ve seen Protestants mock this, saying it shows that Catholics have little actual faith, and instead rely on gimmicks, physical actions and trinkets for salvation, as if God could be gamed in such a way. The truth is the opposite – as one digs deeper into faith, it is exciting to find new ways to be closer to God, to dive deeper into prayer and contemplation.
Going to a weekday Mass really mixes things up, and doing it at the crack of dawn (when they are often held), sets the table for the day and changes the flow of the week. Taking a long lunch for a Holy Day of Obligation likewise creates a sense of diving immediacy. The whole liturgical calendar does that. In his Sword of Honour trilogy, Evelyn Waugh uses the liturgical calendar rather the secular one to mark the passage of time, and it is very effective.
The greater burden of the Church is not taken lightly, and I think it is why so many converts (myself included), feel as if they have been pulled into the faith almost against their will. The extra work, the painful self-examination, the depth of things to learn and read is intimidating.
As I wrote before, from time to time I recall my Protestant days and wish I could go back to them. This is particularly likely during Lent, when my dislike of fried fish leaves my Friday dietary options limited. Why bother getting ashes, using vacation time for weekday solemnities, confessing to a priest (and doing penance!) if one can get the same salvation with a single Sunday service and eat whatever you want year-round?
Based upon what I’ve seen and read, I think that is a major part of its appeal to ex-Catholics, who always seem bitter about the years they spent in the Church. All that prayer and fasting was completely wasted in their eyes. They seem to exult in the lighter burden, much in the way I celebrated my retirement from the military by deliberately sleeping in on drill weekends and growing out my beard (I have not been clean shaven since).
The reason I disagree is that the “easy button” didn’t work for me. I went to church and also went right on living almost the exact same sinful lifestyle. As the sermons reminded me, all I had to do in order to obtain salvation was to love Jesus and I would be saved.
Yet I knew something felt off, and when I entered the Church, the contradiction between faith and practice became obvious. There were two reasons for this.
The first was that Catholic social teaching is much more strict. These days it seems to be more honored in the breach, but there are strict rules about chastity, avoiding mortal sins like wrath, sloth, and gluttony (to name my current favorites).
That leads us to the second reason: having to confess these sins. The Examination of Conscience is a wonderful (and terrible) thing, and having to admit that one has sinned, is sinning, and probably will again, is humbling and appropriately humiliating. Growing up, I heard a great deal about the evils of guilt, including Catholic guilt, but we now see what happens when no one feels guilty: people destroy each other online and in real life, without giving it a second thought.
The Catholic Church gave me a stronger conscience, and that in turn has made me better able to resist sin (though I am of course not perfect). That is why I cannot go back, because I need those boundaries to keep myself in check.
I must also note that just about all the old Mainline Protestant churches in the US are either collapsing or have already collapsed, from the Anglican Communion to the Methodists and beyond. The ‘easy button’ doesn’t seem to be a viable solution.
Chateau Lloyd 
Leave a comment