{"id":12355,"date":"2019-01-02T10:20:14","date_gmt":"2019-01-02T16:20:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=12355"},"modified":"2019-01-02T15:20:54","modified_gmt":"2019-01-02T21:20:54","slug":"does-the-mass-make-a-difference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2019\/01\/does-the-mass-make-a-difference.html","title":{"rendered":"Does the Mass make a difference?"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><figure id=\"attachment_6712\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6712\" style=\"width: 960px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6712\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/533\/2017\/06\/priest-1588892_960_720.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"960\" height=\"640\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-6712\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">from pixabay: https:\/\/pixabay.com\/en\/priest-catholic-mass-host-chalice-1588892\/; public domain<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>Here\u2019s something from twitter:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">In first General Audience of the year Pope Francis said \"People who go to church every day and then live hating others and talking badly about people are a scandal: better not to go to Church, living as they do as atheists, \u2026 rather than giving a counter-witness\" <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/aXakM9Yp7V\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/aXakM9Yp7V<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Catholic Sat (@CatholicSat) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/CatholicSat\/status\/1080490005557055493?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">January 2, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>and<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/twitter.com\/TommasoNin\/status\/1080484588584083459<\/p>\n<p>And I don\u2019t want to get into a dispute about the Pope.\u00a0 Running the full link through Google Translate gets me something that\u2019s a bit mangled and confused and I don\u2019t want to try to parse this too much, but you know you\u2019ve read similar things elsewhere, so I don\u2019t think I\u2019m merely railing against a strawman, but here goes:<\/p>\n<p>My issue is this:\u00a0 it is perfectly OK for Catholics to be sinners.\u00a0 It\u2019s part of being human, and no one should expect that being Christian will remove that human tendency to sinfulness.\u00a0 Some Catholics\/Christians like to say, in response to being called out as sinful, something along the lines of \u201coh, honey, you should see how sinful I\u2019d be if I <em>weren\u2019t<\/em> a Christian.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But this quote from the Pope really bugs me.\u00a0 Let\u2019s suppose his objective was to criticize hypocrites.\u00a0 Yes, I suppose it is possible that there are hard-hearted people who go to mass daily to be a show-off.\u00a0 It seems hard to imagine a culture where this gains admiration from others in the secular world \u2014 are there other parts of the world where daily mass attendance gains one recognition? \u2014 and maybe it\u2019s a Vatican-specific thing that he really speaks of people climbing the church hierarchy with pretenses to be holy when they really care about nothing but that next appointment, in which case it\u2019s merely a dumb thing to talk about in a General Audience rather than among Vaticanites.\u00a0 But (and again, maybe it\u2019s cultural) I just can\u2019t see this being about people who are daily church-goers <em>in order to<\/em> be show-offs, rather than people who go to church thinking they are doing the right thing <em>and yet also<\/em> being sinful, because I can\u2019t imagine there are more than two or three of the former people in existence in the first place.\u00a0 Maybe I\u2019m wrong and you can correct me in the comments.<\/p>\n<p>But to be a Christian, to be a Catholic, is to believe that attending mass has some meaning other than just keeping a pew warm.\u00a0 We hear scripture.\u00a0 We hear a priest or deacon give a homily.\u00a0 We hear prayers.\u00a0 We receive the Eucharist (presuming that his mass-attending others-hating strawman wouldn\u2019t stay in the pew).\u00a0 We are in the presence of Christ.\u00a0 The plain sense of what the Pope said, when we hear from others as well, is that none of this makes any difference, that we might as well stay home, or maybe, to fulfil our Sunday Obligation, show up, sit in a pew, and bring along a good book.<\/p>\n<p>To assert that attending mass <em>makes no difference<\/em> seems ultimately to lack faith in the power of God.\u00a0 It suggests that, however much the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.catholicnews.com\/services\/englishnews\/2013\/pope-francis-without-faith-in-christ-church-is-just-pitiful-ngo.cfm\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Pope won early fans by his statement<\/a> that the Church is no mere NGO, he doesn\u2019t quite believe this.<\/p>\n<p>And the Pope is not alone in these assertions.\u00a0 Cardinal Cupich has said that \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/09\/cardinal-cupich-christian.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">Some of the greatest Christians I know are people who don\u2019t actually have a kind of faith system<\/a>\u201d and that \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/04\/cupich-says-just-pack.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">If we don\u2019t do this [anti-violence and social services] as a church, we might as well pack up<\/a>,\u201d which, as well as his statement that \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2018\/08\/life-imitates-the-bee-cardinal-cupich-edition.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">the environment and protecting migrants<\/a>\u201d are the core of the \u201cwork of the Church,\u201d suggests that he, too, believes, in the end, that the Catholic Church is an institution in which people of a common heritage (which may indeed include a theological body of work) work together for social justice, rather than one in which people\u2019s lives can be changed for the good by belief in Jesus Christ, and in which prayer, scripture, and, yes, the Eucharist, can make a real difference in those lives.<\/p>\n<p>So, bleh, I guess my first post of the new year should have been more inspirational and warm-and-fuzzy than this.\u00a0 Oh, well.\u00a0 Happy New Year!<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here\u2019s something from twitter: and https:\/\/twitter.com\/TommasoNin\/status\/1080484588584083459 And I don\u2019t want to get into a dispute about the Pope.\u00a0 Running the full link through Google Translate gets me something that\u2019s a bit mangled and confused and I don\u2019t want to try to parse this too much, but you know you\u2019ve read similar things elsewhere, so I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[69,317],"class_list":["post-12355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-archbishop-cupich","tag-pope-francis"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Does 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