Hello everyone! Renegade Catholic reporting in! This Sunday morning I attended mass with my best friend, who is converting this Easter! (Hooray!) Afterwards he told me that the Lutheran church right beside his house has service at eleven, and asked if I wanted to check it out. I agreed, so we ran to a local diner, got a quick cup of coffee and some breakfast and made our way to the church.

To give you a quick idea of what I’m going to do, I’m going to give a run down of my thoughts of the church and it’s service, rated by various aspects such as Architecture, the Service, and Anti-Catholic sentiment. Then at the end I’ll give a summary of the thoughts presented.

Architecture:

The architecture of the building was a standard 1950s evangelical Lutheran church. Grey stone, darker grey roof, and some plain stained glass to avoid being to Catholic. When you enter the church, you come into a small vestibule. The front-left wall of the vestibule contained stained glass portraits of Abraham, St. Chrysostom, and St. Peter. The front-right wall of the vestibule had stained glass which depicted St. Paul, St. Augustine, and Martin Luther. The pastor of the church (A female reverend by the way) later explained the choice of Sts. Paul, Augustine, and Martin Luther as being the most important figures to the Lutheran church. Never explained the other stained glass though. When you entered the main body of the church, or the nave I believe, you got the standard carpeted floors and wooden pews, nothing to special. The altar is what got interesting. Situated on the front right and left of the altar, were to pulpits to read from . The far back of the altar was graced with a large, golden empty cross, rising several feet from the ground to the top. The altar was marble, covered in green cloth with various typical Christian symbols. Then the part that confused me, it was surrounded by a railing. It even had a gate that could be open and shut.(More on that later.)

Service:

The service was quite liturgical. They used a paper bulletin instead of any defined mass book like my church uses. But they obviously have very similar practices to us Catholics. What I found quite intriguing and actually quite reverent is they knelt during their confession of sins. (Penitential Rite.) Right in the beginning though they did something I heartily disagreed with. Quoting directly from their bulletin, right after they confess their sins to the congregation the pastor makes the remark “…In the name of Jesus Christ, I announce to you that your sins are forgiven.” So general absolution every Sunday it seems. Anyways, the service continued, they even used the same readings and Gospel as us today. Different psalm though. After that they professed the Apostles creed. (A member of the church later explained to me that they use the Apostles creed half the year, and the Nicene the other half.) After the reciting of the creed they gave their intercessions, which the kneeled during, which I thought was kinda cool. Now began the part of the service that I guess would be called “The Liturgy of the Eucharist”, if it even resembled it. They carried the water and wine up, read a really weird translation of the Institution,quickly sung the Lamb of God, then invited everyone up to receive it. (I abstained of course, as did my catechumen friend.) This is where it got really interesting, they knelt at the communion rail, and received it on the tongue. Then they drank what looked to be a shot glass of wine. Shots with Jesus. Anyone up for it? What do you mean that’s sacrilegious? After that they gave a final blessing and kicked ya out. There were hymns, canticles, and a few other things sung during the service but they were spread out so weirdly that I couldn’t really find a rhyme or reason to them being where they were, which is why I waited till now to note them.

Anti-Catholic Sentiment:

I have to be honest, nothing was said or done in the service that screamed “Death to the Papists!’ During the sermon on the Gospel, the pastor did make a few remarks talking about Peter being stupid, misguided, and having no idea about what Jesus wanted. While some of those are certainly true, only we’re allowed to make fun of him. After the service, my friend and I stayed after to talk with her and ask a few questions. I wanted to get her feel on the church and such. This is were not exactly ant-catholic sentiments came out, just a lot of blatant misconceptions on the church came into light. She believes that their holy communion is the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ, but she doesn’t believe we can know how, and finds any proofs or explanations of it (St. Thomas Aquinas anyone?) completely useless and missing the bigger picture. She also held the common, women priests blah blah blah stuff. Also! Did you know there are tons of different Catholic churches? The American Catholic Church, the French Catholic Church, the Polish Catholic Church, the list goes on! And some of the churches don’t even follow the pope! So she concluded the Catholics are just as broken and divided as the Lutherans. As much as I wanted to argue, and clear up the misconceptions, they were being very nice and hospitable, and I decided I shall make this battle a war of attrition, not one solid attack the first day we meet. A lot of their congregation was very supportive of the local Catholic elementary school that used to be around, the one I attended actually. So I can thankfully say from my experiences, this church does not harbor really any anti-catholic sentiment, just a lot of misunderstandings.

Final Thoughts

In the end I found the service nice, but confusing. They had bits of extreme reverence surrounded by moments of modernist service inventions. In the words of my friend, this service was “the perfect mean between Catholicism and Baptism.” The church was filled with adorable old ladies and only a few younger faces, which is why I assume they were so happy to see us.

This has been the Renegade Catholic reporting in! See you all next time! God Bless!