Unconfirmed

I spent Saturday morning at a confirmation ceremony, sadly confirming what I'd read here in comments about "contemporary" worship music in Catholic churches.

The word contemporary is in quotes there because, as with the evangelical species of "contemporary Christian music," the word there doesn't quite mean what it usually means. It shouldn't be hard to be contemporary. One would think that writing music that sounds like it comes from another time and place would require additional effort, but that writing music that comes from one's own time and place ought to be completely natural, yet there's nothing natural-sounding about this awkwardly "contemporary" music.

Watching Philadelphia's bishop/cardinal preside over the ceremony I was reminded of something I once heard an Episcopalian bishop say. What happened at Pentecost, he said, was a miracle and a mystery. The disciples didn't quite know how to describe what they had seen so they described it to St. Luke as something like "tongues of fire" above their heads. Luke wrote that description down and, as a result, the bishop said, "2000 years later I have to wear this funny hat."

I was also reminded of this bit from comedian Ted Alexandro:

Q: Do you renounce Satan and all his works?

A: Well, I can't really say I'm familiar with all his works ...

Anyway, I was feeling warmly ecumenical throughout most of the ceremony, until the cardinal got to the part in his homily where he urged the kids being confirmed to consider a religious vocation. We need priests, he told the children, because we need the forgiveness of sins and "without priests there can be no forgiveness of sins."

That's the sort of thing that makes me want to nail some theses to the door of the church.

* * *

This letter to the editor, which was actually published in the paper, criticizes Rep. Mike Castle for mentioning that the world's oil supply is "finite." The letter writer disagrees, writing: "There is no scientific basis for alleging that Earth has a finite supply of oil."

My point here is not (exclusively) to laugh at the crazy person who thinks that our planet is infinite. That's barking mad, of course (see photo), but I'm not so much interested in the writer's delirium as I am in the fact that such a letter was published.

This raises, for me, two questions that I really don't know the answer to:

1. Before going to work in a newsroom, I had vaguely assumed that the opinion pages operated according to the old saying, "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not to their own facts." Over the past seven years, however, I've seen hundreds of published examples of things that are demonstrably untrue. I'm wondering what, if any, policies or principles guide different newspapers regarding factual errors in letters to the editor and op-ed pieces. I'm not speaking here of matters subject to debate ("Politician X is doing a good job" or "Kids these days!"), but of simple matters of fact. If a letter asserts that Cleveland is the capital of Ohio, or that talc is the hardest mineral according to Moh's scale, do editorial page editors have any rules or even guidelines for dealing with such mistakes and the letters that contain them?

2. I have attended, monitored, reported on and even conducted organizing meetings for activist groups across the political spectrum. All of these groups encourage their members to write letters to the editor and the advice they give for getting such letters published is remarkably similar. That advice always encourages the writers to get their facts straight and to avoid saying anything as full-gonzo nutty as suggesting that the Earth is infinite. Is that advice wrong?

Comments

[Doctor Science]

In my experience, it depends on how many letters (written vaguely in the English language) they have to fill the space. When I write to the Trenton Times, sometimes I get published and sometimes I don't. When I write to the local just-this-valley paper, I'm pretty much guaranteed a spot.

[Dylan]

Not to diminish the guy's nuttiness, but I assume he's reading "finite supply of oil" as "we're going to run out of oil very, very soon." So I don't think he's trying to argue that there's an infinite supply of oil, only that it is possible there are undiscovered reserves out there. Granted, this doesn't excuse him entirely because it means he doesn't have a grasp on the concept of "infinite."

Maybe I'd just like to believe that people aren't so crazy they'd deliberately argue that anything on Earth was "infinite."

[Tonio]

Do you renounce Satan and all his works?

I can't hear that phrase without picturing the Corleones setting all Family accounts.

What exactly are Satan's works? Does Ol' Scratch make appearances on Oprah touting his latest novel? Do his longtime fans claim that his latest album is a pop sellout? Or how about the self-help market - "Sell Your Soul in 10 Easy Steps."

[yagowe]

Clearly the earth is a cylinder of infinite length. It's just being viewed from end-on in that photo.

[Sarah Dylan Breuer]

When I moved to Maryland, I started going to the only congregation in my denomination in town that said they welcomed gay people. I'm a former worship leader from a Vineyard campus minsitry, so I was quickly drawn into the worship band in my new congregation, led by a person on the very oldest edge of the Baby Boomer generation. The congregation was planted by the diocese supposedly to appeal to members of Generation X, and my partner and I were among what I would say under 10 members of that generation in the congregation. I quickly got in the habit of pulling the vicar aside before services and flipping through the pages of the music he'd chosen, saying, "This was written two years before I was born. This was written when I was four. This was written a year before I was born. This was written when I was two ..." and so on.

He never got it. He always thought of "contemporary" as being what was "contemporary" in churches (which was in turn at least ten or fifteen years beyond what was contemporary in music in society) as being what was contemporary when he was 20 -- 30-35 years before.

That "cutting edge to reach Generation X" church plant is dead now, of course.

Why don't congregations who want to use truly contemporary forms of the arts form relationships with their local arts communities? Instead of turning to dorky Christians thirty years beyond the cultural curve, why not go to actual art galleries and clubs for various kinds of music and ask the artists about the spiritual themes in their work?

I'm a musician, and I know TONS of musicians who would respond in a heartbeat to an invitation from a church along the lines of "we have this room with a locked closet that we only use at X, Y, and Z times during the week. You can rehearse there and lock your heavy equipment in the closet the rest of the time, if you're willing to do _____ (e.g., contribute to one evening service quarterly, etc.)."

Heck, I live on campus on a seminary. I have a band of seminarians and seminary grads. It took ages to find a space on campus at the seminary where we would even be allowed to play our instruments. We'll be kicked out of that space by mid-August, and I hope we'll find a parish that will just let me lay down my two 70-pound amps and various small preamps and mic stands and whatnot for such an arrangement.

So it frustrates the bejeebers out of me to hear people talk about "contemporary worship" and the arts as if the only things that qualify as "contemporary" were done when I was an infant and bought by a major music publishing corporation.

[aunursa]

I just checked the letters guidelines for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Chicago Tribune. Each indicates that letters are subject to editing, but none suggests that false statements will be corrected. From personal recollection I can remember many letters with stated facts that are demonstrably false. I have personally noted that a newspaper's stated standards for accuracy are loosened when it comes to the content that appears on the editorial and opinion pages.

[Carl]

In defense of the bishop:

Again Jesus said, "Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." And with that he breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven."

— John 20:21–23

If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector. I tell you the truth, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

— Matthew 18:17–18

Of course, priests aren't the only way to get forgiveness, but they are a visible representative of Christ acting with the authority He has given them.

[Amy]

If you're going to a Catholic service, you shouldn't really be surprised when the sermon includes points of Catholic theology...

[Amaryllis]

I spent Saturday morning at a confirmation ceremony, sadly confirming what I'd read here in comments about "contemporary" worship music in Catholic churches.
I told you so.

We need priests, he told the children, because we need the forgiveness of sins and "without priests there can be no forgiveness of sins."
Which doesn't mean the rest of you are bound for hell. :)

He was speaking as a Catholic to Catholic confirmands, and it's a sacramental church. According to Catholic teaching, what you really need priests for is the sacraments of Penance and Holy Eucharist. Everything else - baptisms, marriages, education, parish administration, pastoral counseling, social outreach, whatever - can be done by deacons or laypeople. And with the current priest shortage, it often is, and the kids are used to that. He was just reminding them that you still need a priest around to say Mass and hear confessions.

[Carl]

Also, "Jesus breath. Lol."

Religion is weird. At least bishops don't have to wear clothes that look like being they're being breathed on.

More pro-confession verses:

Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise. 14Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.

— James 5:13–16

In the context of the verses, it seems that being anointed by elders causes the forgiveness of sins. Also, according to Wikipedia (the most reliable source possible) confession used to be done publicly, but that was too embarrassing, so it was changed to a private system later.

[Karen]

Thank you for the post about priests, Fred. My in-laws were Catholic, but to their credit, my mother in law quit when she was told that my husband was going to Hell for marrying me, a Presbyterian, in the Presbyterian Church. She goes to funerals still, but that's it. Don't even get me started on the Catholic attitude toward women, or I'll never get any sleep.

[David]

Hey, maybe the Earth is a 3-d fractal. That way it could have finite bounds and still have infinite volume. Getting at it would be tricky after a while, but a mind that can conceive of a fractal Earth certainly wouldn't be daunted by such trifling challenges.

[Chris Koeberle]

Is that advice wrong?

It depends on what your goal is. If your goal is solely to get published, then it's probably wrong. I know some papers are more willing to publish letters that will spark angry denunciations in response. (I certainly can't think of any other reason for the publication of the letter that complained about the endangered species act for catering to species that were such weaklings they couldn't survive on their own.) But if you want to convince the world that people who aren't crazy share your views, then you can probably leave the twelve galaxies stuff on your picket sign.

[Les]

Reason #1 I'm no longer a Catholic: Official hatred of queers.
Reason #2: Official hatred of women (who I think might just be a special sort of queer, actually).
Reason #3: The music

Possibly not in that order.

Before Vatican 2, you couldn't play anything contemporary in a church because it was sinful or something. So allowing different kinds of music was a big advancement. Except, like with any big advancement in the Catholic Church, it was deliberately sabotaged by scads of clergy. Because change is sinful or something. So they wrote music guidelines to disallow anything that was distracting or moving or interesting. It's specifically against the rules of the catholic church to play good music. The new Pope thinks that generic organ improvisation (ie: organ music which sounds churchy, but not written down in advance) is a path to Satan, so things are going to get worse before they get better. Which is pretty much the Catholic church in a nutshell.

I don't think the world's souls would be worse off if the church disappeared, but I do feel bad for people I know in the clergy and for parishioners, especially the old folks. They invested so much of their life in something that's turned out to be such rubbish. Hopefully they got something out of it. Some redemption and not just guilt.

I used to dream of being a composer of catholic church music, but given that I'm unconfirmed and an atheist queer, I'm guessing they're not interested.

Finally, I have to concur with what Amy said. Of course a catholic confirmation mass is going to have Catholic theology in it. Which does not hold that priests are absolutely required for the forgiveness of sins, by the way. But they are required to say mass, which is considered integral.

[Les]

Yay, my italics messed up the rest of the page! Maybe some closing tags will help.

[hapax]

Les, one of my best friends from college is an unconfirmed agnostic queer, and is making quite a nice bit of change composing service music for the local diocese. (He also pulled in a tidy sum on Jeopardy! a while back, but that is, as they say, a whole nother story.)

[Karen]

I do rag on the Church of Rome quite a bit, so to be fair, I thought I'd link to this really good article. If only there were more like her.

[Omorka]

Huzzah the St. Louis Jesuits!

[doowah]

Reason #1 I'm no longer a Catholic: Official hatred of queers.
Reason #2: Official hatred of women (who I think might just be a special sort of queer, actually).
Reason #3: The music

Possibly not in that order.

Amen! My reasons almost to the letter. The only redeeming thing about the music was the fun of listening to our organist, a sweet little old lady who apparently thought it all was a kind of race, and tried as hard as she could each time to arrive at the end of the piece before the cantor could get there.

But as regards confession, I think many people find it comforting to go through with an official process, whether or not they really believe that in the absence of a priest they would be denied God's forgiveness. Sometimes it's less about reassurance that God forgives you and more a reminder that you also need to forgive yourself.

[Kristy]

What exactly are Satan's works? Does Ol' Scratch make appearances on Oprah touting his latest novel? Do his longtime fans claim that his latest album is a pop sellout? Or how about the self-help market - "Sell Your Soul in 10 Easy Steps."

I award to Tonio one (1) internet. Bravo, sir.

I can directly trace my current dirty heathen ways to "contemporary" church music. Our family was quite happy going to church every Sunday (and Saturday night, and Sunday night, and Wednesdays for sign language class, and every day during the summer for Vacation Bible School... we were *that* family), until the choir was replaced by the Praise Band, and hymns with actual harmonies and pretty lyrics were replaced by "Awesome God." When you get more spirituality from Leonard Cohen than your worship music, you're done with that church.

[Froborr]

In defense of Catholicism:

1) They have several hundred years of the best music of any religion in history -- do the names Bach and Verdi ring any bells? Or pipe any organs, as the case may be?*

2) Their churches are the prettiest.

3) They've got style. Nobody does pomp and circumstance like the Church. And those hats are made of win.

4) Confession is actually a pretty awesome idea.

*Man, that sounds dirty.

[Andrew Plotkin]

I do not wish to give aid and comfort to the crackpots... but it helps to know what variety of crackpottery they're shipping. There's mathematically insane, and then there's garden variety wrong.

In particular, I know there's a brand of crank science around that asserts that Earth's petroleum did not come from ages-dead biological matter, but rather is being produced all the time by underground bacteria. Or something like that. (Not sneer quotes there -- it's been a long time since someone lectured me on this. I don't remember the details.)

Anyway, while these people obviously don't claim that the *amount* of oil on Earth is infinite, they do say it's a self-renewing resource, and therefore the *supply* can last forever. At a certain rate, at least.

The letter you linked to didn't have details, but it comments on "oil wells refilling", which might be a reference to this theory.

[dr ngo]

I attended a lecture once by the late Julian Simon, famous a generation ago for his insistence on the plenitude of the earth's resources. When pressed (by me) as to his claim that the supply of fossil fuels was "infinite," he responded that we could not measure the supply, and since it was immeasurable, it was therefore infinite, which meant the same thing!

A celebrated economist, yet a complete sophist.

But I repeat myself.

[burgundy]

I'd never heard the underground-bacteria theory of oil production. If someone claims that supply is infinite/self-renewing, I just assume they're of the "God created the world for us, and God would not make the world so fragile that we could use it up/destroy it, so therefore God will continually replenish the reserves" camp. Good to know there are more varieties of crank than I'd thought.

[Reynard]

Posted by aunursa: From personal recollection I can remember many letters with stated facts that are demonstrably false.

Then they're not "facts", are they? The very word "fact" implies that a) something can actually be proven to exist (or to have existed at some point in the past through contemporary documentation and/or imagery), b) an event can be proven to have actually occurred, or c) a concept (such as a "finite" world oil supply) that can be reasonably surmised from available empirical and/or observable evidence. "Demonstrably false" implies either (worst case) an outright, bald-faced lie, or (best case) uninformed opinion. (And in-between those comes everything from simple fact-spinning/dissembling to opinion which may be based on outdated information.)

[Andy]

Re: "contemporary" Christian music, my little Episcopal parish in Portland, OR, recently toyed with the idea of adding a regular third "contemporary" service as a way of attracting better attendance. I was pretty firmly opposed to the proposal...one of the things I love most about being Episcopalian is the formal liturgy and our great musical heritage. You know, I'm all in favor of mixing it up every now and then -- I'd really like to try a U2charist -- but I thought we should stick to what we do best, not dilute our greatest strength and try to be all things to all people. If people want contemporary Christian schlock, suburban Portland has plenty of options. If we were to become like every other church in the burbs, why would anyone come, at all? Why can't we be different and be liturgically traditional but socially progressive and market that? Fortunately the survey of the congregation showed only mild interest in adding a third service, but fairly significant opposition to the idea of a "contemporary" service. Nothing wrong with doing new music; in fact, I'd encourage it. I'm not just a curmudgeon for the heck of it, I actually do have two degrees in music from a prominent conservatory. My objection isn't to "new," it's to "awful."

[Froborr]

Time to be pedantic against pedantry! "Stated facts" can easily be taken to mean "statements declared as facts", which may or may not be true.

As for your three criteria for facts, only (c) is actually possible. Nothing can ever be truly proved about the real world; it can only repeatedly and consistently defy disproof.

You also ignore several other categories of demonstrably false statements, such as honest errors, articles of faith (religious, political, or otherwise), repetition of bad information, and reasonable yet false inferences from incomplete information.

[Reynard]

Posted by Froborr: In defense of Catholicism (...) They have several hundred years of the best music of any religion in history -- do the names Bach and Verdi ring any bells?

Um...Bach was a Lutheran...

[mcc]

Anyway, while these people obviously don't claim that the *amount* of oil on Earth is infinite, they do say it's a self-renewing resource, and therefore the *supply* can last forever. At a certain rate, at least. The letter you linked to didn't have details, but it comments on "oil wells refilling", which might be a reference to this theory.

What you are describing is known as the "abiogenic oil hypothesis" and in terms of scientific credibility and acceptance it's right up there with vaccines-cause-autism-ism and various theories that posit it is impossible for the world trade center to have collapsed (because fires don't damage buildings, or something). The abiotic oil idea seems to be fairly popular among WorldNetDaily contributors, however.

I think, alas, that you're absolutely right that this is what the letter writer referred to with his cryptic promise of infinite oil.

[Mikael Vejdemo Johansson]

Hey, maybe the Earth is a 3-d fractal. That way it could have finite bounds and still have infinite volume. Getting at it would be tricky after a while, but a mind that can conceive of a fractal Earth certainly wouldn't be daunted by such trifling challenges.

Ummmm, no. Fractals get bigger boundaries, not smaller. That said, there is ample evidence that viewing the earth surface as fractal really is beneficial, so it's not a bad idea. It just doesn't do what you want it to.

And getting the earth in the form of Gabriel's Horn (or Torricelli's trumpet) won't help either: infinite surface area, finite volume.

[Reynard]

Posted by Froborr: As for your three criteria for facts, only (c) is actually possible. Nothing can ever be truly proved about the real world; it can only repeatedly and consistently defy disproof.

Then the World Trade Center never actually existed? I'm wondering if I could, with a bit of ethical gymnastics, reasonably make the argument (using your criteria above) that, other than in extant imagery, it didn't provably, "factually" exist; and, with a bit more, could I not argue that the 9/11 hijackings never happened and that the airliners merely crashed in four separate, completely coincidental accidents? (I'm sure that I wouldn't have quite as much success; but since "fact[s]" seem[s] to have a somewhat more flexible definition in your view, I think I'd have at least some small chance of, if not "winning" such an argument, at least confusing the issue enough that I could "own the facts".)

So I ask you: If facts cannot be definitively proven, then how can they be facts?

[Rosina]

Clearly the earth is a cylinder of infinite length. It's just being viewed from end-on in that photo.

Where should a photographer stand to take a picture of "a cylinder of infinite length" end-on?

[Sniffnoy]

It could be infinite on one side only.

[damnedyankee]

For some reason this talk about contemporary worship music is leading me to draw from the well of Bill Hicks:

"Come on, Bill, they're the New Kids. They're so good and so clean-cut and they're such a good image for the children." Fuck that! When did mediocrity and banality become a good image for your children? I want my children to listen to people who fucking rocked! I don't care if they died in puddles of their own vomit. I want someone who plays from his fucking heart!

And, of course:

Give me the Satan-worshipping family down the street! The ones with the good albums!

[ajay]

Ummmm, no. Fractals get bigger boundaries, not smaller.

Fractals have finite bounds, which does not mean the same as boundaries; ie however complex the shape of your 2-d fractal, it will still be possible to enclose it in a finite area. It can have an infinitely long perimeter but still be enclosed within a single square sheet of paper. To take the old example of the coastline of Britain - the perimeter gets longer and longer the smaller the scale of measurement, but you can always be sure that the land area of Britain will be less than a certain amount.

If the earth were a higher-dimensional fractal shape, it would be bounded by an n-dimensional solid, but could still have an infinite volume...

[MikhailBorg]

Reason #1 I'm no longer a Catholic: Official hatred of queers.
Reason #2: Official hatred of women (who I think might just be a special sort of queer, actually).

Catholic dogmatist, ages ago: Basically, we don't like anyone who likes to have sex with men.
Potential priest: So... we're okay with lesbians, then?
Catholic dogmatist: I have it on good authority that women are only lesbians during their university careers, and we'll be banning women from higher learning anyway.
Potential priest: Wait... we're men... so if we don't like anyone who wants to have sex with us... isn't that a problem?
Catholic dogmatist: Ah, I'm glad you brought that up. Let me run something by you I've invented: I call it the oath of celibacy...

[Keith]

Satan works exclusively in the medium of Rock Music, which is why all "contemporary" Christian music is total suck with a side of fries. This fact was confirmed the moment Pat Boon saw Elvis swivel his hips. Ol' Pat got the heebee jeebees and spread the word. Everyone ran home and played their Kiss records backwards and that was that.

Church groups were at the forefront of demonizing Rock Music. Fifty years later, rock is an integral part of our popular culture and if you don't accept that, and reject Satan and all his works (even from his pre-rehab period when he still killed at live shows) you will be missing a vital component that draws younger believers in. If the priest can get rock music wrong, what else is he not hip to? (Sex and Drugs, mostly) So it's no wonder contemporary church music sucks. it purposely rejected a vital part of youth culture.

We had a nifty cantata premiere at our church on Sunday. The place was rockin'!

[Andy]

do the names Bach and Verdi ring any bells?

Um...Bach was a Lutheran...

Good catch, Reynard. Also worth pointing out that while Verdi was obviously a deeply spiritual man and wrote beautifully for religious characters, citing him as a "Catholic" (though obviously he was) is a bit of a stretch since he was famously wary of the corruptions and abuses of power by the church. (The subject matter in Don Carlo especially appealed to him. In fact, it has at times been deemed so hostile to religion that it was actually picketed in the 1950s at the Met as a "Communist" opera.) I don't recall that he wrote a lot of church music, if any, aside from his famous "Requiem," the demands of which greatly surpass about 99% of churches in the world. I wish people would do the "Ave Maria" from Otello more often...but maybe because the character is two minutes away from being strangled people shy away from it.

[histrogeek]

"That advice always encourages the writers to get their facts straight and to avoid saying anything as full-gonzo nutty as suggesting that the Earth is infinite. Is that advice wrong?"

The advice to get your facts straight is only wrong when you have no actual facts to back you up. Then you just back up your point with bald-faced assertions, preferably with a strong dose of thick-headedness.

[Chris Koeberle]

Reynard,

If something which can be shown to be false cannot be referred to as a fact, do you have a better term than "falsifiable statement" to offer to denote that subset of statements which, if facts, could be shown to be false? Personally, I'm pretty comfortable with the shorthand of using "facts" to mean "items which, if true, would be facts" when it's obvious from context that they they aren't true, but if I'm overlooking something less awkward than "falsifiable statement" I'd be delighted to change my tune.

[Jack Grey]

Catholic dogmatist: Ah, I'm glad you brought that up. Let me run something by you I've invented: I call it the oath of celibacy...

Catholic researcher (looking up from ancient manuscript): "Celebrate! The word is celebrate! They left out the R!"

[Tonio]

Satan works exclusively in the medium of Rock Music, which is why all "contemporary" Christian music is total suck with a side of fries.

I'm probably being unfair to the genre, but the contemporary Christian music I've heard sounds "tragically white" to me, almost entirely free of non-white musical influences. Do any of you share that impression?

[Izzy]

Tonio: Oh, hell, yes. It's white, it's Midwestern, it's sickeningly fucking earnest and wholesome.

There's a lot of classical Christian music I like (Christmas songs from pre-1950 always have a nifty sense of mystery and awe involved, for instance) and gospel music can kick some fairly serious ass. But "praise music"/"contemporary Christian"/whatever the hell Creed sings...well, it falls solidly into Tastes Like Diabetes as far as I'm concerned.

Hardly the only music to do that (I end up rolling my eyes all "Shut UP, John Lennon" every time "Imagine" comes on, and I would explode from critical mass snark if you stuck me anywhere near the seventies "We Are the World" stuff) but the most prominent sort today. Oh, except patriotic music. Shut up, Toby Keith. EW.

[Sarah Jane]

You make an interesting suggestion, Sarah Dylan Breuer, and it's similar to one of Katharine Kapikian's suggestions in her book, Art in Service of the Sacred: that a church which welcomes and fosters the creation of good art will be a church that is regularly blessed with good art in its halls and services.

I'm really troubled at the lack of meaningful, well-crafted art in most contemporary churches. I think we have forgotten that meaning can be conveyed as anything other than words and fuzzy emotions: we neglect the transformative powers of sight, sound, color, rhythm, story, and movement. We decorate our sanctuaries with pretty pictures that resemble artwork, and entertain our congregations with canned performances that resemble music, and because we never enter an art museum or theatre or concert hall, we never know the difference.

I have held several art exhibits in churches, and while people are always very gracious towards me, there's often an underlying uncertainty in the way they approach the artwork itself. Perhaps the preference for Vineyard Worship or Thomas Kincade is really about security and comfort; here is "art" that has been sanctioned and marketed by the Christian bookstores and publications, so we know it's safe. And the contemporary church, with all its glamorous statements about change and relevance and getting out of one's comfort zone, still reliably chooses "safe" over "good."

[Dorothy]

The only reason I've enetered a Catholic church in the last ten years: this group. Alas, they've lost too many members due to auto-industry buyouts. So....

The only likely reason I'll enter a Catholic church in the next ten years: 18 Catholic nieces and nephews approaching marital age. I'll bring ear plugs.

[MBurns]

This is a bit OT, but I just read this article and wanted to share it with you. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts.

http://www.slate.com/id/2190482

[Torpid*Corgi]

Music is my primary means of experiencing the divine, so the concept of "Contemporary Worship" is close to my heart. I recently started a tentative journey from agnosticsm to Christianity and what pushed me forward was the music at a local Anglo-Catholic parish. The Anglicans I am worshipping with are pro-queer and pro-woman episcopalians, but they keep as much old-school Catholic Pomp & Circumstance as possible. The parish and is predominantly gay and at least one priest is as well. We have done "contemporary" music, including a few anthems that have just been written in the last couple of years. However, they are not what most people would consider "Contemporary" - they're from the "classical" tradition rather than the popular one - they utilize traditional instrumentation of organ a choir, or a cappella voices. The current mass setting we are singing is a Mozart Missa Brevis, and it is the first time I have sung a mass in its intended setting.

My mormon parents occasionally mock me for my need for "pretty things", but as with most spiritual things in the last 15 years, I ignore them. I am sure there are churchgoers who are inspired by Contemp stuff, and who am I to judge? But while there was an episcopal parish within walking distance of me, they do a "contemporary worship" so I travel a couple of extra miles for the one the helps me understand just a little bit of the divine.

[Sharaloth]

I'm always a little surprised with the vehemence that people attack the catholic church. I was raised catholic and I never saw any of the stuff people complain of. Sure women weren't allowed to be priests and the music tended to be of the old variety, but there was no obvious hatred of anybody (women, gay people, protestants, etc). It's possible that there might have been, but it was just never mentioned. Ever. I was in the youth group, I sang in the choir, hung out with the local priests and actively participated in church activities (even after I stopped being christian, mostly because a lot of my friends still were), but maybe I was just never in the right place at the right time to hear all the juicy corruption and hate stuff.

As such, whenever a topic like this comes up here or elsewhere, I'm a little baffled. Fred's shot at the Catholic Magisterium a little while ago came out of left field for me, seemed like an attack on the Church just for the sake of having an attack on the Church, with nothing to support the position. Now, I'm sure Fred can support that position, but at the time all I could think of was "What's wrong with the Catholic Magisterium that makes a disorganized and wildly disunited non-structure preferable?" not only preferable, but 'Infinitely' preferable if I recall correctly. I don't know enough about the myriad protestant denominations to even begin formulating an explanation of my own.

Now today Fred seems to become offended when a catholic priest says that only a priest can hear confession and forgive sins. That a catholic priest would say this is perfectly natural, it's part of catholic doctrine after all. What confuses me is that Fred is offended at this, as if he expected the priest to believe something completely different. That's like getting offended at a Hindu saying that there are millions of Gods, or at a french person for saying that people speak french in France.

Is there something inherently wrong in catholicism that I've somehow missed? I mean, something that isn't equally wrong in all christianity, or all religions in general? I am to a certain extent agnostic, I do not subscribe to any religion, and I do not believe in any supernatural higher power. I left the Church because it did not make sense, not because of any disgust with something I saw in that church. As far as I could tell, as far as my experience shows me, it was all stupidly harmless and genuinely intent on making the world a better place. From the comments here I'd have to assume that this experience is atypical, or that I just wasn't paying attention.

Not that I was particularly paying attention. I wouldn't have gone to church in the first place if I hadn't been dragged there by my parents, and mass was just so goddamned boring.

So, I guess the question really is: What am I missing here?

[bulbul]

That's the sort of thing that makes me want to nail some theses to the door of the church.
Now you know how I feel listening to some of your stuff :)
Except, of course, my immediate response is not to look for a sheet of paper, a hammer and some nails. I always start looking around for some wood and matches...