Cultus as Commodity

I was at Mass the other day. (You see, I'm in the Liturgical Choir, and thus am required at Sunday morning masses, vespers, and the occasional feast day.) While the rest of the choir went down for Eucharist, I stayed up in the loft, as Canon Law prevents me from partaking. One of my fellow choir members asked me, "Are you Catholic?" After responding in the negative, I was asked, "What's your brand?" "Lutheran", I curtly responded; I had no desire to continue such a conversation. It is interesting, this identification of sect as brand. Has it come to this?— is one's denomination simply another choice we make as consumers? I will grant that the average American could care less about the nature of the Eucharist, or apostolic succession, or the Filioque clause. The great majority of professed Christians, if pressed, will claim to agree with the tenets of whichever church they happen to find themselves members of. Those who do not belong to the church of their parents (or of whichever parent was more insistent) are usually drawn to another sect by its form of worship and social message, more than anything else.

There is something amiss, here. I won't launch, again, into a diatribe against the materialism of modern culture; you've already heard that one, I suppose. What I'd like to examine is the basis of community: is it a shared doctrine, or culture, or worldview... or even, musical taste? (Certainly all of these have proved cause for union or disharmony. Churchgoers can be remarkably petty, as you may know.) Is any one of these worthy cause for joining or leaving a congregation? Yes, probably. But is any cause for leaving or joining a denomination? There, the matter becomes murkier.

Protestants are accustomed, rightly or wrongly, to some fluidity here. A Methodist can swap places with a Disciple of Christ without much cognitive dissonance. Rare is the Presbyterian who hesitates to marry an Episcopalian. And the various evangelicals are indistinguishable. It is different for Roman Catholics, whose church makes a claim to universality: those who've been paying attention have heard that there is no salvation outside the(ir) Church. We thus have a great many Roman Catholics who profess membership in a Church whose doctrines they routinely ignore (for various reasons, which I neither condone nor condemn).

This is more of an essay topick than a web-log post, innit? The hour being late, I shall continue it at another time. Suffice it to say that I miss, as I have never missed before, Lutheran worship. Even among the Anglicans (both in Vienna and Rock Island), there were enough similarities to sustain me, enough good Lutheran hymns slipped in. Here at Notre Dame I feel alienated among the teeming masses of Catholics, and I wonder whether I am truly justified in my longing for the church of my forefathers. There's a groan-inducing pun here: am I missing the Lutherans for the right reasons? Or for the rite reasons?