(9:14 PM) | Adam Kotsko:

Happy Immaculate Conception

Tonight there was a mass for the feast of the Immaculate Conception. It commemorates the day when Mary was conceived and by God's grace was free of original sin from the first moment of her existence -- that is to say, she was always-already saved. It's a doctrine that's basically indefensible on accepted Protestant grounds -- no one can reasonably say it appears (or is even implied) in the Bible, and it receives mixed reviews in the tradition. It was promulgated by the same pope who declared that the pope is capable of infallibly declaring doctrine without the explicit consent of a council. It also rests on some ideas of original sin that are not shared with the Orthodox. In any event, I kind of like it, even if I'm not quite sure what it actually means.

Immaculate Conception is a holy day of obligation in the United States, but holy days that fall on Mondays are not obligatory, since we were of course just in church the previous day. I went because I enjoy going to mass in the evening. I most frequently go to mass on Saturday evenings, and while I was at Oxford, there was a church that had an evening mass every day, and I attended probably four days a week. I like going to mass. I like Catholic worship music, at least more than I like most other worship music -- the stuff that came out of the sixties seems to me to be more meaningfully "contemporary" than anything that I ever heard in evangelical "contemporary" services. I like how the priest and his entourage walk in in a big procession. I like the fact that priests have little kids picking up their dishes and bringing them their books -- it's a rather literalistic approach to Jesus' command to "suffer the little children to come unto me." When the priest first says, "Let us pray," I always say, "Okay... now!" and watch the kid walk across the stage with her white robe and the jeans and tennis shoes underneath. I like the understated, written out prayers, and I like that the homily is usually short. I like reciting long memorized things in unison with everyone else. You can fill in the rest, I'm sure.

One day when I was talking to my pastor, Fr. Jack, he said that he was amazed at what a huge change I had made. I had gone from a highly pietistic strain of evangelical Christianity, where there is constant anxiety about whether one "really means it," to the Catholic Church, where the ritual really is the thing. I'm coming to understand that better. The problem isn't that Catholics are just itching to become pietists, but no one has taught them how, but that the problem of whether one "really believes" just occurs at a completely different level in the two faiths. It isn't a question of finding the ways in which Catholics and evangelicals are both secretly doing the same thing -- these are two very different ways of approaching God in worship.

I think part of the difference can be described in the way that each approaches the unconscious. In evangelicalism, the problem becomes mining one's unconscious until every doubt and sin is pulled out into the light. This is rooted in the problematic that Luther confronted in the confessional, since pietism originates in Lutheranism. The Catholic Church focusses on the conscious mind -- go to communion as long as you're not conscious of mortal sin, confess serious sins of which you are conscious, do what you're supposed to do on the obvious level and just let the unconscious level take care of itself. In the Catholic Church, how does one pray, by and large? Recite memorized prayers repetitively. Say the divine office -- literally just read out loud from the liturgy of hours for whatever time you happen to be praying. If you have specific, obvious needs at a given moment, then by all means tell God about them, but everything else is probably covered in the prayers that the church gives to you. If meditative, "impromptu" prayer comes out of that, then fine. If not, then just keep objectively praying and hope that the unconscious stuff takes care of itself.

That's what I was getting at in my long comment on Anthony's post in which I advocated reading the Bible. That's all I was advocating -- reading. Mechanically running through the words in your head. I don't expect anyone to think about those words later in the day or focus on the nugget of truth that "God has for you today" or any of that crap. It's not about you. The Bible obviously was not written with your specific needs in mind, dumbass, just like the prayers of the mass and the liturgy of hours and all the memorized prayers were not developed with your specific needs in mind. If it proves to be an amazingly rewarding experience, then fine. If (like me tonight) you realize that your mind wandered so much that you're surprised that it's already time for communion because you don't remember him consecrating the hosts, then fine -- you were there, right? Stop worrying about yourself and your petty motivations.

This is my experience of Catholicism, and it is liberating for me after the tyrrany of pietism. (Maybe I just traded in one tyrrany for another, but still.) I don't remember 90% of the time what the psalms or the scripture reading for morning prayer were. From week to week, I rarely remember what the readings were or what the homily was about. I am not alone in this -- Catholics are notorious for that kind of thing. The key is just to put it in your head, to put your body through those motions, and hope (though not consciously) that the rest will follow. Maybe some combination of the Catholic and pietistic methods would be possible and even "better" than either on its own, but if I were given a choice, I would choose the Catholic method.

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