SEEKING SOPHIA

By Christine Burton

Assumptions about worship may alienate newcomers

Of course we’re welcoming communities. We sing songs everybody knows, we make it as easy as possible for people to participate. It’s a mystery to us why people don’t come to church and, if they do, why they don’t participate more in mass.

That’s what I thought. But, as the old saying goes, “a fish doesn’t know it’s in water,” and we don’t always realize what we take for granted.
A young cousin of sorts has been living in Ottawa the last while. As the only relative around I was happy to make her part of my life. And as my life includes my faith life in large measure, it is not surprising that I invited her to share that with me. Her grandparents were devout and observant Catholics. Her parents are more casual, somewhat agnostic, certainly not churchgoing, but they were happy to have her join me.

She seems to have enjoyed it, and has asked several discerning questions about the liturgy and faith generally. And she has also shown me exactly where I am an unknowing fish living in water.

One day I made mention of the Lord’s Prayer/Our Father. I had noticed she was not saying it along with the community during the consecration. I asked if that was because she didn’t agree with the ideas in the prayer or because she didn’t know it, reinforcing that both were answers I would respect. Turns out she didn’t know the prayer — not the words, not the context, not the meaning.

You could have drop kicked me. I was totally cognizant and respectful of the fact that my friends and colleagues of other faith traditions and cultures would not know the words, but she, well, she was “one of us!” From a shared background. Part of some “Christian majority” that really isn’t an accurate reflection of Canada anymore, one that somehow absorbs the Our Father along with their corn flakes regardless of whether they attend church and so I can just “assume” they will all know the Lord’s Prayer.

We went through it as I drove her home, but a single run-through is not the same as learning it by heart from infancy onward.

Hmmm. I wonder if the rest of the people coming through our doors, whether they come from a Christian/nominally Christian/non-observant/non-theist home all necessarily know the Lord’s Prayer. We put up overheads to make it possible for people to participate to the extent they feel comfortable. But not the Lord’s Prayer. Why would we need to do that? Everyone knows it, or maybe not . . .

Perhaps we should consider including it on our overheads as well. Newcomers may not recite it, but at least they will be able to follow along with that most common and communal of Christian prayers and, in so doing, be better able to see if it speaks to them as individuals as well. It’s not hard, and if we truly want to be welcoming, perhaps we should avoid even this level of assumption about our visitors.

She also mentioned that she had attended a mass while back home recently. She sat with others of her generation who were as unaware of the structure and meaning of the liturgy as she had been only a few months ago. She told me she enjoyed and appreciated being able to help them to understand what was going on and to support them in participating — noting the “sign of peace” in particular. Again, such a simple thing — turn to your neighbour and say “peace be with you.” But if you’ve never done it before, how would you know what to do or what to say? At my parish the priest has recently begun saying a few words of explanation before the sign of peace, encouraging people to act with intentionality in sharing Christ’s peace, and encouraging us to carry the spirit of the act home with us, to live and feel in our daily lives in the week following mass.

She also noted that “they sang some of the same songs — or they had the same words but different music . . .” The same songs? I thought for a moment and then realized, of course, she was talking about the parts of the mass. It made me think about “lapsed” Catholics who might be revisiting us. I remember how difficult and disconcerting it was to learn the new responses in the General Instruction on the Roman Missal (GIRM) just last year. And I attend church regularly. Imagine how someone who has been away for a few or many years might feel.
My parish included a few words of explanation in our parish bulletin at the time the change and still puts the new words up on the overhead. Good, but might it be helpful to have a semi-permanent notice on the bulletin board at the back: “Wondering about the changes in words in the liturgy?” and an explanation. Maybe a computer link in the bulletin under the same title?

While a welcome at the door of the church is important and necessary, welcoming people goes beyond that first contact, those first words. If we are to be “fishers of people” and not unaware fish, we must live our welcome in tangible ways, supporting newcomers and returnees alike, trying as much as possible to put ourselves in their shoes instead of making assumptions. Our traditions may have been around for more than 2,000 years, but if one thing is clear from the Gospels, where Jesus repeats the same lessons, he did not count on any disciples or apostles to catch on straight away after the first time. He met them where they were and supported them with love. As we look to live our lives as Christ did, we would do well to copy him in this regard as well.

A Saskatchewan soprano, Burton has sung praises to the Lord in Regina, Saskatoon, Winnipeg and now at St. Joe’s in Ottawa, where she is a chorister and cantor at two masses.