I've had an issue that's been bothering me for a couple years now, and I've finally had enough that I just have to vent about it.
For most Catholics, a church is the place to go to not just for mass, but also for personal prayer, solace, and quiet reflection. The church we attend is in a neighborhood where home values start in the high $500,000s, and most are valued at a million plus. The homeowners are, to quote from Nielsen's Zip code demographic website www.claritas.com, " a wealthy suburban world of dual-income couples who are highly educated, typically between the ages of 35 and 54"...you get the idea. Though we don't live there, we joined the parish eight years ago because we wanted our kids to attend the Catholic Elementary school in the neighborhood. The church and the school were and are the motivation. Since joining, we've met a lot of wonderful families, and our kids have made many friends that they keep up with even though they now attend other schools. The church remains a central part of our lives.
Several years ago, I stopped by early one evening because I wanted to pray in the presence of God, and much to my surprise, I found the church locked. Locked! In a community that prides itself on their sense of community, where neighbors wave to one another as they walk their kids to the school playground, where they keep a vibrant grapevine alive with community gossip. I was stunned. Why in the world would you lock a church tucked away in a vibrant, wealthy community? Who needed to be locked out?
As an "outsider", I was reluctant to ask our pastor what the reason was. Over the years, I've come to the conclusion that the church has been locked down (outside of scheduled masses) to deter the small number of neighborhood kids who are left unsupervised and have vandalized the school and the surrounding grounds in some form or fashion. (Past incidents have almost always been traced back to students of/from the school.) While I appreciate the desire to protect the sanctity of the church, I just have to wonder - where's the faith? Where's the faith that's being taught in the school? Where's the faith in the parents? Where's the faith in your neighbors?
This was an issue that I left internalized, chalked up to my expectations being too high, based on my personal experience growing up on an island where the church doors were never used to lock out the faithful.
I've learned to seek out other churches when I'd like to be in the presence of God within a church, outside of scheduled masses. And fortunately for me, there's a church that welcomes early risers, and I stop in from time to time after dropping my daughter off at school. And it was there that I recently discovered another modern day issue. I wanted to light a candle in honor of deceased relatives, so I went up to the appropriate area, put money in the collection slot to pay for the candle, and went to light one. Except that there were no matches, and no vessel of sand to put out the matches in. There were no matches because they were electronic candles! I stood there absolutely dumbfounded, stunned all the more when after repeated attempts at pushing buttons to "light" a candle, I realized that the candle display was "out of order". Yes, I said my prayers, though certainly not with the same calm emotions I had walked in with.
So I have to close by asking again "Where's the Faith" in our world, where church doors lock out the faithful, and candles are lit by pushing buttons? Is our world that cruel and cold, or am I that old? And if it's because I'm that old, then I have some hell to raise, because this just ain't right.
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