We Meet an Organist

During the family's vacation trip to Pennsylvania on spring break, we took a walking tour of Society Hill just south of downtown Philadelphia. We stopped in at a dozen churches and graveyards in the district. Saint Mary’s Catholic Church is the oldest Catholic church in this old city (old by American standards, of course), and our visit there was moving. When we went in (this was on a cool, sunny Wednesday morning), the sound of a massive pipe organ filled the sanctuary, though we could hardly hear it right outside the foyer on the street. It turned out that the organist was practicing for that Sunday's Mass. We listened to him play a couple of powerful hymns before I invited myself up to the balcony, where I took this photo of the organist at practice. He was a friendly fellow, but I didn’t get his name. He treated us to a chorus of an old Protestant hymn, being a Protestant himself. He told us he plays Protestant hymns regularly at the church's Catholic services.

There was a time, not so long ago, when I disagreed quite strongly with Catholic theology, which I am fairly well versed in, if you didn’t happen to know. Sometimes a funny feeling can come over people who leave certain belief-systems and convert to new beliefs about what we call ultimate reality. When they return to some particular setting that is strongly associated with their former belief-system, they get the feeling that a very different person held those beliefs a long time ago. However, though I converted away from the Protestant version of the Christian faith some years back, I still feel a strong dislike or disagreement with Catholic theology. Not that I feel Catholics are in some way repulsive, as many Protestant Christians felt in the past and as some still do. No, for me it is a purely intellectual thing. I continue to feel a strong disagreement with Catholic doctrine even though I have little to no stake any longer in the greater and divided religion that is one major venue for Christianity's doctrinal disputes.

The whole idea of a priesthood, of special people of authority who control access to God, is strong in Catholicism and is the source of most of my intellectual objections. But though I once disagreed with Catholic doctrine quite earnestly and, very strangely, still feel discordant toward Catholicism as a belief-system, I never felt much antipathy toward Catholic spirituality. Indeed, I have met and read the writings of many Catholics with whom I felt a deep affinity. I have known and read of many Catholics who appear to have met God through Catholicism as an intellectual and cultural system, even though I once thought that most of their ideas about God are untrue.

And so, long way around, I come back to this photo. The gaudy showiness of Catholic churches, like Saint Mary’s in Philadelphia, can sometimes make me a little queasy. I remain a tried and true, if deconverted, Protestant in this area of thought, having been raised with and still believing provisionally that worship requires austerity and simplicity, the kind found in most Protestant churches and Jewish synagogues, too. But now I see better that Catholic pomposity and finery expresses something different to me than I believe it expresses to the average thoughtful Catholic. I don’t see what Catholics see in their churches, which is always a problem when trying to understand and appreciate the beliefs and practices of others in any area of life. But I keep trying to see and hear as Catholics see and hear in their churches, as well as I am able to understand their sight and their faith. In those churches, I find much worth seeing and much that is moving. I find that something real calls to me in them, even though I discarded a belief-system that, generally, held Catholicism to be a sinful aberration of true Christian faith. What a lot to excogitate upon. I don’t whether I can gather it all up. After all, it is hard to see and fathom one’s own motives and thoughts in such complicated matters.