What happened to the Catholic Church Today? What Has Changed?

What follows, is a personal observation of why the church
has lost some of the influence and it once had.  In every life’s endeavor, when you compromise,
you often lose.

Recently, after a long absence, I returned to attending
regular weekly church services at my neighborhood catholic church.   Now, every Sunday morning after my early morning coffee ritual, I stroll down the street to attend mass at my local church.   But unlike years past, today my
church’s experience is a much different one.

Now that I am older, I find the entire church experience
much different because the church itself has changed and sorry to say, not for
the better.  In years past, being on time
for the start of the mass was an absolute must.  Today, people are always late and adding to
this, is the manner in which some of these people come to church.   For instance, I see grown men and women
wearing shorts, flip-flops, see-through tops, dirty-faced tee shirts and
wrinkled jeans.   This is not the way God
would want us to meet him especially in the blessed event that is, the Holy
Mass.  The only people that seem to dress
decently are the ushers.  Parishioners now
look like they are going to a country fair/club rather than to church. 

Today, even the concept of mass has changed.  I have always considered attending mass as a
blessed event since the days when I attended my first service in Messina, Sicily,
my place of birth.  In those days, I
remember people did not even contemplate entering the church without a head
covering, let alone halter tops, short shorts or any other item of clothing
that exposed a person’s body.  My mother
in particular, was always dressed in a skirt or dress with her arms
covered.  Proper apparel was all too
important when one went to church so many years ago.

Even when I arrived in this country and began attending
church and going to catholic schools, church always seemed a pious occasion. I remember
the parish where I was confirmed, St. Donato’s in West Philadelphia; people
were always properly dressed when they went to Sunday’s mass.  As a student at St. Thomas More High School, I
also experienced the same kind of religious reverence when one regular basis,
the class attended mass service as part of a holiday or a special occasion when
all the students would dress in the normal sport jacket and tie attire.

Today, how things have changed in our catholic churches.  Too many people as a matter of routine
consistently arrive late and once inside the church, they talk to each other as
if they were on a picnic.  We even see some
mothers carrying what resembles lunch boxes to keep their children amused; little
ones sit in the pews eating sandwiches and drinking juice.  I find this practice a total disregard for
the blessed event that is the holy mass and what it represents.  I am sure anyone, even a child if properly
trained, could stay without eating or drinking for 30 minutes. 

How things change, today even the church is unrecognizable
from years past.  Going to church today
resembles more a trip to the local baseball field rather than a place of prayer
and reverence.   People of all ages and especially women are
not intimidated to enter the walls of the church with skimpy clothes, tight
pants and mini-skirts that would make even the dead rise from their grave.  Just a week ago, at a 7:30 early Sunday mass,
I noticed a middle-age woman with a pair of white pants so tight that it looked
like as if they were painted on her. 

Another area of concern is silence while in church.  Silence, which was once considered the normal
behavior while in church, has been replaced with constant talk.  Sometimes, talk continues even during
mass.  I long for the days when going to
mass on Sunday was a sacred occasion when you felt like you were in a
conversation with God.

One reason for this change that has in my opinion diluted
the whole church experience is the fact that the church’s hierarchy is afraid
to enforce a dress code and other behavior for fear of less attendance.  But, doesn’t the church understand that when
you lax the rules, you actually diminish your influence and in this case, the
church’s influence over the parishioners.

Pope Benedict said it best not so long ago when he advocated
that the church return to its original language of Latin.  I do not see any harm in saying the gospel in
the language of the people so that they can understand what Jesus said and its meaning
but the mass should be performed in Latin as it was done for centuries.

I truly admire and respect Pope Benedict for this novel idea
because the church in recent years in order to keep parishioners in the pews
has compromised the sanctity of the mass and the entire church going
experience.  In some respects, when they
decided to recite the mass in the country’s language, it sent a signal to the congregation
that anything and everything was okay.  That
is when everything started to deteriorate. 

There should be a certain reverence for tradition especially
for going to church.  The idea that
anything goes has in my opinion diluted the entire church’s scene.  Maybe, that is one reason I stopped attending
mass so many years ago.  Even today as I make
my way back, I feel like a stranger in the house of God when I see so many
people attending mass as if they were going to the beach instead of attending a
celebration of love in the company of other people and God watching over them.