Steeples and Such

There are so many churches in Chicago. It's really incredible. On my walk around the neighborhood today, I must have passed 50 sacred sites from every denomination and culture under the sun.

In today’s day and age, we're constantly challenged to find better ways of doing things. It sometimes forces us to change things that we became accustomed to over time, even if certain of those things we were accustomed to worked just fine. Somehow, we’re lead to believe that evolution must be the great end-all. The attitude toward most things is, "Let's tear it down, because that will make it better."

Churches stand for tradition, which is obviously the polar opposite of change. Religion exists to be a rock of faith and community during times of uncertainty. The world has changed a lot over the centuries, and religion always manages to weather the storm. Like the Dead said, "Believe it if you need it, if you don't just pass it on." Right now, I unfortunately don't feel the need for religion, but I know I can have it when I need it. But there are things about religion that are cripplingly disappointing to me.

Since I was raised in the Catholic community, I can speak to that creed with great insight. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think some of my basic issues apply in many ways to other faiths as well. In my opinion, the Catholic faith (and other religions, for that matter) went terribly awry when it chose to liberalize. I would be more inclined to ingratiate myself with the traditions if there were more real traditions to speak of. Latin masses represented a kind of secret language at a club meeting, which I would find appealing. (I sat through a bit of a Latin mass at the Vatican a few years ago. It makes the ceremonies seem somehow more religious.) Many young people, in my opinion, would be more closely involved in the Church if it regained some of the secret society factors which prevailed pre-Vatican II. Most of that boundary went the way of change, and now Catholicism seems to have become just another religion. We would do well to resurrect the Church if we replaced today's “Padre Joe, jeans-wearing dude” with retro-style “Father McManus, warrior of God.”

The view of the younger generation toward priests is pretty negative. I won't list the reasons people are mystified by the call to cloth, because everybody's heard them. No one points out that, actually, the priest’s resume is very cool—grab a couple free degrees from the best schools in the world on the church's dime; write a couple of scholarly books or teach; look over a parish for a little while. My big complaint with that set up is: you could do all of those things and still be married. It should be natural to expect that men of a true calling should also be expected to maintain a scared union established before God. The kind of person who joins the priesthood is highly unlikely to be the divorcing type.

We should think about letting priests marry, but revive some of the old traditions. It’d give the whole thing a much-needed shot in the arm, and it’d revitalize the institution.

So as it stands, Chicago is peppered with gorgeous churches, but fewer and fewer people are attending their services. Religion stands for something that's ultimately extremely vital to humanity's well-being. But with the way things are, I don't feel the need to go as often I probably should. Yet I am for the most part a good person, I treat other people with respect (well, most of the time at least), I attend to my own relationship with God, etc etc. It's likely that someday I will become more of a churchgoer, and I know the church will be waiting to have me. That's quite excellent when you get down to it.