Over on Facebook, Joyce Donahue posted a link to a story about our increasingly casual dress in society. Societal norms, of course, influence the way we worship.

I think about this when I’m at church and I see people dressed in shorts and old t-shirts. I’m not a big “coat and tie” prude about Sundays, but shouldn’t our garb for worship be a step above whatever we would wear to clean out the garage?

Whenever I’ve discussed this in public before, someone always replies, “God doesn’t care what we wear.” Well, leaving aside the question of how one can know what God cares about in regard to dress, I don’t think that’s the issue. We aren’t going to church for God’s sake in the first place. We are going for our own sakes and the for each others’. Our effort to “dress up” a little says that we take ourselves, each other, and our worship a bit seriously.

I’d love to know what you think, because I wonder about this a lot.

I arrived in Houston a couple of hours ago for the 48th(!) Southwest Liturgical Conference Study Week. I’ve been on a plane all day, and I was famished. I fled the high-priced and too-glossy hotel restaurants in search of a neighborhood bar. The Holy Spirit has led me to a hole-in-the-wall place with over a hundred microbrews, a delicious and suitably unorganic bar menu, free wifi, and a garage band playing in front of 30-foot screen showing college basketball highlights.

My topics tomorrow are “Liturgy and Catechesis: A Practical Method for Teaching the Faith” and “Whole Community Liturgy.” As I was tweaking my slides in between bites of dinner, I realized they are really the same topic from two different starting points. The first one looks at the liturgy from the point of view of the catechist. If I’m a teacher, what do I need the liturgy to do so I can teach from it. And the second looks at liturgy from the point of view of everyone else. If I’m a parish leader, how does the liturgy give flesh to and embody who we are as a parish?

What is common to both workshops, of course, is the liturgy. When I was starting out in ministry, it was pretty much a given that liturgy was the central and most important enterprise of the parish. Nowadays, that idea almost seems passé in some circles. But not to me. The world is crying out for the hope and liberation we celebrate and manifest in the liturgy.

The recent earthquake in Haiti is a painful example. How can the church provide any kind of solace for such a horrible tragedy? I saws a new report at the end of the day today, the combined Catholic effort from around the world had collected $5 million in relief funds. That’s laudable and important. But Bill Gates donated a fifth of that by himself. Catholics are required to provide as much physical relief as we can, but that is not the unique gift we bring to this, or any, crisis. We bring hope. We bring the good news that death cannot last. We bring salvation from all darkness, pain, and suffering.

And there is one way—only one—in which we bring that good news. When we offer our sacrifice of praise in the liturgy, we make present a new reality, a new reign, that is in, but not of, this world. It is our priestly sacrifice that reorders the world. Or rather, reconciles the world to its original order.

If you’ve been to Sunday Mass lately, its relevance to the situation in Haiti may not seem clear. If that’s so, I submit it is not because the liturgy has nothing to say to our situation today. Rather, it is because we are not saying the liturgy well. If we are letting our own agendas filter through on Sunday, the good news can be muted. If we are easing up a bit on the two-edged sword of the gospel so as not to give offense, then neither are we giving a clear message of liberation.

So by all means, let’s dig deep and give as much material relief as we possibly can over these next weeks and months. But at the same time, let us invest in music that stirs the soul, preaching that shakes us to the bone, ritual that moves us to holy awe, and a warm embrace of the strangers who are not only on a far-away island but also sitting in the pew right behind us.

Connecting liturgy and catechesis.

• Liturgy as source of catechesis

I think we all agree that we should be welcoming toward inactive Catholics and be reaching out to them. Sometimes, however, we have a giant “IF” behind our welcome. We will welcome them if they meet certain criteria.

Melanie Rigney and Anna M. Lanave have written a questionnaire to help us examine some of our assumptions. They recommend that parish leaders fill out the questionnaire below, and then discuss it with some parishioners who were once estranged from the church. The questionnaire and lots of other helpful information appears in their new book, When They Come Home: Ways to welcome returning Catholics (Twenty-Third Publications).

If you have moment, please take the poll. I’d also be interested in hearing your thoughts. Click on the comments link to share.

Some of you may have noticed the new logo at the top of the blog, which displays the original title of the magazine. We’ve just completed an extensive reader survey (thanks to all those who participated). One of the key things we wanted to discover is what would make the magazine more attractive to volunteer ministers. About two-thirds of those who took the survey said that returning to the original title—Today’s Parish—would help accomplish that goal.

So step one is complete. Now I’d like to ask your help in getting the word out. Do you have some key volunteers in your parish who would benefit from the content in Today’s Parish? Why not support them with their own subscription to the magazine. I know budgets are tight, but you won’t find a more economical training program out there. And each additional subscription helps assure that Today’s Parish can continue to provide excellent resources for both paid and volunteer ministers in your community.

Click here if you want to read more about the name change.

Click here if you want to order a subscription for a key volunteer.

First of all, sorry for my lack of thought provoking ideas.  I call this tax season for musicians.  Beginning on December 25th, I hibernate.  Maybe in my next post, we can discuss the merits of not having a Christmas Day service.  Working for the Protestant Church, I will be hibernating as soon as Colleen and I are finished attending Mass.  (I can’t bring myself to attend one of those “Childrens’ Masses” that are in the afternoon on the 24th just so I can sleep in)

A friend of mine sent me this article regarding the new Roman Missal text called “Why Don’t We Just Wait?”  It is published by America magazine which is Jesuit, so know that going in.  I don’t post it as my opinion, I just post it for thought.

http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=12045

My opinion is admittedly convoluted.   As a practicing Catholic, I feel as though I should trust the Holy Spirit who guides the leadership of the Church.  I mean if I don’t, am I really Catholic?  On top of that there are liturgical scholars much smarter than me.  I’m an organ grinder, which is something you see monkeys doing in cartoons.  I consider myself only one small step above that.

As an American Catholic however, is there really wisdom to the new changes, and has it passed enough tests to really be implementable?  Plus I was always taught true faith questions.  Maybe I was taught wrong?

As a music minister, anything that does not foster congregational participation is just unfortunate.  We worked so hard in this religion to help our parishioners become active members in Liturgy, and I’m afraid this may undermine it.  Whether it will undermine it in the short term or the long term, I’m not wise enough to even venture a guess.  This is an important question in my mind.  If it is a short dose of medicine that will truly help prayerful participation then who am I to stand in its way?  However, if it will be a long term pain that is being implemented out of ideal, reaction, and with the participation of the congregation as one of the last priorities, then I cannot in good conscience say it is a good idea.  Otherwise, I compromise what I believe in as someone who has worked really hard to foster participation.

If it makes you feel any better, I have trouble picking between deomocrats and republicans also.  Your thoughts?