Interchurch Challenges

I am not sure when I discovered that I was surrounded by unequaled scriptural beauty in the Mass. Although I had experienced the spoken Word in Protestant churches, I never hungered to hear it. Nor had I hungered to meet Jesus with the intensity that seemed to impel me to seek Him each week at Mass and each day in daily Bible study and prayer.

Hearing the Word of God at Mass was like hearing the voice of an old friend in a foreign land. How good that voice sounded: non-judgmental, comforting, stating the same truths I had learned to trust all my life. “Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world . . .” This text and others woven throughout the Mass made sense of what seemed a senseless predicament for me as a Protestant worshiping in a Roman Catholic Church. Scripture reverberated in my ears and allowed me moments of forgetfulness from the strain of being set apart.

In years past when I attended Protestant churches and socialized with Protestant friends, I did not think it odd to include in my sphere of friendships Catholic friends. Yet I recall only once meeting a Catholic couple at a Protestant church. They were investigating the possibility of attending our church service. I remember being a bit surprised, and after giving them a handshake and welcome, I asked them why they felt a need to leave their own church. They explained they were an interchurch couple (husband and wife from different Christian traditions – one often Roman Catholic) looking for a church that supported them both. Their desperate search for social acceptance was something I did not comprehend at the time. Nor did they express the division festering at the core of their marriage. It would take my own experience of remaining by my Catholic husband’s side at Mass each week to realize how deep and wide the gulf is that pervades our separated fellowship.

In the fall of 2005, as I began to accept my new relationship to the body of Christ, I naturally desired to find some way to serve. A growing appreciation of Christ’s plan for us motivated me to look for ways to be useful. Scouring the church bulletin, I looked for something a non-Catholic might be able to do.

Initially, I signed up with a prayer chain and faithfully prayed for the needs presented to me. This lasted until the leadership decided to revise the call list and hold a meeting to greet their members and get to know them. By that time, though, I had learned to avoid such encounters because I had unhappily found that once Catholics knew I was a Protestant, the welcoming smile become a mask of politeness. A wall of silence often followed with some bland comment on the weather, and then they discovered they needed to talk with someone across the room

So in spite of the wonderful welcome I received from our priest and the director of education, as well as the opportunity to work alongside Rich as he taught Faith Formation classes (Sunday school), I continued to experience being the outsider in a world of insiders.

But I was persistent. I tried a Bible study at our parish, but discovered that many of those attending the study were agonizing over their children who had left the Catholic Church to attend Protestant churches. I believed that my presence in the group would likely have been hurtful for them, so I did not return. I concluded my ability to serve Christ’s body here seemed useless. I responded by isolating myself further, interacting as little as possible.

Eventually, I discovered I could do something without group interaction. I made it my mission to bring food for our parish’s food bank, and gifts for various other charities the church supported. Most of all, I prayed for our pastors everyday.

That daily prayer became the foundation of a commitment that would grow ever larger, and marked the development of my life in Christ.