Caleb Acker--Church Visit #2

Church name: Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church

Church address: 36 N. Ellsworth, Naperville, IL 60540

Date attended: 11/1/15

Church category: Catholic Tridentine

Describe the worship service you attended. How was it similar to or different from your regular context?

The ambiance was very nice. The sanctuary was huge, with a wonderfully domed apse, and the steeple dominates downtown Naperville; I do not enter a space like that the same way I enter my home church. It's simply impossible to enter without feeling different. High church has a way of manipulating emotions to generate certain gravitas and sacred thinking. For this reason I like high church. In my church we use music to manipulate emotions into feeling "closer" to God. But lofty ceilings, gold filigree, massive pictures of Jesus, and Latin all work to make me feel "under" God. Evangelicals often push Jesus as friend, but it is definitely refreshing when he is treated as Lord. One similarity that is interesting was the English that came out of nowhere halfway through: announcements! The head of the church interrupted the Latin liturgy to discuss the problems with his website. It felt so similar to my own church's announcements that I had to stifle a giggle. Things are more similar than I may always think. As when my cousin asked, "What kind of people go to Latin masses?" I answered, "People who live in the area, I guess."

How did the worship service illuminate for you the history and contours of global Christianity?

The thing that struck me the most was the consistency of Catholicism. When Wheaton in the Holy Lands was off for a Sunday in Jerusalem, most of us went to the Pentecost service as the Church of the Dormition. It was a nice service, in both Latin and English, but the process and liturgy for the special service was only slightly different than Peter and Paul's All Saints liturgy. Not only does the consistency span the globe, it spans time, as these liturgies, and even some of these buildings have been around for centuries and centuries. I also reflected that the oldest man that was a part of the service was perhaps seventy. Yet all of his fellow brethren were participating in the life of the church was doing Latin masses more than a millennium before their births. There is a wonderful consistency in Catholicism that allows people born in the 20th century to participate in the same church service in which their long-dead brethren participated.

How did the worship service illuminate for you your personal identity as a Christian?

I enjoy offending my own Protestant ears, which is when my verbal comfort zone is accosted by something "weird." For instance, the saints in heaven were discussed (my ears: very good), the saints on earth were mentioned (my ears: right on), and then suddenly the saints in Purgatory were brought up (my ears: oh no!). But this discomfort is helpful by forcing me to work through my own thinking. Does the mention of Purgatory make illegitimate everything said beforehand? Of course not! Or when the "infallible" church was mentioned. I want to react, but the end of the leader's sentence was correct in its theological framework. It is not the infallible church, he argued, but the grace of God that makes saints. It is the church that recognizes what the Lord has already done. What this reminded me of was how the church recognized, not chose, the Scriptures as inspired. It is healthy for me to look for theological common ground, not to look for theological problems to exploit and argue against. This service was another helpful step in this direction.