Church differences (continued)

This post is a part of sieries that I am doing comparing the Catholic Church with a Christian congregation at MCC. The differences are very huge between congregations. this post is going to be short as it deals with one thing ATTENDANCE.

First of all, attendance in churches are measured in different ways. In the Catholic Church, there is no formal way to register your attendance. This is the responsibility of the parishioner to show up for mass. In other churches like MCC and the UCC there is pads that you put your name on a pad to register your attendance. This is sent to the denomination to keep their records straight. About the only way to halfway track the attendance in the Catholic Church is to count the envelopes and that number would not be correct.

Second, the attendance of the other Christian Churches is primarily voluntary. There is no one holding your hand saying that you have to go to church. This is not true in the Catholic Church. This is primarily why there is so many Catholic Churches in the world. As Catholics, we have to attend every Sunday mass and all other holy days of obligation. This is not voluntary this is church law and is part of our duty as Catholics. We have to surrender at least one hour per week to God. Any masses missed is a sin and must be confessed. We see the same families show up for the same mass Sunday after Sunday. In other Christian churches, you are lucky to see your friends at services one day per month.

There are more differences to come. 

Dishes

This one has to do with a problem that I am working myself out of. It has to do with keeping my dishes clean. I had a hard time most of my life trying to keep a clean kitchen, I do not know if it was the fear of getting my hands dirty with the food on the dishes or what, but I could not keep a cleen kitchen in my trailers or in my other apartment. Moving into this apartment I got a dishwasher in the apartment. This turned out to be more of a curse than a blessing because of me being single. So I was back to square 1. Finaly a couple of weeks ago I decided to break myself of leaving dirty dishes in the sink. I started to wash every dish the same way that I do at work. When I take a dish into the kitchen, I wash that dish by grabbing a scratch pad soaked with a soap solution and scrub the dish and rinse it off right away after using it..

Church differences (continued)

Okay here is another installment to my church differences.

This one has to do with the way that the churches display images of God and the saints.

In the Catholic Church there are statues that signify different saints. From St Joseph to some of the minor saints. There are pictures of the church leaders and a cross with the Body of Christ hanging on the cross. In my church Our Lady Of Guadelupe, We have a mosaic of Our Lady Of Guadelupe on the alter to show our link to this portion of the church. Most churches in the Catholic faith have a crucifix prominant on the alter. One church that I went to had the cross hanging from the rafters of the gymnasium that they were using as a temporary church. There are also a set of the Stations of the Cross hanging on the walls of all the church.

Now to go to the oposite end of the spectrum. Here again I am comparing to the MCC Church. In this church there are no statues at all. The cross is just a plain wooden cross with no statue of Jesus on it. The Stained glass windows have only symbols of the church.. There are no photos of the leaders of the church. I have been to other churches like a Methodist, UCC and a Luthern church and these churches are the same as the MCC church in their no statue usage.

In my own church there are so many statues in this church that I do not think that we can fit any more in.

The next blog is about Music in the church.

Two languages

In my life I have a strong language and a weak language right now.

My first language is of course English. It is the language that I grew up with.

My second langusge is Spanish which I started to pick up in my 40's. This language is fun to learn and use. I have started to use it in Mexican restaurants to order. Some of my Facebook posts are in Spanish, some of my computer programs are in Spanish, I watch Univision on TV, I even think in Spanish more.

Some of the challenges of using this new language is to come later

Pentecost Sunday

As a Catholic I am pleased to be a part of the Churches birthday today.

It was my decission to extend the lenten practice of no meet on Fridays untill the Friday before Pentecost Sunday. It has been a very humbling experience to go without meet on these Fridays especialy with a Mexican food sale going on at my church. All I could eat was frijoles, arroz and other Mexican food.

It has been my pleasure serving my church through the music ministry this past half of a year and helping out with the Fiesta Food Sales. My friends at Our Lady Of Guadelupe are top notch and I will not trade them for the world.

Churches

Belonging to the Catholic Church and having a taste of other churches. I have learned a few things in my faith journey. First of all I am a member of a Mexican Catholic Church by the name of Our Lady of Guadelupe. This church welcomes people with open arms at every mass.

I was a member of a christian church by the name of MCC of Topeka before coming to my current church. This church was also a welcome you with open arms type of church with a strong human rights agenda.

A few differences in the two churches that I have noticed was first the Eucharist. I noticed that the people at MCC realy did not revere the body and the blood of Christ at the alter as us Catholics. We believe that this bread and wine is truly the body and blood of Jesus. We will take extra care not to spill a drop of the blood or drop a piece of the body on the floor of our church. This is considered disrespectfull. Also every utensil used by the priest from the challaces and the ciborium has to be cleaned to not have a speck of the body of blood on the dish. The purificators have to be hand laundered to keep any small speck from going into the sewer. In MCC this practice is not enforced with the purificators left out on the alter from Sunday to Sunday. 

Another key difference is the structure of the mass. With the Catholic Church being the Mother Church, it has the best structure than any other church. from mass to mass you know what to expect and it does not change even in other languages. Other churches services can change from service to service. This is very confusing when you are trying to follow along without a program.

I have more differences coming but this is the first of many posts in the religion portion of my blog.

Downtown Topeka

Downtown Topeka is just like all other downtowns in the country. When it comes to letting such things as Shopping malls and Wal-Marts in town the downtown turns tail and runs the other way leaving their customers in the dust. I watched a video of the Jayhawk Theater today and it showed some of the old downtown. This was a very pretty downtown with its open storefronts facing the street and all of the different stores up and down Kansas. This downtown has evolved into a park like look with trees obscurring the views of the stores and empty storefronts. With this deteriation of the downtown I can not understand why something has not been done earlier to stem the tide of these buildings going vacant. I would like to see a downtown like it was in the 50's 60's and 70's with everything downtown thriving. a little tree pruning or elimination would start this process and return these buildings back to the period that they were built. I know that we can not bring back Woolworths, Crosby Place or others but other stores can step up and fill the bill. Downtown Topeka can be built to fight the stores like Wal-Mart.