Culture shock is something people experience when they enter an environment with different underlying assumptions and views on how things work. But the “shock” part of the term can be misleading. The shock can certainly be profound and disorienting. On the other hand it can be mild. It can be experienced as a mere discontinuity of experience, or a realization that there is a new normal to be adapted to.
Back in 2001 I was a former Episcopalian but not yet Catholic. I was invited to attend a Christ Renews His Parish (CRHP) Retreat by my boss, who was a CRHP Retreat Spiritual Leader. It was a wonderful experience, a blessing in more ways than I can list. I made friends there that I am still close to today. And five years after that I was received into the Roman Catholic Church.
I learned some years later that one of my CRHP brothers told the deacon in charge of the program that he sometimes thought I was more catholic that he was. The deacon replied “Oh, Mark is more Catholic than all of us.” It surely didn’t feel like it then. And there are moments even now, 14 years after officially becoming Catholic when I still experience something akin to culture shock.
My Episcopalian Roots
I was born an Episcopalian and before relocating to Central Texas, I lived in the Episcopalian Diocese of Northwest Texas. The diocese covers 77,000 square miles, so there are miles and miles of empty road between most parishes. Most smaller towns do not even have an Episcopal church. In fact, the entire diocese had about the same number of member families as my current Catholic parish has all on its own.
Episcopal priests, therefore, have fewer families in their care than Catholic priests. As such, one might say they have ‘more time per parishioner.’ Also, Episcopal Priests marry and have families. For all of these reasons their social life tends to develop inside the parish.
As I grew up there was a reasonable chance that our priest would be a friend of the family, connected through kids or adult friendships and so on. So when I approached an Episcopal priest I had never met before, it was in the context of meeting someone that might become a personal friend.
Everything looked different after I was received into the Catholic Church.
Culture Shock #1: Your Priest Is Not Likely To Be Your Buddy
First of all, Catholic priests’ workloads are generally significantly larger, so they have less time per parishioner. Parishes are also closer together and clergy have easier access to each other. Celibacy and the higher view of Holy Orders also changes the social distance between a Catholic priest and his parishioners.
In particular, the authority of a priest is usually greater than that of most non-Catholic clergy. Protestant denominations fall across a wide spectrum of governance and pastoral qualifications. For most denominations, the authority of the pastor comes to some extent from the congregation.
In many instances, a Protestant congregation hires a pastor and can also fire him (or her). In many denominations one may be educated as a pastor, but he (or she) cannot be a Pastor without a congregation. This diminishes the intrinsic authority of most Protestant Pastors. But unless a Catholic priest is defrocked, a priest is still a priest, whether employed or not.
It is not that priests do not have lay friends, or are not friendly with parishioners and others. But I discovered after being received into the church that my propensity to informality and (relative) social intimacy with our parish priest was not the default for most of the parishioners around me.
Fortunately, the priests I have met were not put off by this. Some of my fellow parishioners, however, were a little taken aback. It took some time, but I found myself recalibrating how I approached a priest socially.
On the other hand, deacons seem to occupy something close to the same social distance of Episcopal priests. When you think about it, this makes perfect sense.
Episcopalian Reconciliation
What a non-Catholic knows about reconciliation is influenced by television, movies, books, and sometimes in discomfiting, jokes. You trudge in covered in guilt and walk out with something called a penance. The penance reduces the load so you can start building up a new one for next time.
From outside the church, the Sacrament of Reconciliation looks to be a difficult thing to do. You walk in to admit all the things you should not have done in thought, word, and deed, as well as what you have failed to do. In short, you confess everything you are ashamed of doing and knew better than to do! Not only that, you are pretty sure that the next time you go, you will have a list depressingly similar to the list you are carrying in at the moment.
From the outside it does not sound like something that will be anything other than difficult and painful.
Fortunately I did not have to carry that popular impression. I was a “high church” Episcopalian. This means that I was located on the more Catholic end of the Anglican Via Media – in my case right out on the far edge. We recognized all seven sacraments even though Reconciliation and the Anointing of the Sick were typically less often used.
I made regular Confessions in Lent and Advent, which was not at all the rule in the parishes I attended. This infrequency, combined with the personal connection to the Episcopalian priest, made for a tense and very careful session.
So I did have some experience with Reconciliation. I did not expect to be greatly surprised by the experience. And initially, I wasn’t.
Culture Shock #2: Reconciliation Is Joyful
But after I became involved with a Eucharistic Ministry of Care, carrying Communion to residents of a nursing home, I decided to attend Reconciliation every Saturday before the Sunday I was scheduled to make those visits. This meant that I began attending Reconciliation every third week. I kept the habit even after I had come to the end of my participation in that ministry.
Over time, I began to wrestle more directly and frequently with my besetting sins. I also came to depend on – to look forward to! – the counsel the priest gave me as part of Reconciliation.
So every three weeks I was checking in, refilling my spiritual prescription(s), and opening myself to new and fuller graces. I began to feel an underlying joy in myself and even in many of the people waiting in line for their turn. Here we all are to admit who we are and to receive God’s love and forgiveness!
For years the Eucharist had been the center of my life. It was my source of strength and hope and nourishment. Now I found myself with another source: Reconciliation. It wasn’t all guilt and sorrow and shame and duty. It is freedom and hope and sustenance for every day that comes.
Who knew? There is joy in the confessional. But it takes time to really find it.
Episcopalians & The Saints
As a high church Episcopalian, I knew that Catholics didn’t pray to saints. I knew they asked saints to pray for them. I had even said a Hail Mary or two – though never the Rosary. And I had addressed a few requests for intercession to my patron saint, St. Mark. Growing up I even had St. Mark and St. Christopher medals, and I had looked up the patrons of various occupations and pastimes.
Culture Shock #3: The Communion of Saints Is Alive
Suddenly I was surrounded by people who not only regularly asked for the intercessions of saints, but who were eager to tell me who I should be talking with. Number one on the list of recommendations I got is the prayer to St. Michael the Archangel, closely followed by a prayer to my guardian angel.
The prayer to St Jude was one of the first holy cards I was given. That, too, was a new experience. I now have quite a collection of cards tucked in to various bibles to mark favorite passages of scripture.
I looked up a prayer to St. Joseph because I kind of felt sorry for him. In my parish church Mary has two portraits and two statues (Mary and Our Lady of Guadalupe). Joseph only has just one statue, and it is tucked in behind where the choir is seated for services. I try to pause there at least once a month just because we Dads should stick together.
I also stumbled across the prayer to Saint Philip Neri and discovered it was something I wanted to start using myself. But perhaps the most unexpected and somewhat amusing discovery was “Dear St. Anthony, please come around, something’s lost and must be found.” I hate to say how often I need that one!
But the speed with which the Hail Mary took hold in my prayer life was entirely unexpected. I now routinely pray both a Hail Mary and an Our Father every time I hear an emergency siren. Every session of personal prayer also includes at least one Hail Mary.
Episcopalians and The Eucharist
If you were to construct a theoretical spectrum of beliefs about what happens to the elements of bread and wine during the Consecration, our Catholic view of transubstantiation would firmly anchor one end. Various theologies asserting the real presence of Christ as a mystery while rejecting transubstantiation would be in the middle of the spectrum. At the opposite end of the spectrum would be mere symbolism.
Even coming from high church Episcopalian tradition, I grew up with people who believed in transubstantiation without knowing that was what they were professing. And they would often be sitting right next to people who viewed the elements as symbolic.
Because the formal Articles of Religion of the Episcopal Church rejected transubstantiation, I resorted to “mysterious real presence.” I privately acknowledged that if there was any real difference between “mysterious real presence” and transubstantiation, it was probably too subtle for me to understand.
But that was intellectual and personal. Culture is more visceral.
Culture Shock #4: The Precious Body and Blood
When I was received into the Roman Catholic Church, I became an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion as soon as it was appropriate. I had filled the same position as an Episcopalian. But the increased level of caution and reverence in handling the consecrated elements was immediately obvious. I found that this was a change I welcomed. It meant that my formerly “out on the far end” view of the Eucharist was now mainstream rather than eccentric.
This was a case in which culture shock was comforting.
Shock but Not Shocking
When I look back at the four examples I have given of culture shock, I have to say they were not really shocking in the way we usually use the term. But each of them required an adjustment, and the nature of the adjustment is worth examining.
“Reality” is a difficult term, subject to endless argument between philosophers, mathematicians, historians, and ordinary folks. I want to use it here colloquially, informally, and subjectively. I have no desire to set back ecumenism in any way.
That being said, what these four changes seemed to offer me was a new closeness to God, a way to experience His reality more fully. Somehow my worship and the things that happened in the liturgy seemed more real; bringing me closer to that Real Presence that has always made the Eucharist the center of my life, even before I became a Roman Catholic.
Closer to God
Jesus said “The wind blows where it wills, and you can hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” (John 3:8). The Lord calls us to closeness, and history demonstrates that our unruly species is not content to have one institutional path to follow that call.
The things that I experienced as discontinuities when I was received into the Catholic church were all things that seemed to bring me closer to God. When you think about it, increased closeness itself is a disconcerting thing. It pulls us out of our old context of life into new ones.
Fourteen years after my reception, it is clear to me that the culture shock areas were themselves the very changes that the Holy Spirit wanted for me. Grace and the sacraments worked to continue to draw me closer to our Lord and our God.
Thank you, thank you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit!
