Why Attend a Catholic Service?

Fourteen Protestants—twelve of us lifelong Lutherans—filed into the back rows of the Cathedral of St. Helena for Sunday morning mass. 

The irony of the situation didn’t escape me. 

Modeled after the Votivkirche in Vienna, the Cathedral of St. Helena in Helena, Montana, features 230-foot twin spires topped with gold crosses. Inside, Old and New Testament stories are assembled across 59 stained glass windows, and the details in both architecture and adornment are enough to keep you occupied for hours. 

The Cathedral of St. Helena in Helena, Montana

Few of us had ever set foot in a Catholic church, let alone attended mass. My husband and I have been to a few Catholic services over the years—funeral masses, an Ash Wednesday service, and concerts—and we regularly attend Evening Prayer & Holy Eucharist on Wednesday nights at the local Episcopal church. All liturgy follows the same rhythm and pattern, and I found myself following along in the hymnal with little to no trouble. 

As the offspring of a Concordia University-educated organist, we went to the cathedral primarily for the music. The organ console was hidden somewhere at the front of the church. The instrument's 2,300 pipes flanked the altar and, from their prominent position, filled the nave with its powerful breath. 

We made our way through the service, and I think my family was surprised by how similar the order of mass was to Sunday morning at a Lutheran church. After the dismissal, Mom and I stayed seated in the pew for a few moments, enjoying the music and soaking in the beauty of the space. 

When we returned from our trip to Montana, I was eager to tell everyone about the cathedral. I love historic churches, and experiencing an ancient tradition alongside so many of my loved ones was incredibly special and memorable. Yet, I was met with an unexpected question from my dad. 

“Why would you want to go to a Catholic church service?” 

That question made me reflect on why Catholic and other high church denominations draw me in: tradition, beauty, and liturgy.

The altar at the Cathedral of St. Helena — the organ pipes can be seen to the left and the right

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I was raised Protestant. The daughter of a Lutheran-turned-Southern-Baptist and a lifelong evangelical raised on The Old-Time Gospel Hour, I rarely interacted with denominations outside of the Southern Baptist Convention. I graduated from a “nondenominational” Christian school—while not affiliated with a particular church, it started out Baptist and employed mostly Baptist-educated teachers and staff. Then, I went on to Liberty University for college—another nondenominational Christian school with Baptist roots. In many regions, nondenominational churches are heavily influenced by Baptist tradition, just like the schools I graduated from.

One of the main takeaways from my education was confidence in the faith—what true Christians should believe. With biblical worldview, apologetics, theology, and creation studies courses, I ingested a very specific, unflinching view of the Bible, the church, and the world around me. My education trained me to be on the defensive, to be ready to rebut any arguments against the conservative evangelical worldview, and to view outsiders with skepticism, which easily sours into disdain.

I may dig more into how my perceptions of Christianity have changed in future blog posts, but today, I really want to focus on my answer to Dad’s question—why I wanted to go to a Catholic service (and why I’ll probably go again).

Tradition

If you ask a Protestant about church history, they will usually start with Martin Luther—a Catholic priest and the father of the Protestant Reformation. He kicked off the Reformation when he posted his Ninety-five Theses in an attempt to condemn the Catholic church’s sale of indulgences. He never intended to leave the Catholic church or irreparably fracture the Christian faith—he merely wanted to reform the church from within. He didn’t start his own following (Lutheranism) until he was excommunicated in 1521.

Protestant denominations believe in sola scriptura, by scripture alone. This means that, from a Protestant point of view, the Christian faith and all of its traditions and interpretations must be governed by scripture. 

Protestantism is a spectrum. It looks something like this:

This spectrum is oversimplified because there are tens of thousands of Protestant denominations—and tens of thousands of “nondenominational” churches. The Evangelical church in America is typically made up mostly of nondenominational Christians and Southern Baptists as well as some Methodists, Presbyterians, and Lutherans. 

Evangelicals have largely thrown church tradition out the window. Lutherans and Anglicans embrace their Catholic heritage a bit more than the other denominations, but by and large, Protestants act like the Catholic church isn’t part of our history—like everything prior to the Reformation was a wash. 

It wasn’t! There are so many lessons to be learned from our Catholic forefathers and the saints the church has canonized over the centuries. The Catholic church shaped not only the Protestant faith, but also the world around us—no other institution has singlehandedly had as large an influence on Christian history as the Catholic church. 

Perhaps this is my journalism training kicking in, but it’s important to look at everything from a neutral perspective. Gather the facts. Acknowledge the truth. Celebrate the good and condemn the bad. 

Beauty

Many non-denominational Evangelical churches are also lacking beauty. 

It can be argued that the body of Christ, people, are beautiful. This is true, but I also believe that the aesthetics of a space can both prepare hearts for worship and be an act of worship. 

Two years ago, my family took another trip to Montana—that time to Kalispell for a different cousin’s wedding. We drove south, into the Flathead Indian Reservation, where we visited St. Ignatius Mission. 

It’s a simple, red-brick Gothic revival church surrounded by a chain-link fence. But when you step inside, you’re surrounded by massive murals of Christian imagery blended with representations of the Salish belief system. They were painted by an untrained artist who worked as a cook in the mission, yet they have given St. Ignatius Mission the nickname, “The Sistine Chapel of the West.” 

Interior of St. Ignatius Mission in St. Ignatius, Montana

There is no logical reason for a humble parish in a small town on an Indian reservation in Montana to have world-class paintings on its walls, yet there are. And it draws visitors from across the country, maybe even the world. 

There is beauty in the Catholic church and in the other high church denominations (i.e., denominations that emphasize ritual, priestly authority, and sacraments). Older churches within the Baptist and Methodist denominations are also beautiful (see my two other blog posts about the Great Schantz Organ at Lynchburg’s former Court Street United Methodist Church), yet the newer the church building, the less beautiful. 

My brother works in productions, specifically for churches. He has worked on construction sites at countless new church buildings, and the majority of them were cavernous warehouses with gray or black walls, a plain stage with a black-curtained backdrop, and stackable chairs—not pews. He worked on projects where they would rip out pews and other ecclesiastical furniture to make way for modern furnishings and state-of-the-art production equipment. 

If the argument against beauty is that it’s not needed for worship and that funds could be spent in better ways, I’d argue that that would apply to technology and equipment as well. And if you’re going to spend the money, why not make it beautiful? 

At the end of the day, while not necessary for worship, I think beauty can enhance worship and please the Lord. Think of Brother Joseph Carignano from St. Ignatius Mission—his talents as a painter surely were an act of worship and pleasing to the Lord. 

Phil Cotnoir sums up my feelings well in his article for The Gospel Coalition. “So why do we need beautiful churches? The simplest answer is: because God is beautiful, the universe he made is beautiful, and the gospel of lavish grace is beautiful. To willingly have ugly churches, then, is a kind of inconsistency, if not an untruth.” 

Liturgy

While not limited to the Catholic church, liturgy is something that I did not experience until recently. My mom and I attended a Christmas prayer service at a Lutheran church a few years ago. She was feeling homesick and wanted to hear some traditional Christmas hymns, so we went together. 

I didn’t expect to love it as much as I did.

Put simply, liturgy is “the structured and shared worship that Christians engage in when they are together” (The Scottish Episcopal Church). As an author, I connect with the written word more than any other medium, so having a script to read during church keeps me engaged the entire service. 

Liturgy follows a rhythm, “repentance, instruction, prayer, self-offering, and thankful sharing—follow(ing) the shape of Jesus’ life and teaching” (The Scottish Episcopal Church). And it uses your entire body—you’re sitting, standing, kneeling, crossing yourself, reading, listening, singing, and responding throughout the entire service. It’s a delight to the mind and the senses as much as it is an act of corporate worship.

It’s also a discipline. 

While I love the spontaneity of worship at the Pentecostal church of which I am a member, it doesn’t demand participation. I don’t have any obligation during worship, and many people choose to remain in their seats for quiet prayer and contemplation. Evangelical worship is very much based on feelings and internal posture. However, I understand that corporate worship is about far more than my personal experience, and liturgical worship provides a prescription for disciplined worship that allows me to worship with my body, mind, and soul—regardless of my feelings.

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So Dad, to answer your question (and probably a question that most of the people in my small group have—hi guys 👋), there are many different reasons why I want to go to a Catholic service—why I want to go to churches that aren’t aligned to how I was raised. Tradition, beauty, and liturgy are just a few of them.

Last week, I posted this quote by C.S. Lewis on social media: “The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing—to find the place where all the beauty came from.”

Everywhere I look, I see beauty. And honestly, it’s hard for me to believe it’s all just chance. I have faith we were created by Someone who loves beauty, embodies it, and pours it into the world around us—the world, not just the Evangelical church. 

God has been working for thousands of years—long before the Protestant Reformation, the Great Schism, the founding of the Catholic church, the birth of Christ, the exodus from Egypt, the great flood, the creation of all things. God was and is and is to come. How dare I condense the source of all good things into a narrow window?

I want to experience God fully—with all of my senses. I want to understand how other Christians experience, worship, and love God. 

I want to know the being from whom all the beauty came.