My non-Catholic experience at a Catholic Mass

A few weeks ago I went to a Catholic Mass for the first time in many years. There was a time I went to RCIA (in a small town), but in the end I got baptised in the Orthodox Church.

I went to the Catholic Church because there was no Liturgy that week at my church (no available priest) and because I wanted to hear a homily in English, prayers in English for once instead of in Greek which I don't understand. I think the Orthodox prayers are glorious, really beautiful, when I lived near an English language church I was so enriched by them, and I missed that.

I was pretty shocked by the catholic service I attended - it was ...weird. Firstly all the stuff people mock on the internet that I'd never seen in the small town catholic church - epitomised by the phrase "guitar masses" - were actually real. They weren't made up - this church had a guy with a guitar singing about peace and love and condemning people who didn't "love peace" and never mentioned God once.

But it was weirder than that. There were three priests (this was a big church in the centre of a big town) and they all seemed to be coming from different angles. One was chanting, the other two talking. They were all dressed the same but apart from that they approached things with such a different style, interspaced with a hodgepoge of instrumental music (guitar, trumpet, violin, organ) and it seemed like there were three different homilies (one sung by the guitar guy) coming from totally different angles. This was just weird - the whole thing came across as phenomenally disjointed.

The church to their credit was packed full, lots of families, lots of different cultures and languages which is always a joy to see when you visit a catholic church, even my small town catholic church was like that, full of people of ethnicities I didn't even realise lived locally.

The whole facing the people thing really did feel uncomfortable after spending so long going to the Orthodox church. I didn't really get the arguments that well before, but the way it is in the liturgy, facing the alter and the people depending who is being addressed at the time - makes much more sense to me and is less jarring.

Hymns at the catholic church were awful. I mean, no offense but... how do you cope with them :P Much prefer the unintelligable Greek chanting I get at my church, I honestly think I glean as much meaning out of it :/

But yeah the big impression I got was one of disjointedness. Nothing seemed to fit together. It didn't feel like a coherent whole. I don't think I will go back again after that experience - at least not to that church. When I go to an Orthodox church I know whatever language it is in, it's still going to be one work, something that fits together and is a seamless whole. It's a pity you don't have that, you have to hope that your church isn't being pulled in three directions by three different priests (or by the congregation) and if it is, well I guess you just have to go somewhere else? The language thing seems less of a big deal to me in the face of that... I can always learn Greek :P