daredevilkink | Discussion/Off-Topic Post #1

Has anyone non-catholic ever been inside a catholic church or attended a catholic mass? what were your first impressions of the space, etc. was there anything that jumped out at you as being curious and/or weird?

Are you looking for non-Christian or non-Catholic? Because I could help with the former. (And lol Protestants can have more dumb stereotypes about Catholics than anybody else.)

Basically, I'm just trying to get into the head of someone who isn't used to being in churches or the rituals during Mass.

Okay. Hmm.

The things that are going to surprise a person are obviously going to vary depending on their background (and on the details of the church), but some things that might be noteworthy:
-Why are people touching this water when they enter? Wait, is that /holy water/??? How am I supposed to be interacting with it? What does it mean? Is is really used for exorcisms?
-How do I use the hymnal/bulletin/etc.? Everyone else seems to be so good at juggling all these objects in the pew (or just has it all memorized). I feel like an idiot fumbling with this stuff. A conspicuous idiot.
-Why is the priest randomly break out singing? Is he singing in Latin? What does it mean? Shit, now everyone's singing in Latin wtf.
-Is it bad to get distracted by the art/physical space while mass is going on? (Non-Catholic Christians will probably take note of any prominent images of Mary, Mother of Big J, since she's not as important to other denominations.)
-Only Catholics are supposed to go up for communion. Is it awkward for me to just...sit here? What am I supposed to do? Are people judging me right now?
-These people believe that they're literally eating Jesus' blood right now, right? What's...up...with that????
-And as mentioned below, there's lots of sitting/standing/kneeling throughout the mass that will catch newcomers off guard.

+1

I feel like I've seen scenes in movies or something where people don't know what to DO during a Catholic mass- like sitting down, standing up, and genuflecting, and things like that. Though these times are directed and there's a little pamphlet, but people who have never gone before may feel like they are just standing there awkwardly.

They're either really big and ornate and have acoustics that could blow your tits right off, or they're weird, dimly lit basements with a grotesque bleeding Jesus statue.

Also if you don't supervise your children during a funeral, they're gonna get into something they shouldn't, and that something is probably the baptismal font.

I went to my Grandad's requiem mass, I'm neither Catholic or religious at all. Things that seemed odd to me was the incense being waved around and the fact that everyone else seemed to know exactly what to do, kneeling, saying things in response to the priest, like the whole thing was rehearsed and I'd missed the practices.

this actually reminds me of the time i was invited to a so-called "catholic" mass before halloween....they asked people who were new to the church to bow their heads so i did (LIKE AN IDIOT) and me and my brother got taken outside of the room and basically made to accept jesus as our savior??? (WE'RE BOTH SECULAR JEWISH AND WERE ATTENDING OUT OF POLITENESS?????)

i have no idea if that's like A Normal Thing that happens in catholocism but for background that same church was denounced as a cult later so *SHRUG EMOJI* religion is weird to me and honestly the bread/wine thing along with when to sit/stand/kneel confused me the most.

Catholic: Asking someone to bow their heads and make someone recieve Jesus as their savior is a very Protestant evangelical thing to do. I say this not in a derogatory way but it has happened to me when I was seeing what other churches were like when I was very young. It takes a really long time to convert to Catholicism in the twenty-first century so nobody is gonna ask you to convert during mass.

Churches always seem to have a very distinct SMELL to them as well. I don't know if they all use a particular type of incense, or perhaps it's the smell of the candles burning, but churches all smell the same to me, so someone who's never been in one before would probably notice it.

i was maybe ten or eleven when i got invited to go to church with a friend + i don't remember much in the way of detail but i do remember feeling very very uncomfortable and sort of slightly intimidated?? i imagine i'd feel the same way if i were to go to a church now. i had no real knowledge of religion and i remember feeling like i was seconds away from being in big trouble for doing something wrong. i also remember that listening to the sermon (as a person with no religious conviction/who had never been to church) felt very cult-like (i'm aware now that it's not, it's just how it felt as someone who'd never heard that sort of talk) and frightening in a surreal sort of way.

to illustrate what little knowledge i had of church practices/religion in general: we were offered the bread and what i think was red fruit juice + i remember thinking "this is a really weird snack" so i politely declined and told the priest "no thank you, i'm not hungry" i got laughed at but they didn't push it on me.

i've been in a church one other time for a wedding and all i can really get out of it as a person who isn't religious is that churches are beautiful architecturally and i could imagine how a person could feel very at peace/reflective there if it were empty like you see in films all the time but being there while there's a service going on is an uncomfortable situation.

Sounds like a Methodist ceremony lmao.

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