Why Do (Mass-going) Catholics Resent God?

Imagine receiving this message from a priest on a Sunday night:

I’m becoming more convinced that people resent having God in their lives at all. They resent their Sunday obligation, and they believe that, somehow, it’s my fault that they have to be at Mass. Anything that slows down the distribution of Holy Communion (the reception of which entitles congregants to make a hasty exit from their reviled place of confinement) just prolongs their inconvenience and heightens their indignation. Meanwhile, they have no idea what’s coming, and they won’t give me a chance to tell them.

How would you respond to Father’s message? Before you answer, let me offer you some common but inadequate replies and explain why they are inadequate:

• “At least they’re coming to Mass, Father!” Is that really enough? Without any prejudice to the justice of their Sunday obligation, is it really enough for them to arrive late, sulk and smolder throughout Mass, and then leave early? Is it good for their souls for them to do that week after week, for years and decades?
• “You have to meet people where they’re at, Father!” This is the favorite maxim of Fr. Cheerful, the pastor of St. Typical’s, where “meeting people where they’re at,” in practice, means offering them no invitation to spiritual and moral maturity. Fr. Cheerful makes his pronouncement as if he’s said something profound, thereby proving that he doesn’t think through what he says. Where else could one meet the people except where they’re at? They’re not anywhere else. But as far as any observer can tell, Fr. Cheerful has no plan for the people he’s meeting, except to take up a collection from them.
• “You sound very judgy, Father!” Oh, my goodness—I certainly hope so. By virtue of my ordination, I share in Christ’s priestly ministry to teach, to sanctify, and to govern. The Church spent a lot of time and money cultivating a habit of good judgment in me. If I don’t make moral evaluations, if I don’t draw conclusions and offer advice, exhortations, and commands based on what I see and what Christ has revealed, then I have failed as a priest.

So, what are some of the more serious, less easy-to-dismiss explanations for why these manifestly unhappy and resentful people are showing up for Mass on Sunday? These suggestions have been offered to me by people I trust and respect. Recently, I have started to see their explanations as inadequate too:

• “They go to Mass for CYA (‘Cover Your Apocalypse’). Going to church on Sunday is minimum payment/minimum coverage anti-Hell insurance.” That used to make a lot of sense to me. Nowadays, not so much. When was the last time these folks who drag themselves into church 10 minutes after Mass has begun heard any preaching about sin, judgment, damnation, or Hell? When was the last time they went to a funeral and were exhorted to pray for the salvation of the deceased? Isn’t it much more likely nowadays that they went to a funeral (redescribed as a “Celebration of Life!”) where they were confidently told that “Grandma is in Heaven now…”
• “They show up on Sunday for the fellowship. People are so lonely and isolated during the week—Sunday Mass is a time to meet up with like-minded people.” Maybe for a few people that’s true. But that explanation doesn’t comport well with the reports I hear from priests all over the country. According to them, not only are most people only too glad to get away from any reminder of the God with whom they have just communed, they are even more eager to get away from their “brothers and sisters in Christ” with whom they had only recently, and with gusto, exchanged “a sign of peace.” These folks stampede toward the parking lot as if they were moving to a lifeboat on a sinking ship being boarded by flesh-eating zombies. They have no interest in fellowship.

The “message from a priest” above is actually a synthesis of many messages I have received from a large number of priests over the past several years. In brief, these priests observe that most of their Sunday congregants arrive late, are dressed inappropriately, do not sing the hymns, do not respond to the Mass parts, become lifeless during the homily, receive Holy Communion indifferently (if not outright irreverently), and then scramble to the exits at the first opportunity.

I don’t know why they come to Mass at all or why they keep coming back; but I have some speculations to offer about why they seem to be so miserable at Mass and why they are so desperate to get away from God. In brief: they resent God. They don’t like anyone making any kind of claim upon them—and especially not God. You see, God might actually have a legitimate claim on them, and they find that intolerable. We sinners hate the idea of being creatures, dependent upon and accountable to a Creator God. All that goes against the grain of our sinful selfishness, and if you want to get people really annoyed with you, start poking at their sinful selfishness.

Parents know that once a toddler starts screaming, “Mine!” their journey suddenly becomes permanently an uphill one. We foolish sinners speak of “my life” and “my time” as if we gave ourselves those gifts—and they’re not really gifts because we “deserve” our twenty-four-hour days and our lifespan. (A moment’s examination would reveal those claims to be the nonsense that they are, which is why we sinners assiduously avoid such things as silence, which would facilitate such unwelcome examinations.) Sunday’s Mass (even Saturday’s “Sunday Mass”) represents an intrusion upon “my time” and “my life.” But it’s worse than that. Much worse…

Even the most uncatechized Christian has some awareness that God has a terrible potential for being a real buzzkill. That pesky Sixth Commandment, with all the sexual prohibitions that it entails, just gets in the way of us getting what we want—which, of course, is sex on our own terms and without consequence. Sitting in church on Sunday is a subtle reminder that we are playing by our rules and not His, and we don’t like to be reminded of our disobedience.

Moreover, there is the unpleasant matter of the Fifth Commandment. One of the possible consequences of sex is offspring—a fact that we sinners are determined to treat as a bug and not as a feature. The prohibition against murder gets in the way of our getting rid of the unwelcome consequences of our sexual actions. Not only that, the Fifth Commandment gets in the way of our getting out of the way anyone who is in our way—if not by outright murder, then by contempt, slander, lawfare, and legislation.

In short, people visibly disdain being at Mass because they have some sense (however vague) that they are in the presence of God, who offers them nothing that they want and would deprive them of what they do want. Why do they keep coming back to Mass? I don’t know. People visibly disdain being at Mass because they have some sense (however vague) that they are in the presence of God, who offers them nothing that they want and would deprive them of what they do want. Tweet This

I do know that passing over in silence, for weeks and months and years, their manifest resentment of God at Mass is not good for their souls. I know that when Fr. Stifled, the parochial vicar of St. Typical’s, is forced implicitly and explicitly by the pastor, Fr. Cheerful, to not act upon what is seen at Mass and just take up the collection, then Fr. Stifled dies a bit inside each Sunday. He begins to develop, slowly but steadily, a self-loathing, as he sees by his weekly complicit silence that he doesn’t sufficiently love Christ or the people Christ entrusted to his care to actually speak up on Christ’s behalf or theirs. No one—absolutely no one—benefits from pretending that the “good enough Mass” at St. Typical’s is actually good enough for anyone—certainly not for the Typicalians.

What’s the solution? Again, I’m more confident about the negative than the positive. I know that cheerful, enthusiastic statements and gestures under the banner of “Revival!” will not change much at St. Typical’s. I know that more of the same at St. Typical’s will not suddenly start doing anyone any good. Attempts at making Mass more “user-friendly” (code word for “more entertaining”) will fail. Vapid hymns sung badly, accompanied by inept musicians who don’t know the difference between a liturgical venue and open mic night at the local club, will not help. 

Fr. Cheerful trying to be funny from the pulpit will surely fail. (I spent many years speaking to college students who didn’t want to be in class—I know that engaging people who don’t want to be there is extremely difficult; and Fr. Cheerful just isn’t up to it.) “Fellowship Sunday,” where weak coffee and a few donuts are available after select Masses, won’t suffice. I know that these things can make no difference because St. Typical’s has routinely made use of these for decades, with no visible or lasting benefit.

Perhaps—just perhaps—if we emphasized worship as sacrifice and as remedy for sin, if we emphasized spiritual struggle and combat as essential preparations for eternity, if we taught people to pray so that they and their loved ones would not become food for the devil—that just might work. I have it on good authority that it worked in the past. But that was a long time ago, wasn’t it?