Faith Infiltration: St. Louis Cathedral Basilica

This week Flimsy and I visited the beautiful Cathedral Basilica, hailed as one of the most glorious Cathedrals in the US.

The Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis is one that must be seen personally. It is impressive and overdone: if Vegas is entertainment on steroids, Cathedral Basilica is Catholicism on steroids. The entire ceiling is covered with gold-flecked murals, marble statues abound, and they have tours after every mass (which is 4 times a day on Sundays and several times during the week). There is probably close to an acre of pews inside the sanctuary, and don’t know if this is an exaggeration.

Because of its size, services seemed very impersonal. Instead of a close-knit community, it felt more like we were at a baseball game, where participants were only united by their common belief but not necessarily a “community” in the sense that most congregants knew each other. In this way, the visit was more of a spectacle (and I do not mean that pejoratively) than anything else. No one so much as looked in our direction.

What is it with sermons at Catholic churches being so short? Granted, we only have a sample size of 2 (having only visited 2 Catholic churches) but both times, the sermon or message was very short. The sermon was delivered by a bishop who climbed a small spiral staircase to an ornate and impressive podium made of carved marble and fine wood – obviously, any podium one must climb a staircase to stand on is impressive.  The general message of the sermon was that we must give Jesus access to our hearts, especially those parts of our hearts that are dark. The bishop gave a very long list of “dark parts” we should let Jesus see, encouraging people to ask Jesus to help with the tough questions and church teachings people refused to follow. Some of the questions included:

Which church teachings to I refuse to follow? Who do I refuse to meet or be nice to? When did I last go to confession? At whom am I angry – god, the church, people who have died? Why do I blame god for not answering my prayers?

If we give Jesus and god access to our hearts and weaknesses, the Bishop said, we will not be afraid of answers to these questions. Instead, asking these tough questions will give people the opportunity to grow with god.

The bishop did not give answers to these questions, but given my limited understanding of Catholicism, I can only assume that the answers to these questions are that the parishioners are guilty and selfish sinners who are putting themselves above god, but I don’t know that for sure.

After the sermon, most of the parishioners took communion, but I was surprised to see that we were not the only ones who abstained: of the several hundred people present, I would say about 20 people did not take communion.

Following this, several prayers were offered, the most interesting being a prayer that the new year of school education and academics work to educate people that life “is sacred and begins at conception”.

As we left, I observed a family with a young daughter who was maybe eight years old exiting the pews. As the mother and father exited, they bowed to the front of the sanctuary and crossed themselves. Their daughter made a move to leave, and her father grabbed her arm: she bowed and crossed herself, facing backward. Looking stern, the father spun her around so she could do it facing the correct direction.

We did not go on the tour because we were starving!