Some correspondence from the "You Should Go To Church On Christmas" post. First, here's one from a Catholic priest. I've edited it slightly to protect his identity:

I read this piece with interest for a few reasons.  I’m the pastor of three parishes outside of [place.]  One of the things I felt I had to do as soon as I arrived was to combine the parishes’ religious education programs so that there would be a common curriculum and consistent staffing between the parishes.  That necessitated the changing of the Mass schedule to be sure that families from each of the parishes would have the opportunity to attend Mass at their home parish as well as faith formation classes.  The change went fairly smoothly, for the most part, but there were some objections. 

One of the ones which most surprised me was a father calling to say that his family would be leaving the parish because of the change.  He argued that the Mass at his home parish was too early, and that he didn’t want to attend Mass at another church because it wasn’t his parish.  He complained that the Mass schedule was interfering too much in his family’s “family time”.  I was going to gently suggest that perhaps that wasn’t the best way to see things, but he cut me off pretty sharply and said “I know what you’re going to say, and no, it isn’t the same thing.” 

At the point, I was at a loss for an effective response, because it seemed clear we were operating with completely different religious grammars.  I politely asked him to reconsider and give it a shot, and promised to pray for him and his family, but that was that.  So your blog post today reminded me of that incident. 

It seemed fairly outré at the time, but now, evidently, it’s out there in the world in a sizable way.  There is an asset which the Catholic and Orthodox churches have, that at least on an official, ecclesial level the idea of not having Mass or Divine Liturgy on Christmas or any given Sunday is simply unthinkable.  But the number of families and individual believers who skirt around that logic isn’t small anymore.  I think (predictably) the pandemic exacerbated this a lot.  When everything first shut down, I jumped at the opportunity to live stream Mass so that people would still feel a connection to their parishes and have some sense of continuity.  But at the same time, the loss of a sacramental sense that went with that, the ease of watching Mass from home at one’s convenience, had a really corrosive effect on the faith or practice of a lot of parishioners.  It was a tough call, because I’d like to think I was making a good decision for defensible reasons at the time, but there have been downstream consequences. 

The other interesting point regards the WSJ article you mentioned; a brother priest shared it with me and we’ve been discussing it.  I think there’s a category missing in their analysis.  They’re measuring “younger priests” against “the laity” at large; I wonder how much different things would look if they stacked up clergy next to laity who are of the same or similar age.  I’m [in my thirties] and fairly religiously orthodox and politically conservative.  But I feel I’m also observably “left” of many younger Catholics and young Catholic families.  The problem is, the younger part of the Church has been almost wiped out.  The Catholics who support abortion, same-sex marriage, all the usual stuff of the Left the article mentions are noticeably older.  Part of that number is also self-identified Catholics who don’t really practice. 

The problem is made worse, frankly, by statements from the Bishop of Rome and the hierarchy about rigid, conservative, younger priests who “lack compassion”.  It’s tremendously demoralizing to hear your superiors speak that way about your cadre, for one thing.  But it’s also a way of avoiding the conversations that really need to be had. 

As I mentioned, I’m a pastor of three parishes.  Ten years ago, that was practically unheard of.  Moreover, I was made a pastor after being ordained three years.  As of ten or twenty years ago, that also would’ve been unthinkable.  We have an ever diminishing number of priests serving a largely static number of parishes, and I’ve found it’s extremely difficult to be a priest for multiple parishes in the same way you can for one.  Those issues aren’t being discussed because we younger priests are “too conservative”.  When we point out how sick, Satanic, and screwed up the culture surrounding us is, it’s because we’re “rigid”.  When we argue that a Christianity which has ceased to make any demands on the lives of its disciples is headed for the morgue, it’s because we aren’t “compassionate”.  Whether or not there’s any merit to what we’re saying can be discounted, because we’ve been labelled and boxed. 

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Another reader:

My family converted to Anglicanism about 10 years ago, but my wife and I were life-long evangelicals prior to our conversion. You've mentioned from time to time your unfamiliarity with evangelical culture, so I thought I'd pass along some thoughts about your piece from this morning as I work them out in my own head. 

The phrase that really caught my attention was "the second most holy day in the Christian calendar." (Or something very similar to that phrase; I don't have the piece pulled up for an exact quote.) An older generation of mid- to higher-church Protestants would have understood that phrase, even if they didn't agree with the idea. Old school Presbyterians would have objected to the idea of one day being more holy than another, regarding Sunday church attendance (or Saturday, if they were really old school Presbyterians) as a discipline rather than an obligation. Methodists would have been more sympathetic to the idea, and Episcopalians and Lutherans certainly would have both understood and agreed. 

But evangelicalism has changed enormously in the past 60 years or so. Baptists have become much more prominent in American Protestant life at the popular level, and much of urban and suburban evangelicalism has been deeply influenced by Pentecostalism through the charismatic movement. (By the way, I was raised Pentecostal and my wife was raised Baptist.) These are movements that are deeply disconnected from the historical practice of the Christian faith. Baptists are disconnected rather intentionally. They very frequently believe that Christianity went off the rails and devolved into sacramentalism very shortly after the turn of the 2nd century. A "calendar" for the church year is part and parcel of that devolution and is to be rejected. Pentecostals are disconnected more through ignorance than conscious choice, but the disconnection is still very real. 

These folks will often argue that making one day holier than another runs counter to God's plan that all things should be made holy through Christ. Tuesday is no less holy than Sunday. If we choose to celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday, fine, but we shouldn't think of that day as somehow more holy than the next Sunday. 

I think what they've achieved is actually the opposite. Rather than elevating all of life into a realm of holiness, they usually end up dragging sacred things down into the vulgarity of pop culture. Their music is a second-rate knock-off of pop radio, and the sermons are usually some form of Christianized self-help. [A megachurch here in my city] set up a red carpet style photo op for attendees at this year's Easter service. I kid you not. When every day is holy, no day is holy, so why wouldn't you think of Easter as a chance to step out in your new ensemble and get some great snaps with your family? They seem genuinely unaware that they've made the Feast of the Resurrection a celebration of self rather than of God's saving work in history. Their understanding of the eucharist is particularly striking. The eucharist becomes a mere memorial, a time to sentimentally recall Christ's self-giving love rather than receive God's grace through the body and blood of His Son. 

My family's not perfect. My kids ask from time to time to sleep in on Sunday morning. I don't let them, but the fact that they ask lets me know there's still work to do in their spiritual formation. My middle daughter, who's 18, struggles with her theology of human sexuality. We didn't leave behind the wilderness of evangelicalism and become ideal Christians by entering the promised land of the high church tradition. But at least that tradition gives us the tools we need to fight against our own disordered desires. One of those tools is going to church on Christmas Sunday. We'll be there.