Love Letters to Lukewarm Souls

How Catholic Worship (aka Mass) Is Different From Non-Catholic's "Worship" (aka Service)     One time in a party, I introduced a family new to our town to an old friend of mine. As we were all having nice conversation of pretty much anything the family needs to expect as newbies, my old friend (a fallen-away Catholic and now an active member of a certain evangelical ecclesiastic community) brought up in the conversation that they have a new pastor in their church that is smart and charismatic, and invited the new family to come and attend their worship service sometime. Now, as a Catholic, I always admire our Non-Catholic brethren's enthusiasm of inviting other people to their church. They always seem to make evangelizing so easy and natural than a Catholic would do the inviting. We can always learn from them, we grant them that. However, I also wonder how come is it this way? How come for some reason inviting someone to a Catholic Mass does not seem to have the sa...

Charismatic style of worship or popularly known as a Prayer Meeting, in a nutshell, is basically praising God together with fellow members in a Christian community. Usually it starts with an exhortation from the worship leader (to inspire or bring the congregation into the presence of the Holy Spirit), and then followed by fast and slow worship or gospel songs about 4 or 5 tracks. It is originally a Protestant style of worship, fairly novel (early 20th century innovation), and still the main, normative and typical type of worship being done in various Protestant denominations in their Sunday services today. However, this is allowable in Catholic settings as well (gained popularity in the 1960's), approved by Popes including Pope Paul VI, Pope St. John Paul II and others (although not to be substituted or replaced for the Mass), and adopted by Catholic Charismatic groups. I happened to belong to one particular ecumenical Charismatic-based Christian community here in ...