Music leads pianist to a life of Catholicism (former atheist converts)

SF Chronicle ^ | 6/20/05 | David Ian Miller

[TFFKAMM]

Classical pianist Jacqueline Chew rebelled against her Christian upbringing and became an atheist while attending the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in the 1970s. But her love of music eventually led her back to a spiritual life.

Chew was so taken with the work of Olivier Messiaen, a pioneering French composer known for his sacred Catholic music, that after hearing his composition "Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jesus" ("Twenty Contemplations of the Infant Jesus"), she began questioning her belief that God does not exist. The more she learned about the music, the more religious she became.

Next month, Chew, who released a CD of "Vingt Regards" last year, will take her interest in Catholicism to a new level. She will be received as an oblate, a layperson living outside a monastery who promises to follow the rules of St. Benedict in her private life, at the New Camaldoli Hermitage, a community of monks in Big Sur.

Tell me about your upbringing. Were you raised in a religious family?

Yeah, my whole family is Christian. My parents came from different places, but they ended up in Oakland and met at a Chinese Presbyterian church there. They were very active in the church while I was growing up.

Do you remember any spiritual experiences as a child?

Well, I remember that when I was in the sixth grade, I did a report on different religions. I decided that even though I was brought up as a Presbyterian, I wanted to make my own decisions about what I believed...

[Polybius]

....for instance, he said in one letter that Roman Catholicism, or at least its practice in some place, raises Mary the Mother of Jesus to "co-redemtrix."

I never heard that in Sunday School or in Jesuit high school.

However, if he literally meant "at least in their practice in some places", I guess anything is possible.

At least in their practice, a certain small Protestant group seemed to be raising Tammy Faye Baker to "co-redemtrix" whenever I channel-surfed past their cable TV station several years ago.

[GadareneDemoniac]

You have just identified a problem I'm having. I visit occasionally with my offspring and the repetitive music and hand clapping drives me up the wall. The "Minister of Music" thinks he's leading a Broadway musical or something. But AT LEAST the minister preaches against sin and points the parisioners toward Christ.

At my home church, the organ is powerful, we actually use a Hymnal and sing Hymns that I grew up on, but the preacher is so mealy-mouth it's pitiful.

I really wish I had the answer. I want the old Southern Baptist church I grew up in without all this "its-everybody's-fault-so-it's-nobody's-fault" feel-goodism. Our preacher is trying to get us out of the SBC and into the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. In case you don't know what that is, one of its "leaders" is James Earl Carter hisself.

The old Southern Baptist way was for the believer to get into the true, God-written Word - and that provides plenty of intellectual challenge for anybody.

[GadareneDemoniac]

Thanks for the ping.

[good old days]

"Why, in today's churches, is the rigor of their theology inversely proportional to their musical talent and complexity?"


Why, indeed. We moved out-of-state recently and are having an awful time trying to find a church because of that very reason.

[Born Conservative]

Palestrina- Great album; I may have to go out and buy it.

You should also try The Antiphonal Music of Giovanni Gabrieli (the absolute best album for brass ensemble EVER, bar none).

[ArrogantBustard]

Good stuff.

Thanks!

[Tribune7]

good one ping

[ArrogantBustard]

I'm sorry, sir, but you just referred to the "hymnody of the 'St. Louis Jesuits'". That is totally unacceptable! Have you lost your mind?

That stuff isn't 'hymnody'.

It's simpering drivel.

And Dan Schutte is a poofter.

[Tribune7]

I think Lewis was an Anglican

[Betaille]

Ya... I got the point.

[Tribune7]

I should have also tried to answer your orginial question. Catholicism addresses spiritual and material matters seriously. Most other denominations seem to underemphasize one or the other. The Anglicans (and Epsicopalians) once fell into this category also but contemporary fashion seems to have knocked the spiritual out of them.

[TFFKAMM]

Many Anglicans do as well.

There's an Anglican subculture referred to as the "Anglo-Catholic" tendency, where they outdo pre-Vatican II Roman Catholicism in ritualism and eucharistic adoration. I've attended an Anglo-Catholic parish in San Francisco which is a wild combination of more-Catholic-than-the-Pope mystical liturgy, and highly unconventional parishioners (flaming gays and homeless people sitting next to stereotypical Episcopalian WASP oldsters...)

[ninenot]

In my initial post, the noun used was "ooze."

I used 'hymnody' to clarify for our confused brother...but the term "ooze", I think, is more apropos.

[Conservative til I die]

When I was studying and considering converting from being a Southern Baptist to a Seventh-day Adventist, I studied my Bible like I never studied it before but I wanted to be sure so I discussed what I was learning w/ my Southern Baptist pastor. I showed him the scripture texts about the "state of the dead" and the ultimate annihiliation of the wicked at the end of time. Since he had no coherent defence of the traditional SBC interpreation of everlasiting hell-fire and the fact that people don't go to heaven right afte death, I left the SBC gladly.

Then when I went onto study the merits of Messianic Judaism, I also went into an intense mode of Bible study. As far as I am concerned, the intellectual appeal of a particular denomination depends far more on the person than the religion.

This lady is NOT an example of an intellectual conversion to Catholicism, she converted based on emotion, which I could never do.

Of course who knows how many more religions you'll hopskotch to and from. Might be an emotional jump in there too.