I currently attend a Catholic Church with my wife ( she`s Catholic, I am not ). I have been walking into Mass with her for over three years now.
I very much miss my Journey concerts with Ned Flanders singing.... I still attend a few “concerts” a year.
From what I can tell, all those hand wavers have no less of Jesus in their hearts than any one of those Catholic parisioners I see most Sundays.
If it works for you, great. It just leaves me cold and uninspired.
St. Charles Borromeo in his youth allowed himself no other amusement but that of grave music, with a view to that of the Church.
“As to music as an amusement, too much time must never be given to it; and extreme care ought to be taken, as a judicious and experienced tutor observes, that children be not set to learn it very young, because it is a thing which bewitches the senses, dissipates the mind exceedingly, and alienates it from serious studies, as daily experience shows. Soft and effeminate music is to be always shunned with abhorrence, as the corrupter of the heart and the poison of virtue.”
And the Jesus in their minds? After forty years of dumbed down catechesis, many Catholics are very lacking in that, too. But the big question is “who Jesus.” Aldous Huxley once told the story of the young fisherman, really a boy of thirty or fourteen, who he met on the beach in Spain. He was a bright and cheery lad and Huxley liked to strike up conversations with him about. Huxley met him often since he like to walk through the village. At some point they struck up a conversation about religion. Somewhat with amusement, Huxley recalled that with just his mastery of the catechism, the boy was more than able to hold his own in the conversation —something I doubt that you or I could do easily. A year or so later, he returned and asked a local about the boy and learned that he had been lost as sea. Huxley was saddened, but reflected that the greatest mysteries could be reduced to simple forms, which if we reflect on them yield great wisdom, even in the young. We must just believe in them.
Why don’t you check out a RCIA class. Your wife can tell you what that means.