A minor

Probably the one thing I appreciate more than anything else about the Catholic tradition is the way they have church all the time. And by "all the time," I mean a lot more that once or twice on Sunday. If you miss the 10am Sunday service, you can go to the noon service or the 4pm service, or you can plan ahead and go to the Saturday vigil or the 8am Sunday service. If you wake up at 6am on a weekday and think to yourself, "Man, I could really use church right now," you're in business. If you leave work early or manage to pull off a long lunch break, there's probably a weekday noon service at a Catholic parish or chapel somewhere in town.

If Protestants could learn one thing from Catholics, I think it would be this: Yeah, they have their carnal Christians, who pride themselves on their Catholicism but live like hell and go to church maybe once a year - but we have those people, too. Where they have us beat hands-down is in having church without ceasing, serving both their devout members and the down-and-out who show up for weekday or alternate weekend services.

If the church exists for the life of the world - if the church is the mission of God to the world - how can we be content to celebrate the Eucharist once a week on Sunday morning? The world needs more than that. I have a feeling that we'll all eat together with Jesus a lot more than once a week in the kingdom, but you wouldn't know it from our life here & now in the church. Why is that? What else are we doing that's so important?