Visiting an invisible church near you

Church attendance poses logistical challenges for pious Protestants. That’s because, as any good Catholic apologist will tell you, we don’t have a visible church. Only the Roman church is the visible church, founded by Jesus.

When I first got saved, I had a dickens of a time trying to find an evangelical church to attend. I looked in the yellow pages under the church section, but the names and addresses of the Protestant churches were all printed in invisible ink.

I drove around town, but I could never see a Protestant church. Just empty lots.

I finally asked a nice blind evangelical to take me to his church. Everything was invisible to him, so locating a Protestant church posed no special problem for him.

However, I got off to a bumpy start. I tripped over the steps leading up to the entrance because I couldn’t see them. I accidentally stepped on the toes of the invisible usher at the door. Once inside, I accidentally sat on three invisible parishioners before I found an empty seat.

This has also posed a serious technical challenge to televangelists when they broadcast a church service. You don’t see an actual church sanctuary, since that’s invisible. What you see is chroma key compositing. The sanctuary is really (if “really” is the operative word) a postproduction simulation.

Ecclesiastical invisibility has some fringe benefits, however. For instance, the collection plate was invisible, so I couldn’t put any money in the plate when the invisible ushers passed it around.

Next week I got one of those white folding canes the blind use, so that I could feel my way around a bit better.

When you think it about it, it’s remarkable how well Protestants manage to navigate the hurdles of invisible church attendance.

And on second thought, it’s certainly no worse than consuming an invisible, miniaturized Jesus in the communion wafer.