I have been thinking about it and, in the near future I think I may want to visit a coptic monastery. I have never been to one and so I am wondering, would it be better to wait a while for my church to go visit one as a group or maybe visit one on my own in a couple months? To anyone who has visited a monastery, what was your experience like?
Firstly, please forgive me if I say anything ignorant or uneducated, if I do, it is because I am speaking as someone looking into Catholicism. I have always felt this natural pull towards the Catholic church but ultimately I had made the decision to convert to Oriental Orthodoxy. Despite convincing myself that I was in the true church, there are just some things about Catholicism that draw me in, and I do believe that on a personal level that the Catholic church does have valid sacraments. However, there are some things that, from the perspective of an Orthodox christian, make me feel slightly uncomfortable. Things such as lay people being able to hand out communion (EMHC), receiving communion in the hand, irreverent liturgies with modern music, and the priest facing the parishioners rather than ad orientem. There are so many parishes near me where this type of stuff happens and I hate seeing a guitar and modern music, it feels completely detached from tradition. Once again, I am sorry if this sounds picky, but these are things that usually wouldn’t be an issue in the vast majority of Orthodox liturgies, yet is a common thing among many latin rite Catholic parishes. It seems like it would be more difficult to find a reverent Catholic mass than it would be to find an irreverent Orthodox liturgy. If anyone has had a similar experience going from Eastern/Oriental Orthodoxy to Catholicism, let me know how you overcame this. Lastly, if I were to in the future convert to Catholicism, this would be a secondary issue, because, even if the mass isn’t super reverent, I believe taking communion would be the most important thing.