"Five Church Tales," or "Andrew Needs to Devote a Large Block of Time to Commenting to This Post, Assuming That the Comments Are Working, Which of Course Right Now They Are Not."
Tale one:
I don't think I ever told this on my weblog, but stop me if I have. Except you can't. Stop me. Because how could you.
Anyway, Kim and I went to a different Catholic church one Sunday because we (a) were unable to wake up in time for 8:30 mass yet (b) had somewhere to go that made attending 11:15 mass impossible. So we attended this other Catholic church, and one of the songs for that Sunday was "Amazing Grace." The music and lyrics for the song was in the bulletin, and I didn't bother to even look at it until I heard the congregation singing the following:
"Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
"That saved a soul like me!"
It is difficult to express how angry I was, but let me try: I was angry.
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Tale two:
Also, the priest kissed Kim on the cheek on the way out. That was weird.
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Tale three:
Not being Catholic, I'm occasionally a conscientious objector to parts of mass I don't agree with or aren't applicable to me -- for example, unless I'm zoning, I won't follow the rest of the congregation in saying, "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed," not because I disagree with the notion, but because I won't be imminently receiving Him, be it symbolically or physically.
But there is one part of mass at our particular church that I don't have any theological issue with, yet refuse to participate in out of purely aesthetic reasons. As the children are leaving to go to their own ministry, the priest has them face the congregation, put their right hands up in the well-known blessing manner, and say, "God bless you as you stay." And then the congregation (sans me) does the same, but instead says the line, "God bless you as you go."
Please, someone give me some good dogmatic reason to hate this cloying blessing.
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Tale four:
We have a new priest at our parish. I do not like him. I liked him for about a month because he writes decent sermons and, unlike at least half the priests in the Richmond area, he is not excessively theatrical. (One local church feels more like "The Father John Show, Starring Father John!" than a legitimate body of God.) But now has decided that this parish is not enough like his old parish, and it is now time to change everything in our parish to match his previous one. For example:
a) During the portion of the main prayer where the reader will list the names of those sick or passed away, the congregation will now repeat the first name of each of those people, i.e.:
I do not like this, and I only partially know why.
b) Rather than have choirs at two of the masses, the choirs will be merged into one giant superchoir, which will sing at one mass a week. I can see advantages to this, and if it were a decision made by the choirs themselves or the music coordinator herself (whom Kim and I are both fond of), I'd have little issue with it. But having the priest come in and, two months forward, decide this is the way "his" choir shall be run is disingenuous.
c) Rather than have 10-12 cantors (read: song leaders) rotating among the many masses, they will be auditioned, and only three will be allowed to remain cantors. And they will be paid. Although, apparently, the bell choir director will not. (Not that he has an expectation of such, mind, but still.) I can see advantages to this -- although I think they're far outweighed by the dis- -- and if it were a decision made by the cantors themselves or the music coordinator... You get the picture.
There's more, but I forget what. Largely, it's not the decisions themselves that bother me, but the autonomous way that the priest is thrusting his own personal aesthetic preferences upon a parish that has its own aesthetic preferences, thank you very much. I don't believe anyone from church is reading this weblog, and if they are, oh well, but after Kimberly and I have given this priest a bit more of a fair shake, there's a not-piddling chance that we will change churches.
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Tale five:
There’s a problem with the way Catholic churches pick priest rather than how protestant churches (at least the ones I’m familiar with) do the same. Protestant churches use the corporate America model, with minister as “CEO”: They interview, they look at past results, the “board of directors” looks at the CEO’s likely fit with the “company,” and a decision is made from inside the individual church. (Part of the reason why there was never as much of a child abuse scandal in the protestant church is that bad eggs are likely to be successfully vetted by this process.) There are problems with this method, no doubt -- churches are less likely to be challenged by the ministers it choose -- but all-in-all, it’s not a bad system.
In the individual Catholic church, the priest for a particular parish is chosen by the bishop, who has hundreds of parishes under his jurisdiction and thus doesn’t know the tenor of each and every one. He knows enough to put a priest that speaks Spanish in a highly Hispanic area, I’d hope; beyond that, the priest a church gets depends mostly on what other area priests have ended their seven-or-so-year stints within the past few months and are looking to be relocated. And because Catholic priests have autonomy over their parishes -- unlike in protestant churches, where the church council runs the show -- rather than a reflection of their parishoners, Catholic churches are instead largely a reflection of their priests. (No church, of course, is a perfect reflection of God.) And in a Catholic church when one doesn’t like the priest, one is more or less resigned to not liking the church.
oh so lovingly written by
Matthew |
i sincerely do not know what you are doing here. are you lost? were you
looking for your delicate calico cat, and did you follow her up two flights of stairs
to this room? she is not here. she was here, yes. we gave her a warm bowl of milk, we talked with her about campaign finance reform for a time, and then she bid us good day. i believe she was
going to the post office two blocks down, but i don't quite recall.
for surely you did
not find your way from prinsiana, the least traveled site on
the internet. if you did, though, perhaps you are looking for humor. perhaps you are looking for profundity. perhaps you are looking for answers.
i'm sorry, but you shall go naught-for-three.
