God Says Quite Clearly That You Should... Um... Er... We'll Have To Get Back To You On That
I go to church every week. It's not so much the devotion as we've already paid for my kid's Sunday school classes through May and we'd hate to see the money go to waste.

For those who aren't up to speed on the form of the Catholic Mass, it goes like this:

1. Stand up. Singing singing as priest enters. Mumble prayers in unison and on cue en masse.

2. Sit. Scripture reading. Very important: do not fall asleep. Someone is bound to notice.

3. Stand. Gospel reading. That Jesus was one witty bastard.

4. Sit. Homily. Some sort of clever weaving together of the Gospel with earlier readings that you did not sleep through. Probably also some underlying message about how I am a worthless human being, but God loves me anyway.

5. Stand. Mumble more prayers. More singing. Kneel. Very serious non-sleeping. Stand. More singing, make awkward contact with people around you. Get snack (same crackers every week). Leave.

The only variable is the Homily. This is as it should be since the point is to bring across 2,000 years worth of storied ritual with deep meaning stretching all the way back to the beginnings of mankind. Not Mankind the Wrestler either, I mean the actual human race.

As you may or may not know, it is not easy for the Catholic Church in America to draw young, unmarried men to forswear Budweiser and naked chicks in favor of cheap wine and buggery.

Whoops, pretend I didn't say that. No buggery. We cleared that all up. The wine they use is pretty cheap, though.

This, I think, is the primary root of the church's opposition to contraception, the idea being the more kids you have, the more likely you would be to force one into the priesthood instead of, say, paying for them to go to college or having them live with you indefinitely until the lazy bastard "finds his way". With 1-3 kids these days--as opposed to the 12 my grandparents had--the urge to force someone to consider giving themselves to Christ isn't quite so pressing.

The answer for the Church has been to recruit from around the world, bringing new priests out of all manner of overpopulated (coincidence?) Third World countries to tend to the American flock. I've been mystified by homilies delivered in incomprehensible accents from Nigeria, the Philippines, nearly every Latin American nation, Haiti and--most commonly--Ireland.

The Irish priests tend to be older, staunchly conservative and still bitter about being the eighth of nine children, having been made to watch their older siblings go on to fabulous secular careers as Assistant Dung Separators or Pub Stool Occupiers while they were stuck with Jesus, some dusty books and handsy seminary teachers.

Over the last few weeks, all the talk in the homilies (it all strings together, I swear) has been of politics and voting.

We do have one young American priest in our parish. Priests alternate which Masses they work, so two weeks ago we got the young American and last week it was the Bitter Old Irishman. A sampling of the differences:

1. Young American Priest: It is against the law for us to tell you whom to vote for specifically. The church has strong positions on a range of issues. Just because we voice certain opinions louder than others doesn't mean you should weigh that one issue more heavily than others. You have to make decisions based on the whole record of a candidate, not just his or her stance on one single issue. To do otherwise is a violation of the Godly exhortation to be a good, responsible citizen which is part and parcel of exemplary moral conduct.

2. Old Irish Priest: Election... stem-cells... frozen embryos... Abortion! Abortion abortion abortion abortion. Abortion abortion abortion. And don't forget about abortion. There are 8 billion abortions every second in America. If you make a vote one particular way, this will immediately stop. Abortion abortion. Abortion. Oh yes, don't forget abortion.

So you see, even week to week in one parish, there is more than one face of the Catholic church.

Oh yes, there was a really, really good segment on Hardball about this issue last week. I can't remember the day it was so I don't have the link to the transcript, but it was basically Catholic Chris Matthews trying to figure out how you enforce an abortion ban legally should Roe v. Wade ever be overturned and basically coming away with no viable answer at all. It's something "pro-life" people (and I think Chris basically would fall into that camp) never talk about.

It was probably fascinating in its entirety, but the commercial over on FOX ended and baseball came back, so I had to bail out on the end of it. Priorities.


This post on the Narcissus Scale: 5.7


Pops

- posted by Pops @ 2:02 PM