Going to Church - Trip Report - Long, crappy cliff notes

[RayPowers]

First, some background. I am a "lapsed catholic turned agnostic" for lack of a better way to put my religious beliefs. My wife is a devout catholic, but a bit.... lazy about the whole going to church thing. When we were younger, talking about having children, I agreed that if my wife wanted to go to church with the kids, I would go as well and support it. While I am not a fan of organized religion at all, I think the basic teachings of church at that age for the kids is actually useful. Love one another, etc etc.... In return, my wife would not "force religion" on the kids, and if they did not want to go, or wanted to explore other religions, she would allow it.

Now we have a four year old and three year old. The number of times she has asked to go to church with me, three times (not counting Christmas which is a gimme for her as far as I am concerned). So, I don't really have the right to complain when it does come up, except this time it was the immediacy of it all. Sunday morning, I wake up to "Honey, lets go to church!"

I already had my day planned. I had a card tournament online I had to play at 8am for the website I moderate, then some laundry and cleaning, then, well, I just got Season Two of Lost. I worked straight through the weekend last weekend, and had worked Saturday this weekend, and was looking for a little couch potato time. Church ruined that plan somewhat, and I am one of those anal people that hate having plans ruined.

I agreed, if we could go to the 11am mass so I could play in the 8am tourney as well. (This was easily fixed when I went out in about 15 minutes, sheesh.) She agreed. The kids were down for going, so we were set to go. But then, she pulled this randomly weird switcheroo....

"Kids, do you want to go to the school at church?"

<Both kids> "Yayyyy!"

The "school at church" is basically a child care while the parents go to church. I am slightly miffed about this, as the whole idea behind me going to church is to actually, you know, go to the mass with the kids, not drop them off in some play area while I'm stuck going to mass with the wife. The kids gain nothing out of this, I gain nothing out of this. The only person who gets something is my wife, who gets to alleviate non-church going guilt for a few more months.

I'm pretty cranky about this, but the wife has already seemed to indicate today that she is insane through various other things, so I decide not to fight it and instead be a happy boy and not let it bother me. Off we go to the church, and then to the room where the child care is.

Well, where it was. They've moved the child care, and like a man on a cross country road trip, my wife utterly refuses to ask someone for directions because she doesn't want to appear as someone who never goes to church and wouldn't know that the child care moved some months ago, so off we roam through the other administration building, then the neighboring catholic school until we find the child care center in a time slightly longer than this run on sentence, and that's saying something.

The kids are happy to play in this new play area and off we go to the church. We still make it with time to spare, and my wife sits us by the musicians, who are practicing a song called "Jesus has done so much for me," sung like a bluesy soulful parish get up and clap type song. It's kind of amusing to watch them practice as the drummer is in this glass box that I guess mutes the sound somewhat in the hall so the drums don't blast over everyone/thing else, and the pianist is obviously the ringleader and a bit of a perfectionist. Several times he gets up, stopping the song, walks into the glass case, and is standing over the drummer clapping his hands at a certain pace, tapping a certain drum at a differing points, then storming back out to the piano to try again. In addition, several of the church goers are really getting into this song and trying to participate, and my wife makes a funny comment about the sterotype of white people having no rhythm being proven true today.

This keeps me occupied until the mass starts. One of the priests come out (not the one doing our service) and wants us all to go over the recital hymn, so everyone knows what to sing. Lo and behold, they have two overhead projectors that display the song lyrics on the walls on both sides of the dais, and he talks to the lead female singer of the band (who is quite the hottie actually), and she sings the Hymn Recital for everyone to repeat, of which the first line is "Praise the lord."

Except on the wall, it says "Praise TO the lord." The priest asks which it is, the girl sings it again and embarrassedly states that the word "to" is not in it, and she'll change it in time for the singing.

All you PUA's out there, is the priest sarging the hot lead singer, or is it just me?

We actually get a fairly old priest, and his assistant, who looks pretty much exactly like Dustin Hoffman. Now, I may not be a devout catholic now, but I was raised as one, and let me tell you, its amazing how much your brain remembers. I was able to pretty much mouth the entire mass, aside from the standard local church idiosyncrasies, and of course, the readings. For those non-religion types, in every mass there are three readings of sections of the bible, two by local parish folk, and one "gospel" by the priest himself.

The second reading was amazing only because it was done by an older gentleman with a thick, almost comical German accident, and I was almost disappointed that it didn't end with a hearty "Seig Heil!"

The sermon was by far the worst sermon I have ever heard given by a priest, and remember, I grew up devout catholic. I've heard a lot of sermons. It was all about telling the truth. It started with him talking about a deaf, mute and blind boy in a hospital he worked at, and how the boy could not communicate, but the hospital made him as happy as they could. Then he moved on to how communication is important, and being able to communicate is what made someone human, right after the story about the boy who could not communicate. So, they boy was not human? Seemed pretty offensive to me, but to continue on, he then went off into this fire and brimstone speech about how he felt people's inability to communicate plainly and honesty was causing the ruination of our society. He spoke as if a little white lie was right up there with murder and child raping. It was rather humorous. Realizing he might be going a little too far, he quickly changed to a nice anecdotal story about how he remembers in the movie 48 Hours, Eddie Murphy is talking to the police chief, and telling this story about how the cops were doing such an amazing job and everything was amazing, and then the other cop was too weak to hold up the lie, and told the police chief that Eddie Murphy's story was false.

Ok, first of all, that was Beverly Hills cop, with the "super cop" story. Second there was a lot of profanity and violence in that movie. Third, the movie he did refer too, 48 hours, has violence, profanity AND nudity. Apparently my priest is down for these kind of movies, as long as no one is lying. Fourth, he described the guy who told the truth as weak! So, he wants everyone to tell the truth, and its horrible that people don't do so, but the guy in the movie who does it is weak. WTF?

Worst sermon ever.

During the entire mass, despite my hatred for organized religion, I was very happy to see that when I looked around, most of these people were here because they wanted to be here. They wanted to try to be better people, even if for only an hour a week. And while some of them may be the stereotypical catholic who sins six days a week and asks for forgiveness on the seventh, there seemed to be an overall feeling of goodwill that made me kind of happy I had come, with a slight faith restored in humanity.

That is, until I got in my car and tried to leave, and not one mother [censored] would let me in to the exit lane as everyone crammed their cars together to rush like hell out of the church parking lot.

Hooray, Church.

Ray

Cliff Notes: Non-Religious Guy goes to church. These people are not professionals.