Church and politics

This morning I went to the early Mass, since I didn't want to be rushed getting between church and our costume call for our final Romeo and Juliet this afternoon. So, it was off to St. Stephen's for a quick and dirty, get in and get out, "medium" Mass. There's no choir at this service.

I sat behind a lady today who, aside from the fact that she was black, looked exactly like my friend Linda in Indianola, Oklahoma!!

Hymns today were the ever-popular Protestant hymn Nicaea (Holy, holy, holy) for the processional, Leoni for the offertory, and In Babilone for the recessional. The cantoress sang some responsorial "congregational" hymn during communion, but nobody sang the antiphon, and even I didn't know the song. Other than those unfortunate hymns as "marching music" for the people going up for communion (which seems to be a really bad habit in this diocese, not just St. Stephen's), the organist/choirmaster always does a good job of selecting good, inspiring, appropropriate, and singable hymns....in fact, I get the impression that he must have come from an Episcopal church before coming to St. Stephen, since the lifelong Catholic musicians always pick really, really sucky, saccharine hymns.

They didn't have printed service leaflets today for some reason. In a way, I thought that was actually a good thing, since the cantoress had to announce the hymns, and I think more people actually picked up their hymnals and sang than what happens when people have the hymns in their leaflets.

The GWU chaplain was the celebrant and homilist today. The Gospel reading today was about Jesus going to the synagogue in Nazareth, reading a passage from Isaiah, and then announcing that the promise had been fulfilled. Father took that and told how some Protestant minister taught the youth group to hear things and then say, "So what?" as a means of examining faith and Father thought we should do that, too, but he never really explained to what end. By the time he finished that section of the homily, I was thinking, "So what?" too. Then he launched into his frequent abortion-is-bad commentary, tying it in with some March for Life they are having on the Mall tomorrow.

Eh. I'd be much more inclined to be against abortion if the Roman Catholic Church were to permit contraception and birth control. This particularly struck me today, because after communion, they had some nuns from the Little Sisters of the Poor there to speak and then stand by the door collecting money as people left to help them pay for existing ministries to help the poor; the Catholic Church can't afford to pay for caring for the existing poor, and yet they want those people to continue breeding and having babies? A few condoms here and there would work wonders—if God wants a couple to have a baby, He'll cause the condom to break.

Yeah, I know, you priest readers of mine are having a heart attack right about now, but nobody ever accused me of being a good little Catholic boy.

And that's how my sinful day started. :-)