Infantile Mass

I thought I was doing a good thing this morning. I thought I was, really.

Wishing to get an early jump on the day’s activities and taking advantage of the extra hour we got due to the Daylight Savings thing, I showered upon waking, dressed, grabbed Patch (age eleven), and headed out the door to do a relatively-speaking early mass, the Nine A.M.

I forgot that the Nine A.M. mass at my Novus Ordo church is the “Family Mass.” Or, as Patch described it, the “Children’s Mass.” Or, as I’m going to describe it, the “Infantile Mass.”

First of all, as we sat down ten minutes before the start of mass, I knelt and tried to pray. But it was futile. A small group of young ’uns were loudly rehearsing a song off key. Adults – all rocking their finest pairs of jeans – shuffled in herding toddlers and babies, chatting animatedly to each other and in that overly-exaggerated way to the various youngsters they passed, all oblivious to the Presence of Christ in the tabernacle off to the side. I would have had better success praying in Grand Central Station. After a minute, I stopped.

The mass was said by the priest who had the lowest testosterone-to-estrogen ratio in the parish. A nice man, but not very manly. Everything was caterwauled by the half-dozen member choir, consisting of a sixth-grader my daughter knew from school, a fifth-grader, and four other younger children. Some elderly hippies on guitar and keyboards accompanied them.

The readings were done somewhat respectfully, though in that slower-than-molasses enunciate-every-word-monotonously Novus Ordo way I hate. Give me a televangelist any time over these zombified lectors. The gospel was on Jesus’s interaction with tax collector Zacheus, a perennial favorite the Church runs through every year. When my girls were younger a priest even brought out a Zacheus puppet for the homily.

Ah, that brings me to the homily. The old priest called up all the children from the pews – about two dozen – to sit on the stairs before the altar. Through a faulty mic that keeping cutting out he explained in excruciatingly simplistic detail the “moral” of the gospel reading, via a Q&A with the little ones. Basically, if you do bad, confess to God and make up for it in some way.

The Liturgy of the Eucharist veered back towards a normal, reverential mass, though I balked when I saw six Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion tromp up to the altar to help the priest distribute the Body and Blood to all ninety of us in the pews. I no longer serve as an EMHC as I cannot theologically justify the office of Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion. I told Patch to slip into the line feeding to the priest as it came our time to go forward.

Now, to defend myself, as you no doubt consider me a cold-hearted reactionary bastard.

I am not against children learning hymns (but please not those God-awful 70s abominations) and learning some basic lessons in morality and what our Church teaches. No, I am not against this at all. In fact, there should be a special place explicitly devoted to these goals. In fact, there is: Sunday School.

Mass is Mass. Mass is to honor the sacrifice Christ made for us on the Cross. Christ should be the center of the mass. After 1970, with the institution of the Novus Ordo mass, we became the center of the mass. In the “Family Mass,” the children became the center of the mass.

The priest no longer faces Christ on the Cross; he faces us. We no longer kneel and take the Eucharist on the tongue; we stand and take it via our unconsecrated hands. We no longer dress like we are in the presence of the Creator of the Universe; we dress like we’re going to watch a T-Ball game.

I observed the distracted faces of the parents as the mass went on. No one was focused on the readings or the prayers from the priest. Everyone was letting their precious ones climb all over the pews, noisily rip open bags of snacks, burble out loud and smack each other. There was the occasional “hush!” but no discipline at all. Only one grandma left the pews with her granddaughter, and that was to proudly escort her down the center aisle to use the bathroom.

I saw a lack of catechesis in those distracted faces. No one knew why he or she was there. Since 1970 there has been a dearth of catechesis to the “faithful.” Certainly very, very little from the pulpit. Ninety-nine percent of the sermons I hear are on some variation of “being nice.” I have never heard a sermon on the Church’s teaching on abortion, homosexuality, or any non-liberal cause (I did hear one on why the death penalty should be abolished).

It has been written that America worships a religion called Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. Go ahead, google it. What it means, basically, is that we want a religion that only demands we feel good about ourselves by being nice. The “deism” part is a non-personal God who demands nothing too strenuous of us.

We also are in full communion with Mammon. Mammon, meaning wealth or the pursuit of it. For who would dress in their best pair of jeans to go on a job interview? How many of us are too tired from a week of work to attend Mass on a precious day off? How many of us spend more annually at amazon.com than contribute to the Church or a charity?

Additionally, we commune with the god Athletica. Who would willingly allow our children to miss a practice or miss one of their games? Who would willingly allow our children to be late to a practice or game? Or allow distractions? How come I never see the coaches of both teams allow younger siblings on the field to play with them in a “Family Game”?

What is important to us? Work? Sports? Or worship of the True God?

Now, I admit, though I believe the truth of Catholicism, I disavow the current regime in the Vatican. I disavow the implementation of Vatican II. I disavow the “weaponized ambiguity” of the documents of Vatican II that allows such sillinesses as Clown Masses, Pachamamas, and Family Masses. And so, apparently, whether consciously or not, so do millions of others. Google any statistics on the numbers of Catholics, Catholic marriages, Priests, and Religious Orders, and you’ll see the downward trend. Since 1970 and the “reforms” after Vatican II, the Church has been in freefall.

This “Family Mass” is but one of many, many, many symptoms, and as the years go by and the numbers of faithful decline, nothing ever changes.