Brendan:
Ok,
How about this, go to another parish and get a good gallon or so of Holy Water.
Bring it back to your parish and fill up all the fonts.
When asked, explain that your became conscience of the many ways people journey towards God, and how experiencing the dryness of Lent would aid some, others might find the use of Holy Water more comforting on their Faith Journey.
So rather than appear to be devisive, you thought it would be a great idea to fill the fonts up. That way, all those who wanted to experience dryness could by foregoing the use of the fonts, while those who wanted to use Holy Water could still feel welcomed and cherished in their particular Faith Expression.
Then hug the person(s) and exclaim how thankful you are that they make you feel so empowered as a member of the Priesthood of the Laity that you felt comfortable taking this apostolate on by yourself.
If you can say all that with a straight face, your all set
you are good, as long as you get the lingo down pat you may get away with it. we can also try this when we kneel during the consecration at these places, or when we keep our hands in our pocket during the Our Father etc., loudly exclaiming how comfortable we feel in our particular Faith Expression, and how affirmed we are.
my brother gave me a bamboo back scratcher with a little hand on the end for use in his diocese in Michigan, which shall not be mentioned to protect the guilty, for me to use during the Our Father, just extend it to the nearest person.
worst Mass
outdoors, on parish grounds of one of the most beautiful Churches in a large Michigan city
priest in hawaiian shirt, cut offs and flip flops, altho he did wear a stole
altar servers ditto, but one had a pink floyd Tshirt
bread was Wonder, right out of the package, each family was given one piece to share among themselves
wine looked and tasted like watery pink koolaid, actually poured into little dixie cups
bread crusts and empty cups strewn everywhere, but thoughtfully youth group members collected them in trash bags afterwards
I do not say body and blood because he ad-libbed the words of consecration and the entire Eucharistic prayer sounded like something written by a committee of Call to Action, and I recognized none of the elements of a valid Mass.
we would have left but were with my husband’s new boss, my mother, and several co-workers. We did go to Mass in my old parish afterwards, thereby missing out on the picnic that followed the “celebration experience” at the other place.
everyone was supposed to bring their own lawn chair, otherwise sit or stand on the grass, pavement, or in the street as we ran out of room
cannot remember the music, mercifully I have blotted it out, but it was all pop stuff from the radio at the time, early 80s
liturgical dancers the worst abuse of all because they enlisted small girls for this purpose, which is also child abuse, and had them waltzing around during the proceedings apparently in some random modern dance ecelctic self-expression waving ribbon streamers.
they had no clowns, but the way the priest and congregation were dressed, for a picnic, they didn’t need them
I would have thought it was some other event like a prelude to the picnic except for the fact that they took up a collection, the only thing resembling an actual Mass that took place.
according to my sister who still lives in that town and parish but has not been Catholic for a long time (who can blame her) that priest sometime after left the priesthood to live with his long time friend and partner and they run some kind of new age artsy crafty thing up north.
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