My husband and girls wear modest shorts (to the knees) to Mass in summer. Our church has no air conditioning, there is no real ventilation, and sometimes the day is just too hot for a dress, even a sundress!!! I wear pants because it makes me feel better. I seldom wear shorts, mostly because in my line of work, I can and do crawl around in tight spaces. Pants and trousers are what I wear. Lots of times, those pants are jeans.
My only concerns with flip-flops is on servers. I am afraid, in our parish with polished marble and terrazo floors, they will fall. So is Father, so they are not worn by servers. I really don’t look at people’s feet. The girls wear sandals that I picked up at Wal-Mart for $3 that are really just pretty flip-flops made of leather. I wear gym shoes a lot, because they have traction, and I am 50-ish. (Did you know flip-flops were invented during the Depression to give people an inexpensive pair of summer shoes?)
What bothers me is the belly shirts and very tight Hollister jeans worn with flip-flops. It is distracting to watch a girl’s rump be used as an advertisement during Mass, not in a sexual way (I am female after all) but the up/ down/twist/turn. I keep expecting blinking neon lights to be included in every pair of Hollisters.
I receive our Lord in my hands. I make sure my hands are clean first. I would prefer intinction, which I think is much more efficient, but I am not in change.
I kneel now, but kneeling isn’t getting any easier. My boss, who is principal of a Catholic elementary school, has a great deal of difficulty with kneeling, as she has been teaching for decades. On the weekend, she attends a local parish that has no kneelers so nobody says, “There’s the principal of St. Whozits, and she isn’t kneeling!”
So- Are you so different?