Popularity Contest For Priest?

[flick427]

nucatholic:

The only reason English is the main spoken language of America is because the majority of the original immigrants were English-speakers. However there were many people in what is now America that spoke other languages before the English-speakers even set foot here. Why isn’t one of those the official languages? If there is a larger influx of different language speakers should that become the main language of our country? You said that we are being divided by not melting into one culture? Give me Italian, Greek, German or Palestinian (Christian Palestinian anyways) culture over American culture any day. It is a shame that my Italian family has lost so much of its identity for a NONEXISTENT culture of death which is “progressive” America. I consider myself a Catholic first and foremost. Stop being so worried about holding on to our “American” culture and start worrying about how to make our brothers and sisters grow in their Catholic faith. I can’t stand the nationalism that is put ahead of faith in America. Might as well create a “Church of America” and get it over with because there is so much America worship nowadays that I want to hurl everytime I hear someone say that “America is a Christian nation and is the light of the world.” I love our freedoms here but as a culture we are sinking into the mud. I think our form of hands off Capitalism is the main cause for our downfall. Label me a communist if you want but I don’t see much Capitalism in the first Church…

America has that problem with the majority of our people claiming to be Christian and only a small percentage actually practicing. That is why our country is not really Christian in reality. I understand you don’t like capitilism fully, but I look past that. The thing we have is freedom and I see that as a gift from God and something we should protect and not take for granted. After being in countries without these freedoms, it is easy to observe them and notice how nice we have it here. The problem is *apathy. *I am guilty of it at times too, but that is why our country and Church are having problems. The religious are are afraid of speaking up just like the Christians are not being as vocal in the government. If it was up to me, this whole country would be more like a giant monastary and everything would stop so people could go to Mass and pray throughout the day…wouldn’t that be nice! Oh, and I would make the official language Latin so we could all talk about Catholic stuff…heh heh.

 

[system]

kellifickel:

A friend of mine, who’s family is from Poland, told me about her recent visit to Poland. Upon entering mass, she noticed some cold stares and head shaking from many of the women. When she entered the pew and knelt down, in her ankle length skirt and wrist length sleeves, the lady next to her looked at ther feet, and admonished her severely for coming into the presence of Christ with bare feet and sandals. My friend, blushing, then noticed that everyone was wearing closed shoes and stockings. She appreciated the admonition, however. She explained to me that in the parishes in her families Polish town, a dress code is strictly enforced by all the women who teach it to each other.

kelli

Hmm…Yes and no on this, Kelli, from a native Californian living in Poland (for 12 years). The Poles have a MAJOR THING about wearing socks with shoes and sandals and something on your feet at all time. I strongly suspect that ‘coming into the presence of the Lord’ was one of their peculiar prejudices to do with not going ‘barefoot’ at any time outside the bathtub, rather like the scolding I got from walking past a statue of Mary without GENUFLECTING! (The joke is that such Polish Catholics believe the Trinity refers to Jesus, Mary and Joseph - I only got off the hook by nodding at the statue and explaining that I was going to pray the rosary before the Blessed Sacrament.) I think what your friend reported is more a Polish prejudice against having ‘bare’ feet at all. Poles often put a religious spin on things to give their opinions weight…

Just last week a handyman came into my flat (in JULY) and let out a shocked yelp because I was padding around in bare feet. Two days ago, in 95-degree heat, a friend and I were out with her 18-month-old who was wearing sandals without socks. My friend was chewed out by three older women (all strangers) in less than five minutes for letting her daughter go sock-free. This happened in the town square in Krakow - you don’t have to be in church to have older Polish women ‘admonish’ you for not wearing socks! (The baby’s grandmother has already so indoctrinated the baby against bare feet that when the child sees me barefoot at home, she brings me slippers and puts them on my feet!)

I constantly get strange Polish women staring at my feet and shaking their heads when I’m wearing completely closed moccasins without socks.

Poles are also nuts about the dread diseases you’ll get from sitting on concrete, stones or anything cold. And then there’s the warnings against eating a banana all the way to the bottom - you get worms from doing that, you see.

I’d take the ‘bare feet in the presence of the Lord’ thing with a grain of salt and a big allowance for old wives’ tales about bare feet causing terrible illness.

It’s true that Poles dress up for Mass, though, in their Sunday best, as a rule, and are shocked when they go to America and see people in T-shirts, shorts, flip-flops or just plain sloppy.

The behavior you recount may well have been in a village or small town. In the ‘big city’ where I live, I see at least one or two immodestly dressed girls in Sunday Mass, and in summer, young men in 3/4 length trousers or even shorts.

On the whole, though, Poles are somewhere in the 1950s in terms of appropriate dress for Mass compared to Americans.

But the bare feet thing - nah, that’s a national prejudice that has nothing to do with respect for God.

 

[system]

**If a priest would correct her, she may take off in high dudgeon never to return to Church for 30 yeats. I sometimes ask a woman in Church to be bold enough to confront such a dresser with kindness since some girls might respect another woman’s judgment rather than that of any male. **

Let’s look at what Father Levis said, before we call him a coward. ‘If a priest would correct her, she may take off in high dudgeon and never return to the Church for 30 years.’ Ladies & gentlemen of the thread, I submit that that may be the voice of experience talking! Haven’t you heard of a case in which a priest offered ‘correction’ to someone, only to have that person leave the Church in a huff? My niece is an ardent anti-Catholic because the priest told her she’d have to take marriage preparation, stop living with her fiance in a state of mortal sin & go to confession before she could be married in the Church.

Some have suggested that even the gentle correction of a woman in the parish could blow up in your face - & that, too, strikes me as experience speaking. Have you ever approached a friend & said, ‘I care about you, and the thing you are doing could hurt you and others very much’ and had the person get angry & offensive because they don’t want to be told that they are doing something wrong?

I think Father Levis - no doubt from innocence & purity - left out a good reason why it might even be dangerous to a priest to suggest that a woman was dressing provocatively. How many times have we heard, ‘If a man is aroused by how a woman dresses, he shouldn’t be looking! It’s his problem - not the woman’s’? In this climate of even innocent priests being accused of sexual misconduct, a priest may very well put himself in danger by mentioning that a woman is dressed provocatively. First, she’s angry because he’s pointed out that she’s doing something wrong, & second, she turns it around at him: ‘Well, what’s Father looking down my blouse for in the first place? He’s a priest - he’s not supposed to be looking at my thighs no matter what I wear.’ I can even imagine some mothers saying such things if their daughters were reproved by the priest.

There’s lots of good advice to be culled from everything people have said here: The priest needs to preach from the pulpit (but probably play safe by not approaching individual women); announcements need to go into the bulletin; a committee of mothers & - perhaps more important - fathers in the parish could come up with a dress code published in the bulletin; the whole parish could get involved in the deeper issues, perhaps by having a ‘modesty fashion show’ in the parish hall or having speakers like Jason Evert & his wife come out to talk to teens about purity & self-respect. The issue is deeper than bad taste or cluelessness about what immodesty does to men. It goes to irreverence for God, for women, for sex & for the human person.

I don’t think Father Levis should be condemned as a coward because in the course of answering scores of e-mails, he suggested that the writer directly deal with the problem - I have no doubt that in his mind that was the most efficient & prudent thing to do, as well as the thing his experience as a priest tells him is most effective.

Seems to me that when we are really troubled by something - a Mass abuse, immodest dress, problems in the parish school, etc. - it could very well be God’s way of calling us to action as individuals. Perhaps that’s how Father Levis saw it - as the writer being called by God to take some action, & that’s why he gave the advice he did.

And now I’ll risk opening another can of worms & sending this thread bounding off in another direction by saying that ‘Let Father do it’ went out with Vatican II. Nowadays, the laity are expected to get involved… Seems to me we have an obligation, when concerned, to reflect prayerfully on what action God might be calling us to.

Nel

 

[nucatholic]

Flick, your right about how God has blessed us with freedom. I also agree that apathy is a HUGE problem. Unfortunately my ideal Christian communist society doesn’t work in our imperfect society so I just have to dream about it with starry eyes…Forgive me if I seemed rude or really blunt but I get pretty passionate about things sometimes…God bless and its good to see another passionate Catholic out there who can discuss things even with a brand new somewhat crazy Catholic

 

[loyola_rambler]

nucatholic:

The only reason English is the main spoken language of America is because the majority of the original immigrants were English-speakers.

Nuca, honey, you and Dr. Bud need to have a little chat. The reason English is the main language in America is because this land was settled as an English colony. The majority of the original immigrants were actually Dutch, German, Basque, French, Portuguese, Spanish and African (also some Russians in the far west…but different story there). Yes, there were many English, but they weren’t the majority…just the ones with the money and the power.

 

[nucatholic]

Did you read further down…I talked about how there were many European languages spoken before the huge influx of English-speakers…

 

[misericordie]

Nel:

Hmm…Yes and no on this, Kelli, from a native Californian living in Poland (for 12 years). The Poles have a MAJOR THING about wearing socks with shoes and sandals and something on your feet at all time. I strongly suspect that ‘coming into the presence of the Lord’ was one of their peculiar prejudices to do with not going ‘barefoot’ at any time outside the bathtub, rather like the scolding I got from walking past a statue of Mary without GENUFLECTING! (The joke is that such Polish Catholics believe the Trinity refers to Jesus, Mary and Joseph - I only got off the hook by nodding at the statue and explaining that I was going to pray the rosary before the Blessed Sacrament.) I think what your friend reported is more a Polish prejudice against having ‘bare’ feet at all. Poles often put a religious spin on things to give their opinions weight…

Just last week a handyman came into my flat (in JULY) and let out a shocked yelp because I was padding around in bare feet. Two days ago, in 95-degree heat, a friend and I were out with her 18-month-old who was wearing sandals without socks. My friend was chewed out by three older women (all strangers) in less than five minutes for letting her daughter go sock-free. This happened in the town square in Krakow - you don’t have to be in church to have older Polish women ‘admonish’ you for not wearing socks! (The baby’s grandmother has already so indoctrinated the baby against bare feet that when the child sees me barefoot at home, she brings me slippers and puts them on my feet!)

I constantly get strange Polish women staring at my feet and shaking their heads when I’m wearing completely closed moccasins without socks.

Poles are also nuts about the dread diseases you’ll get from sitting on concrete, stones or anything cold. And then there’s the warnings against eating a banana all the way to the bottom - you get worms from doing that, you see.

I’d take the ‘bare feet in the presence of the Lord’ thing with a grain of salt and a big allowance for old wives’ tales about bare feet causing terrible illness.

It’s true that Poles dress up for Mass, though, in their Sunday best, as a rule, and are shocked when they go to America and see people in T-shirts, shorts, flip-flops or just plain sloppy.

The behavior you recount may well have been in a village or small town. In the ‘big city’ where I live, I see at least one or two immodestly dressed girls in Sunday Mass, and in summer, young men in 3/4 length trousers or even shorts.

On the whole, though, Poles are somewhere in the 1950s in terms of appropriate dress for Mass compared to Americans.

But the bare feet thing - nah, that’s a national prejudice that has nothing to do with respect for God.

Actually, BOWING the head when passing an image of Mary and Joseph is CATHOLIC TRADITION and reverence to whom the sacred images represent. Only fundamentalist christians are offended when true catholics do that.

 

[flick427]

nucatholic:

Flick, your right about how God has blessed us with freedom. I also agree that apathy is a HUGE problem. Unfortunately my ideal Christian communist society doesn’t work in our imperfect society so I just have to dream about it with starry eyes…Forgive me if I seemed rude or really blunt but I get pretty passionate about things sometimes…God bless and its good to see another passionate Catholic out there who can discuss things even with a brand new somewhat crazy Catholic

It seems we want basically the same thing, the conversion of the world!!! …but, we have different views of how we should be going about it. You were not rude like you say, just perhaps stubborn and passionate about things like I tend to be…I don’t mind your views, I am just happy that you are Catholic and love Jesus!
We strayed off the topic of the post though…but hopefully the apathy will pass with our prayers (we should both pray for the church for help and in thanksgiving)…I know that as a single young male I would be EXTREMELY thankful if women would dress more modest at Mass, it is hard to concentrate on Jesus when there is a pretty girl around…I have to complain to Jesus and His Mother about this all the time and get Their help !!!
God bless you!

 

[system]

misericordie:

Actually, BOWING the head when passing an image of Mary and Joseph is CATHOLIC TRADITION and reverence to whom the sacred images represent. Only fundamentalist christians are offended when true catholics do that.

I have no problem with a show of reverence, a bowed head - I was told to GENUFLECT - and I see it often here, even among young people, genuflecting in front of a statue of Mary. I’m quite aware of the difference between worship and reverence - I have a devotion to the Divine Mercy, and reverence that picture by kissing my fingers and touching the Christ’s wounds in the foot (something I picked up from watching how Poles reverence the image). But I’m not genuflecting to a statue, since we all know that genuflecting is a sign of reverence to Christ in the tabernacle. A bow is appropriate for the altar or a statue, as you say. Some people here seem to have elevated Mary to goddess status - priests even address the problem from the pulpit - it’s that tendency to ‘over-sacralize’ that I was addressing.

Poles who would claim that wearing sandals in church is irreverent are not making sense: Moses removed his sandals before the burning bush; Jesus wore sandals Himself, Franciscan priests wear sandals, etc. The poster’s story sounds all-too-familiar: an old Polish lady shocked by someone not wearing socks and adding ‘authority’ to her busy-body remarks by saying it’s irreverent to approach Christ without socks. Tell it to all the pilgrims to Czestochowa who remove their shoes as they approach Jasna Gora (where the image of Our Lady of Czestochowa is housed), tell it to pilgrims over the centuries who removed their shoes and walked over sharp rocks as they approached Christ in the Eucharist at a pilgrimage site.

It’s a very good thing - one of the things I love about Poland - that there’s a homogeneous Catholic culture and members of the culture reinforce the cultural norms (whether reprimanding foul-mouthed teenage boys on the bus or telling a little boy to remove his hat in church). Try that in America and you might get sued (or shot). But when it comes to the line between reverence and worship…well, it’s a good thing there aren’t many Protestants in Poland, that’s all, or they’d think that vast portions of the country was rampantly pagan statue-worshippers.