The old crying baby problem.
The solution is simple. We are all called to the the other more than self. If you are subjected to a screaming child, your job is to love and desire the best for them first. your convenience is secondary. Like someone else said, offer it up if you can. If you can’t help but get ticked off, then take this as a clue that this is an area of growth for you. I have found it is usually best to learn such lessons quick before God decides to teach you the harder way.
If you are the mother, then you should love your fellow parishoners more. Yes, you have to balance the raising of this child with your duty to others. But make no mistake, you do have a duty to love your fellow parishoners and to not be a cause of stumbling. Take the child out if you can, please.
We are all in this together and we must, must work together if we are to grow in sanctity.
This is ideal. Thank you. We should always look out for the best interests of others. Isn’t that what the reading this last week was all about? Be ye kind one to another.
I do think that some parents take advantage of Catholics with the attitude that “if these people are truly pro-life, we shouldn’t have to take our screaming baby out of the Mass.”
Or there’s the attitude that “my screaming baby needs to be in Mass just like everyone else.”
My biggest problem isn’t with the homily, but with the music. If a cantor is trying to sing and an instrumentalist is trying to play, a screaming child is extremely distracting. I try not to pay attention, but this last Saturday evening, I totally messed up the Gloria in the first Mass I played for because of a screaming toddler. I couldn’t help it–he startled me and I hit the introduction very badly.
Most Catholic churches that I have been in have abominable sound systems, absolutely shameful. The parish could buy a couple of Mr. Microphones at Radio Shack and hook them up to those little plastic speakers, and save themselves a lot of money–it would sound better than the junk “sound system” that some unscrupulous salesperson conned the parish into buying. For this reason, I think that parents with loud children should please be considerate and take the little ones out for just a minute or two until the child is calmed down. People really do like to hear the Mass, not just see it.
As for the pro-life issue, I think it’s a kindness to the child to allow him/her a few minutes to run around a little. Although others on this board disagree with me, I think it’s unrealistic to expect a little one to sit…SIT…quietly for more than five minutes at a time, let alone an hour. This isn’t something that needs to be “corrected”–this is their level of development.
It’s no different than toilet-training readiness–no one would expect a year-old child to be ready to toilet-train, and no one should expect a baby or toddler to sit still and quiet for a whole hour. I say take them out and bring them back in, several times if necessary, and gradually increase the amount of time that they are expected to sit quietly in the Mass as they get older and their attention span naturally increases. This will help the child to learn to love attending Mass, rather than making them dread it.
And during those times that they are in the Mass, teach them what’s happening. From a young age, I whispered to my children through the worship services (we were Protestant) about what was going on and if they were sitting in the worship service with me, I expected them to participate as much as they could (stand up during the hymns, fold hands during the prayers, etc.).
The Church Herself says that a child is not obligated to attend Mass until they are around aged 7, so it’s not a sin if the child misses parts of the Mass for his/her “active” jogs in the lobby.
The irony was that he was doing this during the singing of the psalm “Taste and see the goodness of the Lord.” I ended up turning around and giving a bemused ironic look at the young crumb-crunching lad.
