What to do when the priest is out of sorts

[agw123]

So?

If the priest wants to talk for 40 minutes it’s his prerogative.

There are some subjects that ought to be talked about that would take at least 30 minutes to do a decent job of explaining.

If the priest (or deacon) has his homily properly prepared you won’t even notice how long he goes.

Unless you have somewhere “more important” to be.

It may be his prerogative, but you have an issue if there is another mass scheduled afterwards.

 

[Luvtosew]

I’ve experienced this several times in a former parish where the same retired priest was hired every time the Pastor had to be away. Although this retired priest was a lovely man without any sign of impairment, when it came to his homilies he rambled and he repeated the same thing three or four times - years later I saw the same sort of thing in the correspondence of my early stage Alzheimer’s-suffering Pastor.

I would always avoid telling the kids if I knew this priest was going to be the celebrant, it avoided the complaining I was likely to hear. In return, I would not take them to one of his Masses two Sundays in a row unless I was scheduled to be a reader or EMHC. In the event that he was going to be there two Sundays running we’d go to Mass at the parish associated with their school on one of those Sundays. That’s when we had the luxury of 5 parishes to pick from on any given Sunday – something totally foreign in this part of the world.

Oh how sad hey, and he probably enjoyed filling in so much , Yes I can see why you didn’t tell the kids and I can almost hear it in the car afterwards- I’m not going there next week if he’s going to be there.

Well homilies usually all lasted 10-15 mins tops and 15 mins was a long winded one from what I’ve been use to.

 

[paperwight66]

i keep pondering this scenario, and trying to work out what could have been done at the time. I can’t help feeling that some here have been too quick to condemn the congregation. Imagine, you are sitting there as the priest is preaching, Ten minutes go by. Twenty minutes Thirty. Forty. Children getting restless. Taxis waiting outside for seniors.All the time, he is getting more and more repetitive and rambling, and is plainly not picking up signals from the congregation.

What exactly could they have done? Who would take it on him or herself to go up into the pulpit and coach him to come down? Would you, perhaps risking a tussle or argument? What would then have happened re the rest of the Mass as well?

No doubt the people HAD tried to signal that he should stop, by rolling their eyes, reading the newsletter, shifting position. But hints like that hadn’t worked.

What could they have done? What realistically, would the average congregation have done?

 

[SMHW]

i keep pondering this scenario, and trying to work out what could have been done at the time. I can’t help feeling that some here have been too quick to condemn the congregation.
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What could they have done? What realistically, would the average congregation have done?

I’m not sure the average person in the congregation should have done anything.

But I would think that a sacristan, reader, usher, adult altar server, or someone might have gone up to Father and whispered a question about whether or not he was OK. Maybe the woman who stood up near him WAS trying to do just that. For all we know the organist has been ASKED to start playing if the priest went beyond a certain amount of time to cue him to wrap things up but he still couldn’t manage it.

We know that the OP found the behavior of all these people to be rude (and some of it definitely was) but I know that more goes on behind the scenes at Mass than we sometimes know about.

 

[Ohana]

I have to wonder how this congregation treat their aging parents. My mother in law used to ask me, “so honey, how are your parents”, I’d reply, Oh I think your forgot Mom, they died and are in heaven". Two minutes later, 'and so honey, how are your parents?" “Oh they are fine Mom!” And that was true. As far as I was concerned, they were.

I have to wonder if all the interruption did not derail this older priests train of thought, and so he started over. Yes, clearly his mind was failing, but I did not note that any comments were made about how he said Mass. I was a nurse and had the privilege of taking care of a priest who was dying on our unit. His fellow priests were there. I coulld not help but noticed when I went in to do necessary tasks that Father was saying the Mass as he lay dying.

This post almost makes me weep. Could those people not understand that they were in the presence of Grace and Innocence?