When you study buzzwords or fad words from each generation, very few stand the test of time. “Groovy”? “Hep”? “Tight”? “Gnarly”? (Really?) Nope. All of them – gone from our lexicon. However, one has stood strong for at least 3 generations. That is “cool”.
I don’t know why this specific word has lasted for so long, but I think I understand why what the word represents has endured. The idea is that you not only fit in, but that you fit in very nicely. Cool is comfortable. It fills that 3rd level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It means we are accepted and maybe even respected by the tribe.
Long ago, ‘cool’ meant being different in some sort of interesting way. The ‘differentness’ is what made the person (or the action) ‘cool’. However, ‘cool’ wasn’t usually associated with virtue or engaging in something ‘good’ or particularly healthy or virtuous. And that’s the downside – the dark side – of ‘cool’. It was never about becoming fully alive. It was never about growing as a person or being the best version of oneself. It was typically about wearing masks and aspiring to something that wasn’t worth the effort.
That differentness imbued with a general lack of goodness or virtue has become sameness. When you look around these days, ‘cool’ is about blending and conformity. Challenging traditional values was once considered ‘cool’. Now, if you don’t challenge them and conform to the ‘new normal’, you’re likely to be marginalized with visceral enthusiasm. Wearing underwear on the outside of one’s clothing (or in place of outer garments) used to be reserved for Superman. (Probably not the impression he was trying to give, though.) Now, if you leave anything to others’ imagination, you’re prudish. Getting a tattoo was once a unique thing to do. Now, it’s not a matter of getting a tattoo to express individuality – it’s that you’re kind of strange if you don’t get one. (This is not a judgment on tattoos, by the way – just saying that they hold no inherent ‘goodness’ or value.)
This new definition of ‘cool’ doesn’t just lack virtue, though – it’s not even cool. It’s now about fitting the beautiful diversity of what every single person brings to the table into a very small box – and a boring box of sameness, to boot.
But perhaps herein lies opportunity to rekindle ‘cool’ in a whole new way – a way that makes goodness and virtue desirable as something ‘different’. Recall those words from 1 Corinthians 12 where St. Paul says, “For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the organs in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single organ, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.’”
There is a reason each of us is different. We all have unique talents which aren’t always appreciated by others, but that shouldn’t stop us from fully developing them for the good of mankind and for the glory of God. We’re meant to strive for goodness and virtue. Becoming more virtuous means becoming more like God. Anything else is disordered and a waste of our efforts. It’s just not ‘cool’ (in this new sense, of course).
Dare to be different. Dare to be the best you imaginable. Dare to let others see God through your actions. How cool would that be?
Vincent married up more than a quarter century ago and is a proud father of 5 wonderful daughters. He teaches business classes at a college in Greenville, SC, but thrives on discussing controversial topics, especially as they relate to Church teachings on sexual morality.
This is a post for people who tend to be too lax with themselves. We’ll start by kicking out those of you who don’t belong here.
If you are prone to scruples . . . don’t read this post. Go make an appointment with your pastor for a five-minute consultation. Write down your plans for Lent, get him to sign off on that, tape your list to your fridge, and DON’T ADD A THING.
You may sprinkle on bits of supererogatory penance on your better Lenten days if the opportunity presents itself, but that’s pure bonus and you have to both (A) congratulate yourself for those days and (B) knock it off if your hot Lenten super days are wearing you down and making it too hard on ordinary days to do the thing you and your pastor agreed would be your thing.
That’s it. Get out of here.
PS: If your pastor is a totally namby-pamby, flakey-wakey, wishy-washy cuddle puddle who wouldn’t know penance if it scourged him with briars . . . that’s God choosing to really lay it on you this Lent. When Fr. Laxalot looks at your list of planned prayers and fasting and tells you that what he really needs is for you to smile during the sign of peace as your Lenten act of self-denial, honey you just do that. Tape it to your fridge.
If your life is inherently penitential . . . this post isn’t really for you, either. But you can take a look, as long as you promise not to scruple. Otherwise, it’s off to meet with Fr. Laxalot.
Slackers Quit Slacking
So there are people you know who glance at Lent and announce that The Really Important Thing conveniently does not include prayer, penance, and almsgiving.
Now let us agree, the Really Important Thing is you responding to God’s grace and accepting His gift of salvation and all that goes with. Absolutely. But you are a timebound meat-creature, so the ethereal glance towards Heaven is not something you are quite ready to sustain. Your body and soul are inseparably glued together like a PB&J sandwich that’s been sitting on the dash of the car on a summer afternoon; therefore you must do things with your body now if you want to shine up your soul so it can embrace the beatific vision when the time comes.
Let us also acknowledge that if you are bitter, nasty, ungrateful wretch with seven mortal sins you commit before breakfast, you’ve got some rough work to blast through before getting to the fine-tuning. Do please orient your Lent towards knocking off at least the most egregious outer layer so we can get to the deeper stuff in future years.
Furthermore, let us note that once the big crust of visible nastiness has been mostly brushed away, it’s possible that what we find inside is a festering wound of putrid moral ugliness. In all likelihood you are so accustomed to the stench you don’t even notice. Telltale Sign: You create complicated explanations about why your life doesn’t match the things Jesus says to do, but hey that’s okay! It’s not okay.
Jesus came to save you from your sins, not to explain that drowning in the mire is just fine too.
Prayer, penance, and almsgiving are the physical tools God gives us, by His gift of unfathomable Grace, to help us not want to drown in the mire quite so much.
Prayer
Prayer takes many forms, but Not Praying isn’t one of them.
Please do not tell me that your work is your prayer. No darling. Your work is your work. Your prayer is your prayer. It may be that your state in life does not allow for the type of prayer you especially prefer or admire, but actual prayer is the thing we’re going for here. Examples:
Praying some shorter (or longer) prayer that fits the occasion.
Setting aside a certain amount of time, alone and unbothered, to become aware of the presence of God and then converse with Him.
If you like to write: Prayerfully conversing with God via conversation with Him in a private journal.
There are other ways of course, but you get the idea.
You cannot pray all the prayers. You must discern and choose. I am well aware that there are times in life when your work or your vocation or your health does not allow you to pray as fully as you otherwise would. But if you can read this post, you can definitely pray.
Penance
If you have big sins you’re trying to shed, penance can run two ways. If your sin is something like using porn or committing slow suicide with your cigarette habit, then this particular Lent you might take on the “penance” of quitting that habit, stat. It’s actually a gift to yourself, not a punishment, but such gifts can own you for a long while, and one can only do so much at a time.
On the other hand, if your persistent sin is something like wrath, or lust, or gluttony, there’s a point when cold turkey can’t happen. Once you’ve eliminated the obvious don’t-or-die items, you’re left with a pile of wriggling worms of naughtiness that are constantly evading capture. Fasting in its various forms, as well as acts of overt self-mortification (cold showers, for example), are the tools that fight sin and save lives.
Conveniently, if you take up such a penance you get a double-bonus: The miracles that are wrought by the combination of prayer and penance will flow both outward towards others and inward towards your soul.
Offering it up. If your life comes with a significant built-in penance, then a reasonable Lenten resolution is to live out that God-ordained amount of suffering with a prayerful disposition. This post was not for you, but there you go.
For those of you who are, in contrast, perfectly capable of additional acts of self-denial, don’t delude yourself. You will not become a nicer person by resolving to be a nicer person. You will become a more charitable person by training yourself, through self-denial, that it is not necessary to indulge your every whim.
Almsgiving
Sometimes people say, “Rather than giving up something for Lent, you can take up something for Lent.” Certainly true, but if you are a slacker, you know very well how easily you can turn that observation into a shadow-play of Doing Nothing.
Slacker friends, let’s raise the bar one more: When you take on works of charity, don’t deceive yourself into Not Actually Giving.
If you have money to give, give it. Give it freely and generously. If you are the widow in the parable, this post was not for you. This post is for those of you who so easily persuade yourself you are that widow, when really you’re the guy walking by the money box not even bothering to drop in a few coins.
Almsgiving is the triple whammy:
It is an act of self-denial, hence it works like a penance.
It teaches you to trust in God, because you are giving up your means of saving yourself.
It does some good for the recipient.
Most of us stink at it even more than we stink at fasting, and you know we pretty much stink at fasting, too. If you are a person with significant wealth, you are far more likely to succeed at prayer and fasting than you are to succeed at almsgiving.
About those Poor People
Let me say a crazy thing, and you stay calm until you’ve read the details: Please don’t take on the works of mercy for Lent. The corporal and spiritual works of mercy are your duty all year long.
It may well be that since you have no money to give, but you do have physical strength and free time, taking on one of the works of mercy will in fact be your best way of almsgiving. Furthermore, taking on a work of mercy is often the necessary counterpart to a penance — if you don’t fill the void with something good, you’ll only go and fill it with a fresh vice. Finally, if you are not currently practicing the works of mercy, or your life has changed so that you are now free to carry out works that were heretofore not open to you, please, take them on!
So it may in fact be best if you take up a work of mercy this Lent. But slacker friends, do not say to yourself, “Oh yes, I feed the homeless every Lent!” or “Oh yes, I visit the sick every Advent!” Love of neighbor is not a seasonal activity. Take note of your spiritual gifts and the opportunities that your state in life allows, and do not shove off your portion of Christian charity on your fellow parishioners.
Chances are you stink at this even worse than you stink at prayer, penance, and almsgiving — and don’t even know it. Love of neighbor flows from love of God. Work on the Big Three this Lent, and the works of mercy should be the obvious fruit of your repentance and return to God.
Catholic Icing’s Interminable Collection of Lenten Activities for ChildrenI’d rather just not eat, thanks. But if rolling in nettles isn’t enough for you, there’s always crafts. All the crafts. The Crafts Will Never Ever End Here Have Some Peg Dolls! (Truth: These are fabulous, just pick and choose per your state in life. Don’t try to do them all, no spiritual director will ever permit it.)
This time a year ago, my littlest homeschooler asked if she could go to St. Urban’s, the elementary school that serves several parishes in the region. We knew some of the families at the school and liked what we saw. She had made friends with girls her age at parish events. It was not an agonizing decision, because we had already been considering the move for about a year. We did a little more research and decided this was the time.
Our experience so far has been nothing but positive. Since this is Catholic Schools Week, let me share a few of the reasons we love our school.
Everyone is kind and friendly.
When I was researching the school, I spoke to a friend who had volunteered there and at a number of other elementary schools in the region. She said to me: “I can honestly say that St. Urban’s is what a Christian school should be.”
The administration actively works to promote kindness and encouragement among the students. Recently on the drive into town my daughter told me she had to write a persuasive paper, and she had chosen the topic ofwhether there ought to be school uniforms. She asked my opinion, and I gave her the long list of reasons mothers love uniforms (thank you, school, for a simple, stain-resistant, affordable set of uniform options). I finished up by adding, “And that way, for example, a mean girl can’t say oh your skirt is so ugly, because she’s wearing the same skirt.”
To which my daughter replied: “Mom. This is St. Urban’s. We don’t have bullies. The worst thing that happened is that Scholastica wanted to play with Benedicta at recess but not Ignatia, and then they all ended up playing together anyway.”
The friendliness is welcoming to me, too. The administration respects my time. The school’s academic reputation isn’t built on sending home young children with mountains of homework every night. We parents aren’t saddled with a bazillion overwhelming volunteer projects and fundraisers. When teachers or staff do ask for parent help, they take into account our varying circumstances.
I know some private schools have a “type” of parent, and if you don’t fit in you’re on the outs. Our school is truly Catholic — truly diverse. Not just in terms of race and national origin (though there is that), but also in terms of the parents’ professions, state in life, personalities, and dare I say it: social class. It’s not a prep school, it’s a parish school.
Our faith as Catholics is 100% supported.
The school Mass is both beautiful and edifying. Prayer is part of the rhythm of the day. There are Bible verses on the walls, a well-delivered religion curriculum, and an enthusiastic attitude towards Catholicism that permeates everything the school does. I don’t know all the teachers very well, but I know that the two teachers who have the most influence on my daughter both exhibit a sincere and profound faith.
Before she went to school, my daughter was homeschooled by me. There are ways the Catholic faith was shared in our homeschool that don’t happen at the parish school, but the reverse is also true. When I came to eat lunch with my daughter, I asked her as we sat down and pulled out lunch bags, “Do we wait for grace?”
“We already said grace in our classroom,” she said. “And also the Angelus.”
The children ate and then talked quietly. The teacher who was serving as lunch monitor complimented the children, as a group, on how her husband had been moved to tears by their beautiful singing that Sunday at Mass. The children swept up and prepared to leave. Before dismissal to recess, everyone stood and faced the massive crucifix in the cafeteria and prayed the second grace, thanksgiving after the meal.
My daughter’s teachers know her.
The school is small. There are about fifteen children in each grade (it varies), so that the total school enrollment hovers comfortably within knowable limits. (See here for the theory of Dunbar’s Number, andhere for TheNew Yorker’s explanation of it. I have found this to be true in practice.) My daughter has been with the school less than six months, and already knows the names of all the students except the very youngest. But more important me: Her teachers have time to know her.
When I went to the parent-teacher conference after the first quarter, the 5th grade teacher sat down with me and talked about my daughter. She talked about my daughter’s strengths and weaknesses; what she needed to work on; and how her transition to school was going. To all of it, my only answer was: Yes, you are correct.
I’ve been teaching and rearing this child for ten years, I know her. All these things you describe? That’s my girl. You’ve paid attention, you’ve gotten to see the real her, you obviously care about her. She’s not lost here. There’s a real relationship going on, rooted in both love and quantity-time spent together getting to know one another.
The curriculum is well-chosen.
Between homeschooling and my years of small-format teaching in religious education, chastity education, parenting classes, French, economics, logic, debate, apologetics, can’t remember what else, and maybe a little tutoring here and there . . . I’ve evaluated curriculum. Oh and I wrote a book that has a thing or two to say about how to structure a class.
If nothing else, I know how to see whether a class is working or not, and what is or isn’t successful.
Everything that happens at our parish school makes sense.
Sometimes the book the teacher is using is right off my shelves, sometimes it’s one I’ve never heard of before. But I am still waiting for the day when I see some assignment or activity and can’t figure out what the point is. Everything I’ve seen so far fits with the goal. I can immediately see why the teacher chose a particular activity, and how it fits into the bigger picture. There is no busy-work. Everything converges on a well-built whole.
Sure, I’d heard it was a decent school, but I wasn’t quite expecting it to be this good. I’ll take it.
The school makes the most of its strengths.
One of the mistakes people make about homeschooling is thinking that it’s supposed to be just like school. That approach doesn’t work. Homeschooling isn’t for that. Homeschooling has a dynamic that’s unlike school, and that’s part of the point. If you try to re-create school at home, you’ll be harried and overwhelmed. The trick to homeschooling is to make the most of the distinctive strengths that only homeschooling can offer.
My parish school does that too.
There are ways to teach and learn that can only happen when you’ve got a dozen or so students the same age. There are cooperative projects with other programs nearby that take advantage of St. Urban’s downtown location. Even the way the classes are organized teacher-by-teacher makes sense developmentally — at least in the upper grades, which is what I’ve seen, the right teacher is assigned to each grade and specialty subject.
My daughter loves it there.
No school can be everything to everybody. My daughter thrives on structure, gentle but firm discipline, clearly stated learning objectives, and frequent feedback via formal assessments. Any time a child changes school systems there’s an adjustment period. She didn’t arrive at school having mastered The Way Things Are Done Here. Her teachers brought her up to speed through a steady combination of clear correction and enthusiastic encouragement.
She’s a normal kid. Left to her own devices, she’d gladly sit around watching sitcoms and eating endless bowls of ice cream. There’s a time and place for leisurely pleasures, but what she gets at St. Urban’s — the reason she’s excited to go to school every day — is the profound happiness that comes from having her genuine needs met so well. Her need for love, her need for guidance, her need for growth: Everyone at the school works together to do their part in meeting those needs.
Addendum: About that award she got.
Some people from the parish who read this blog might be thinking You’re just all rosy in the afterglow of your kid getting an award after Mass this morning. Truth? It’s the other way around. I started writing this post in my head months ago, and sat on it because I kept waiting for the inevitable bad day to show up so I wouldn’t be all honeymoon-googly-eyes. I started writing this post on my PC earlier this week, but it’s been coming along slowly because my primary vocation keeps getting in the way.
And thus before I could finish writing, first semester Awards Day came around. You know what happened? They quick gave out certificates to the honor roll kids, and then moved on to the big event.
What’s the big event? Grade by grade, each teacher gave a short talk about two students in her class who merited particular distinction. One student was lauded for attitude, effort, and improvement academically — not for grades earned, but for the student’s perseverance and diligence regardless of academic difficulties. The other honored student was praised, in descriptive detail, for kindness, integrity, piety, generosity — all the virtues that aren’t about being Number One, and are about being more like Jesus Christ.
That’s what I want in a Catholic school.
The sisters agree: If you cultivate the virtues, you’ll get the best academics you can have.
We are fortunate to live in a diocese where good design is flourishing. I don’t for a moment wish to naysay any of the hard work and sacrifice that went into creating these beautiful new buildings. On the contrary — I am grateful beyond expressing.
But let’s not delude ourselves: The very existence of some (not all) of this new construction should be an elegant, delightful, but shocking warning sign.
The Myth of the Flourishing Parish
Let’s look at St. Mary’s as a case study. The original St. Clare’s chapel, now devoted to perpetual Eucharistic Adoration, was succeeded by the first St. Mary’s Help of Christians parish church early last century. You can read an insightful history of Catholicism in the region — dating back to the 16th century — here. The historic St. Mary’s parish church is still in use. It wasn’t replaced because it was no longer habitable. It was replaced because there were too many parishioners to fit into the building.
This sounds like a good problem, right? It is, in a way.
It would be more accurate, however, to say: There were too many parishioners for the number of priests.
The Catholic population in Aiken, SC, as with the rest of the diocese, has grown significantly due to retirees moving south (we get your empty church parts to refurbish our buildings), professionals moving here from other parts of the United States, immigrants arriving from around the world, a certain number of conversions, and of course old-fashioned human reproduction. Some of this represents spiritual growth; some of it is just other parts of the world sending us their Catholics.
But regardless of the cause, an unavoidable fact is now set in stone, brick, and concrete: We are not producing priestly vocations in adequate numbers.
Still, the arithmetic doesn’t lie. Some parishes are on fire with the faith. Some Catholics — in every parish — are wildly in love with Jesus and have the fruit to prove it. But mostly we have to make larger buildings because we have pewsitters who love the pews, but who wouldn’t want to get carried away with any craziness. Catholicism is legit here these days. Church-going is civilized. If you’re nicely married, it’s a wholesome place to raise the kids.
We feel good about our faith and we do good works, but it’s not the kind of thing you’d really give your life over for. We pat ourselves on the back if we get the teens to Adoration for ten minutes. We’re wildly excited if a young couple gets married in the Church — the idea that most young adults would remain Catholic after high school is a rich fantasy. Some statistics, via Brandon Vogt:
79% of former Catholics leave the Church before age 23 (Pew)
50% of Millennials raised Catholic no longer identify as Catholic today (i.e., half of the babies you’ve seen baptized in the last 30 years, half of the kids you’ve seen confirmed, half of the Catholic young people you’ve seen get married)
Only 7% of Millennials raised Catholic still actively practice their faith today (weekly Mass, pray a few times each week, say their faith is “extremely” or “very” important)
90% of American “nones” who left religion did so before age 29 (PRRI)
62% leave before 18
28% leave from 18-29
If you’re not even Catholic, you are highly unlikely to become a Catholic priest.
Old Warning Signs
For as long as I’ve been talking to catechists and faith formation leaders, the refrain has been the same: “The kids in religious ed don’t even go to Mass.” Some do, of course (mine, and quite a few others I know), but a surprising number of children are dropped off for CCD but never taken to Mass. The situation is so dire that some parishes have resorted to requiring children preparing for sacraments to provide hard evidence they attend Sunday Mass, such as getting a bulletin signed.
Here’s another example by way of a personal story. My daughter’s would-be confirmation sponsor is an ardent young Catholic well known by many in the local Catholic community. As we put together paperwork, however, we discovered that due to an oversight when the family purchased a new home, they are not presently registered at the parish they attend most. We’ll get it all straightened out one way or another, don’t be scandalized because there is no scandal.
But the underlying situation is this: It is now the rule that the way we “prove” someone is a “practicing Catholic” is via a set of papers and financial transactions. Get registered, turn in collection envelopes, and you qualify for a “Catholic in Good Standing” letter. The idea that one could simply be a faithful Catholic known in one’s community is utterly foreign to the present practice.
What if you trusted people when they said the godparents or sponsor were good Catholics? We have come to fully expect people would outright lie as a matter of course.
Thus we live with a different set of lies. We as a Church are so alienated from any sense of real community that we depend on bureaucratic proxies that supposedly indicate a practice of the faith, but everyone knows that they don’t. Everyone knows that teenagers go through confirmation to make their parents happy, and then drop out at first opportunity. Everyone knows that the confirmation class is composed of kids who last attended Mass at their First Communion. Everyone knows that when we teach the Catholic faith assiduously, the kids whisper to themselves, right there in class, which parts they think are bunk.
The parts they think are bunk are almost invariably the parts their parents likewise think are bunk. The Catholic Church is the stronghold of people who know how to shut up, smile, and get along.
Repeating Ourselves to Death
Any student of Church history can attest that things have always been shockingly bad. The behavior of Catholics is the incontroveritble evidence that God must be holding this institution together, because it sure isn’t us. That is not, however, an excuse to keep on behaving badly.
I write this today because I’m concerned that our beautiful new buildings will lull us into continued complacency. We will persuade ourselves that what we’ve been doing is working.
It isn’t.
The buildings themselves cry it out. We shouldn’t have mega-parishes. We should have enough priests that when the parish overflows, we’re ready to form a second parish nearby.
The lack of priests isn’t some mystical aberration. God isn’t suddenly pleased with the idea of men exhausted from administering multiple parishes and saying half a dozen masses in a weekend and having to rely on collection envelopes to know who comes to Mass because they couldn’t possibly meet all the parishioners they are supposed to be pastoring. Nonsense.
We have no priests because we are very good at getting along and forming lovely clubs, but we are terrible at being Catholic.
If we don’t change this, St. Mary’s beautiful new building in Aiken will enjoy a brief sojourn as a Catholic Church, and then go the way of Sacred Heart across the river, no longer a church, now just a lovely but Godforsaken building.
Artwork: Postcard courtesy of Boston Public Library (Sacred Heart Church, Augusta, Georgia) [CC BY 2.0, Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
I’m not a fan of sports on Sundays. I’d like to stay home, go to Mass at my local parish, then spend the day relaxing with friends. Instead, I’ll be at a tournament this weekend, watching one of my top favorite athletes in the world do her thing. Also, she and I will be going to Mass. If you’ve ever had a child involved in competitive sports, you know that’s not as easy as it sounds.
Should You Even Be Playing on Sundays?
There are two questions every Catholic parent of an athlete ought to ask:
Should we, as Catholics, even be participating in Sunday sports?
Should my child in particular be involved in such sports?
The first question has been answered, for the moment, by silence and logic: I’ve never heard any priest or bishop forbid the faithful to watch the Olympics, professional football, or any other sport. These activities take place on Sundays, and furthermore they require a decade or decades of training that involves, almost invariably, playing or practicing on Sundays. If it’s moral to participate as a spectator, it’s moral to participate as an athlete — you can’t have one without the other.
That said, if at some point the Church should study the matter and determine that it is in fact immoral to play sports on Sundays, there we’ll be. (I don’t mean kickball at home with your friends. I mean the kind that dramatically interrupts church and rest for all involved.) Until then, we have a conditional green light to play on.
So long as Question #1 remains a tentative yes, Question #2 is up to you as the parent to discern: There are many good reasons not to play sports on Sundays. Some of those reasons may well apply to you. Discern thoughtfully.
Plan Ahead. Way Ahead.
Let’s imagine that for some good reason you’ve determined that your child ought to participate in a sport that plays or practices on Sundays. I hope if you had another option (a team with Saturday games only, for example) you took it. But say this was your only realistic choice: How do you make sure you’ll still get to Mass?
Answer: Talk to the coach before you sign up with the team.
Sooner or later, you are going to find yourself in a corner. You’ll be playing in some town that only has Mass the same hour your child is scheduled to compete. Your coach needs to know before you join the team that if push comes to shove, your player will be at Mass.
At that point, the coach might let you know that you should look for another team. So be it. It’s one thing to stretch the very limits of our freedom as Catholics; it’s another to abandon the faith altogether. But chances are your coach will be willing to accommodate you, if you hold up your end of a fair deal. What does that look like?
Don’t Be Obnoxious
You don’t have to make a big scene to the other families on the team about what amazingly holy people you are. Come on: You’re playing sports on a Sunday, not fasting in the Adoration chapel. You aren’t that holy. Put together a list of parishes within striking distance and all their Mass times. Then, when you get a break in the schedule, quietly head down the road to church.
Go to the first-available Mass opportunity you get. You don’t want to miss your one chance to get to Mass free and clear, only to have to hurt the team later by skipping out on a game.
If you have more than one child playing at the same event but with different play times, ask around and find out if there are any other Catholic families also trying to get to Mass. If your children’s breaks should line up just wrong, sending one child with another (trusted) family may be the only way you can get all children to Mass.
If you know you’ll have to skip a game, talk to the coach. Have your list of Mass times laid out in a way that’s easy to understand, and let your coach pick which game your child should miss.
Be willing to accept any consequences that go with missing a game. Charitably assume your coach has good reasons for having to bench your child if you miss a game. If you don’t trust your coach’s decisions, look for a different team.
Be Ready to Do the Unreasonable
When you make your list of potential Mass times and locations, include every possible option, even if some of them are just horrible. So you have to spend three hours on dirt roads getting to and from the Ancient Slobovian 10 pm Mass on your way home after a long weekend? If it’s a safe possibility, the fact that you’ll be inconvenienced is beside the point. If you want convenience, competitive athletics is not for you.
There can be times when there is no safe way to get to Mass. Weird things happen. In the winter you might, for example, be playing at a venue that is on well-maintained roads just off the interstate, but the nearest Catholic parishes are deep in the hinterlands with long stretches of dangerous ice patches. Likewise, don’t be on the road later than you can safely stay awake to drive. It’s better to skip a game and go to Mass during the day than to risk your life taking one for the team.
But if there is a way to get to Mass without missing any games, take that option even if isn’t your favorite choice. Don’t put the team dinner, touring around, or a relaxing morning at the hotel ahead of your obligation to attend a Sunday Mass. Save your miss-a-game cards for when you really need them.
The How-To’s of Finding a Mass
Look up your event location, then search Masstimes.org for nearby parishes. If your hotel is in a different area, look for parishes near your hotel as well.
If you will be traveling home on Sunday, look up parishes along your route home in addition to those near the event.
Click through to the parish websites, and confirm that the Mass schedule is up to date. Watch out for holiday schedules in particular, as Mass times can get irregular.
Make yourself a list of parishes and their Mass schedules.
Either include each church’s address in your list so you can get directions on the fly, or print out directions from the venue or your hotel (or both — whichever you are most likely to be leaving in order to attend Mass).
If you know the tournament schedule in advance, you might be able to pick out which Mass you’ll be attending ahead of time. Otherwise, watch for an opening as the weekend unfolds. When you get a chance head to Mass, out you go!
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia [Public Domain]. Some guy who liked sports. Click through for details.Related Links:
Copyright Jennifer Fitz 2017. If you would like to reprint this article for your parish or diocesan publication, you may. Please credit the original link.
I was asked two related questions by parish friends this week, and I answered incorrectly:
What things do we do to help our kids “Keep Christ in Christmas”?
What are we doing for Advent?
I thought the answer to both was: Nothing. This year, anyway.
I was sorely mistaken. Since both these are going to be discussion topics for our Family Fellowship group this week, here are my notes so I can keep my facts straight. These are things we do, and which have held together through the years, and which I think are probably helpful. Some are easy for anyone to do, some of them maybe not.
#1 Be a Disciple of Jesus Christ
When the SuperHusband and I first became Christians, I was a little disconcerted to notice how little our extended family’s observances of the feast involved any particular worship of Christ. It had not bothered me before, but now somehow it seemed wrong to gather together for a meal and gifts and not much Jesus-ing. A lot of years later, I’m not bothered. Those of us who are Christians get plenty of Jesus-ing all year long, including Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and we don’t need every single moment of every single feast to have a little cross tacked on it.
(For the record, there is a very Christian grace before the big extended-family supper Christmas Eve and plenty of Christian-household backdrop going on. We’re not celebrating Festivus or something.)
My point is this: When every day and every week of your life is built around the worship and service of Jesus Christ, there’s not a need to make sure your wrapping paper has manger scenes on it. Both the “Christ” and the “Mass” in “Christmas” are patently obvious. Forgetting that Christmas was about the birth of Christ would be like forgetting what your own birthday was about. It’s unlikely to be problem.
#2 Dang I Love My Parish
My DRE has a passion for keeping Advent, and the pastor’s completely on board. (Yes, it unrolled in that order — she predates him on the staff roster.) Rather than rushing to quick celebrate Christmas with the kids before the break, there are Advent events throughout Advent, and Christmas is unleashed on — get this — Christmas. The religious ed classes host Christmas parties the first class back after the break, while it’s still Christmas season.
This is not just good for holding onto Catholic liturgical order. This is good because it causes us all to be keenly aware we are out of sync with the wider culture, and therefore aware of what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. It also gives me a little bit of ammo in my effort to keep things purple around the house, though admittedly that’s push-and-pull. Yes, in fact we do have the best Advent Lights on the block. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
But I would say the biggest help we get in terms of the parish enthusiasm for observing Advent is that it completely prevents our brains from equating what we do as Catholics with that merchandising event going on at the mall.
#3 We’ve got a great Advent calendar.
The one we happen to own is the Tony Wolf Advent Calendar, which I reviewed when I first got it years ago. Each day from December 1st through 24th there is a mini boardbook ornament that contains a Bible story, prayer, hymn or carol. All put together you get the highlights of the story of Christmas from Adam and Eve forward. There is no Christmas Advent tree up yet this year, so I told my ten-year-old to hang the ornaments on the hooks on the mantel where our stockings will eventually go.
She loves this. She loves reading aloud the day’s mini-book, singing along if it’s a hymn, and keeping all the ornaments organized on their hooks. The other kids are older now, so the ten-year-old’s the chief user. I remember myself having a little mini-book Christmas ornament and how much I liked to read it (mine was The Night Before Christmas). Bite-sized books are captivating.
There are other similarly good options, it doesn’t have to be this exact product. I remember growing up that my best friend’s family had a homemade Advent calendar with pertinent Bible verses for each day — same principle. I think the takeaway here on why this concept works so well is that kids like to open a new thing every day, so they bring the momentum to the daily observance, and the day’s thing isn’t just a piece of chocolate or a picture from a snowy village, it’s a piece of the Good News.
#3.5 We Stink At Advent Wreaths, Forever and Ever Amen
For your amusement, here’s a photo from a glorious Advent past:
I would have kept the thing, but it was too bulky to store easily. This year we’ve got an assortment of mismatched white candles with purple or pink ribbon tied around the base. We never remember to light them.
I’m completely in favor of Advent wreaths. I have happy childhood memories of lighting the candles at dinner every evening. We just aren’t there. Sorry.
As we dropped the ball on this one in recent years, some friends have picked up the relay. Mrs. A who first started hosting an Advent tea party every year (most years) when our girls were little has merged that tradition with a potluck supper and caroling party afterwards. It’s a good event. We stick to classic Christian carols (Silent Night, We Three Kings, What Child Is This, etc.) plus We Wish You a Merry Christmas. We only plague neighbors who show evidence of celebrating Christmas, so we’re not foisting our zeal on innocent bystanders. The response has been 100% positive.
We’re up to 4/6ths of the family now singing in some choir or another at church, so the kids get a strong dose of sacred music there as well. We go to one of those parishes where the songs are all about Jesus, which is a big boost.
Or Bethlehem, as you prefer. Way back at the time of our first caroling party (before kids), I didn’t have a nativity set, so I made one out of Lego bricks. Since that time we’ve added humans to the family and all kinds of toys. Playmobil. Fisher Price. Little Woodzees. All that stuff. Thus we have evolved an annual tradition of creating not just the manger scene but a good bit of Bethlehem and environs.
We’ve had years that featured Herod’s castle and a Roman circus (the better to eat you with, my dear), though the best was during the preschool years when we had the big red barn with the door that mooed. A traditional nativity set can sometimes look too much like Camping with Baby Jesus — Pass the S’mores. The circumstances of the Incarnation hit home more soundly when you’ve got a neighborhood of cozy cheerful dollhouses, and then the Holy Family camped out in what truly looks to modern eyes like a place only fit for farm animals.
This year, having just pared back the toy collection, we’re focusing on the unrolling of the historic events day by day. Right now the angels are all up in Heaven, at the top of the bookshelf in front of the vintage Hardy Boys collection, waiting for the big day. (That is what Heaven is like, right?) Mary and Joseph are in a caravan headed towards the city of David. The Wise Men are still home watching the sky. The stable is busy being just a stable, though the innkeeper — you might remember this from your Bible study — likes to come by every day and visit with his pet bunnies. St. Ignatius Montessori, pray for us.
Late last Lent an Orthodox friend and I were whining about how much we hate fasting. There are people in this world who don’t have much appetite, and he and I are not those people. Furthermore, at his parish he knows these guys who fast for days and days during Holy Week, and hold up just fine. We’re not talking St. Starvicus of the Empty, Empty Desert who lived on a weekly mouthful of bitter herbs in the second century. We’re talking about flesh-and-blood normal guys with day jobs in modern America.
How do they do it? We had a number of theories, and mine were all wrong.
Not too long into Easter (happy happy feast feast) I stumbled on a website run by a physician whose practice includes overseeing a lot of clients who fast extensively for health reasons (primarily in the treatment of Type 2 diabetes, as it happens). Dr. Jason Fung is a normal (secular, slightly potty-mouthed) Canadian-guy MD with normal-people clients and a lot to say on how fasting affects your body, and why our non-eating Orthodox friends are experiencing something radically different when they fast than that misery you feel on Ash Wednesday when you eat one regular meal and two small snacks.
–> I have no opinion on whether or how you should fast, other than that you should mind the Precepts of the Church and also common sense regarding your own health and state of life. But if you are bored, here’s a site with the answer to the question of What’s with those people who don’t eat for days on end?
I mention it now during Advent because if you want to run pre-Lent experiments on yourself, now’s the time.
Link #2 Vader Did You Know?
A profound thank you to Jane Lebak for sharing this link. Sometimes a song is so bad that the only good use for it is turning it into a Star Wars plot summary.
#3: Not a link, just a PSA
Dear Adults Who Edit Hymnals,
Did you know that young people are linguistically competent? You might have noticed the way they are constantly making up words and phrases that confound you to pieces. This is because they are able to learn languages, even English.
Therefore, it is not necessary to wipe every use of the word “Thou” from your hymnal. People under the age of 150 are able to learn new words, just like people in previous eras were able to learn new words like “telegraph” and “wireless” and eventually even “social security check.”
Also, you look very stupid when you “fix” a hymn for us by making it grammatically incoherent in the effort to remove verbs ending in “est.” So perhaps you are not able to master the English language. But the rest of us can pick it up pretty well, thanks.
Sincerely,
Jennifer <– So done with offering it up. Just done. Get me to confession, please.
Link #4: My Classic Collection of Advent Links
When I moved the blog to the new location, I didn’t pull over the entire old sidebar. FYI the new sidebar has lots of good stuff, including a freshly-harvested crop of internet reading now that I’m back to goofing off on the internet. But if you’re looking for the annual collection of Old Reliable Advent Links, here they are:
This is not the year I grow the list, but look, when I searched Wikimedia for “Advent” this slightly-wrinkled manuscript page from the “O Antiophons” category popped right up:
Artwork courtesy of Benedictine monastery of Podlažice [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
This is a post that sounds like satire but is not. This is a post about cold, hard, liturgical reality: The best Catholics are the slackers.
That’s right friends. You agonize every year about whether you’re doing Advent, or Christmas, or Lent, or Easter just right, and you have the pictures on Pinterest to prove it. Dear, dear one, lose your life and you’ll find it. The best way to be liturgically on the ball is to drag through life barely holding your head above water.
Here are five proofs hidden in the couch cushions at the home of that friend who never invites you over because her life is such a trainwreck. Not kidding. This works. Especially #2.
#1 No new music.
New music is for people who have time to learn things. Now mind you, I don’t object to the odd innovator. But nothing says in step with the season like singing last millennium’s music. Or the millennium before that. If it was good enough for Advent 1016, it’s good enough for me.
#2 No gratuitous shopping trips.
Christmas is so commercial! they weep. Not if you don’t have the time, money, or energy to go the store, it’s not. You don’t have to be poor in the spirit, just poor in something that keeps you out of the mall. I’ve tried it both ways. Not shopping is better.
#3 No decorating and entertaining excess.
Yes love, we’ve heard all about how so very tired you are from all the time and energy you spend getting your house (and office, and wardrobe) just so for the holiday season, and how much work it was to put on your fabulous collection of carefully tailored parties (one for clients, one for employees, one for the neighbors, one for the close friends, one for the other friends, one for the friends who can’t be with the other friends . . .). Sweetie pie, if you were really tired? You wouldn’t be doing all that stuff.
You know how tired people entertain? By sleeping. That’s how. It’s very entertaining, try it sometime.
Liturgical tip: Start the season utterly exhausted, and you’ll never, ever have to wonder if you’re losing the “real meaning of Christmas” amid all your busyness.
#4 Your Christmas tree will always go up at exactly the right time.
This is the great thing about trees: They look great anywhere. Your Christmas tree might be sojourning in the forest all winter this year — that’s very contemplative, you know. But imagine for a moment that you mustered the wherewithal to drag a tree, or some inventive product that reminds the casual viewer of a tree, into your home this holiday season.
Some Catholics, under those circumstances, would have to worry: Have I done this too early? Too late? When exactly is the tree supposed to enter the home?
Not you, exhausted slacker friend! If it arrives early, it’s an Advent tree, or else it’s you managing to get something done ahead of a time for a change. If it comes in the 24th, hey, perfect!
But what if, say, you pull it off the neighbor’s curb on the 26th? You’re a shining example of good stewardship, both financial and environmental. Rejoice — you’ve been heralded in a century-and-change of papal encyclicals. Woohoo!
#5 No skimping on the fullness of the season.
What’s the big rush in taking down the Christmas decorations?
Would it really be the feast of the Presentation if there weren’t a few reminders of the Nativity artfully displayed about your home? What about the Annunciation, huh? Are you so spiritually adrift on the tides of the seasons that you’ve never noticed the parallel between the manger and the tomb? It might be easier to catch those connections if you weren’t so keen to whisk away your baby Jesus to His summer home in the attic.
And of course there would have been no Easter if we hadn’t had Christmas first. Leaving out your past-due decorations is like living every day of your life in a dusty, slightly dented, but arguably beatific living Gospel.
While organized, industrious people pack up their holiday spirit in order to bustle onto the next big source of ennui, we slackers bask in the glow of eternity, our living-rooms perpetually witness to timeless truths.
Happy Advent! And other seasons, too, while we’re at it.
I do not know Fr. Frank Pavone, but I have friends who hold him in high regard. There can be no questioning the sincerity of his devotion to the cause of ending abortion. I agree with the sentiment that we who are pro-life are not vocal enough in our opposition to the massive slaughter taking place in our country. While it is evident that I disagree with Fr. Pavone concerning certain tactics, I am not one to confuse squeamishness with righteousness.
Zeal can at times cloud our judgement. I am an expert in rash behavior, and the decision to place a deceased infant on his chapel’s altar was, I firmly hope, an act of miscalculated passion.
It was certainly a sin.
Have you been to confession lately? Fr. Pavone is human, and like you, he is capable of sinning. Like you, he is capable of acting in willful disregard of the law of God. He’s also, like you, capable of acting in culpable ignorance. We who view from the outside cannot know the state of Fr. Pavone’s soul; we can, however, inform our consciences to the point that we can perceive when an objectively sinful act has been committed.
Now it is likely that in his tactics Fr. Pavone sinned against the virtues of prudence and temperance; certainly his bishops have found it so. For the remainder of this essay I’m setting that aside, already dealt with extensively elsewhere. We are going to look only at the sin against the cardinal virtue of justice. Did Fr. Pavone give God His due?
What is the Purpose of the Altar?
In our spiritual lives we often invoke the image of the sacred altar. We speak of uniting our sufferings with Christ on the Cross, and Christ in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. When we offer up a Mass for a given intention, we might say that we placed that intention on the altar. You’ll often notice when you attend Mass that the priest will have a card right there on the altar reminding him of the intention for that Mass.
Thus we can understand how someone — anyone — might have the natural instinct to place some significant object on the altar in an act of devotion and offering.
To avoid sin, however, requires obedience to supernatural instincts.
The altar of the Mass is the place where heaven meets earth. We who enter a Catholic church are entering the Holy of Holies. We are people who, at the moment of the Consecration, see God and live. We are so used to this sacred privilege that we forget how unspeakably privileged we are. The daily duty of caring for the parish church can create an over-familiarity with sacred things, to the point that we start to forget they are honest-to-God sacred.
Our Strength is in the Lord
Time and again in the Old Testament, we see the Lord do valorous deeds for the people of Israel. That miraculous action didn’t end with the Incarnation: We can cite miracle after miracle in the long history of the saints down to our present day. These miracles are not mere emotional adjustments. God acts in the physical and social world, at times miraculously delivering physical healing, political victory, and military protection.
These miracles happen not on our schedule but on God’s. They also follow a pattern, and it’s a pattern that illuminates the nature of Fr. Pavone’s error. Step 1: We turn to God for His miraculous provision. We acknowledge our complete dependence on God’s saving hand, and abandon ourselves entirely to His divine will. Our help is the Lord who made heaven and earth. Step 2: God intervenes for the good of His people when and how He pleases.
In so doing, we often experience the Lord’s sacred paradox. We put our trust in the Lord, not in chariots and horses — only to turn around and see the Lord using chariots and horses to deliver us. The order of the operation is the hinge on which the whole of salvation rests.
In the beginning there was God, and then He made heaven and earth. The sacred altar belongs to that First thing. It is a holy place set aside for the Presence of God in the shockingly same way God Is, outside of all time and space.
Righting the Sacred Order
God wills the protection of all innocent lives. He wills an end to abortion. It is the desire of God that men would freely act to end this atrocity. It cannot but be the desire of God to come to our assistance in the work of protecting and defending the most vulnerable among us. These facts are incontrovertible.
We must charitably assume that Fr. Pavone’s recent actions were motivated by a sincere desire to serve God. All the same, he committed an act of sacrilege. We can defend him with mercy, for who among us is not also a wretched sinner, but we can’t defend his action with approval. To do so would require contortions along the lines of proposing that first God made heaven and earth, and then the next day He Is.
No no no. It must always be the other way around. It is unable to be otherwise.
The objective gravity of Fr. Pavone’s sin was in putting a second thing first. He failed to remember the supreme sacredness of the altar.
You have probably done that once or twice, if only in thought if not in word or deed. You may have heard about, if not witnessed yourself, reprehensible violations along these lines committed by clergy and others who ought to know better. We humans are woefully fallible.
Mercy and Reparation
Fortunately, there are remedies. Begin by forming your conscience as to the sacredness of the altar of the Sacrifice of the Mass. If you do not live in a parish where the sacred altar is treated with due reverence, make a pilgrimage to a place where it is. Lex orandi lex credendi.
Then proceed with prayer and fasting for the reparation of every rent in the sacred relationship between God and man. Contemplate our Lord’s mercy on us sinners. One of the missions of Priests for Life is bringing healing to those who, knowingly or unknowingly, committed a grave offense against God and man in the act of abortion. As it is for abortion, so it is for every sin: No one who desires to repent is beyond the reach of the Lord’s infinite mercy.
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