Whine

Every summer, we'd had the same visiting priest spend a month with us. He has some quirks, like making the congregation sing the 1st verse of the opening hymn if it's not loud enough, and singing a little song before his homily as a little meditation (mood enhancer?)

In any case, I was caught by surprise this year. He showed up one Sunday and because of the acoustical wasteland that my parish is had us sing the 1st verse of the opening hymn again because it wasn't loud enough. Do people always sing with gusto at our parish? Nope. But does it merit giving the congregation a friendly lecture on singing "lustily" (his word)? I'm not sure.

And it didn't end there. We have a children's liturgy of the Word at our Mass, and all the kids are paraded into the chapel. They come down front, receive a blessing and head out to the chapel. This time, Fr. Guest kept telling them to come closer, come closer, I can't bless you if you're not close enough. And the clock is ticking which the kids, a bit leery of the whole thing, move closer, millimeter by millimeter. The homily began and ended with a song. The homily was long, the songs made it super-long. Little things added up so we were there 1 hour and 20 minutes and our Mass was dismissed 25 minutes before the next Mass.

Last Sunday was the same, but different. Fr. Guest sauntered down the middle aisle and told everyone to sing out on the opening hymn. He said the gospel was about resting in the Lord, and we should let our anxiety go, no matter how long Mass is. A few more words of encouragement and he was sautering back up the aisle to do the actual procession. No songs during the homily, but right before the Holy Holy, Fr. Guest invited all the children up to gather around the altar and take part in the special moment in a very special way. Some were 4. Some were 8. Some watched attentively. Some picked their noses. One slouched down on the stairs in front of the altar and stayed there. When we got to the Our Father, Fr. Guest stopped and said to the children. "I want you all to hold your hands like me so we can show how open we are to the Father." And Fr. Guest and most of the little children stood there in the Orans position. Mass was over in an hour and 15 minutes.

What's my problem, you might ask? I have several.
1. Donations are down at my parish.
2. The parking lot is a mess because of construction, it takes quite some time to get out of the parking lot after Mass.
3. During the last year we had a big bruhaha about the length of Mass. Some were regularly going 1.3 hours and the parking situation was worse because people were coming and going. Parishoners wrote angry letters. Long homilies were shortened and that, among other things, got Mass down to a little over an hour.
4. We've been very conscious about following the directives in the GIRM.
5. We have good participation at St. Marks in terms of singing. We are not St. Silencium or Our Lady of the Closed Hymnal. We do standard, singable stuff.

Items 1-3 are all related, since drive-by Catholics want to go to an "easy Mass" instead of a long one that's difficult to leave from. Item 4 is important to me since I like to play by the rules - there's freedom in the rules because the Church is making the decisions about the norms instead of liturgical practice being driven in large part by taste and relative levels of learning. Item 5 is something I've been working on for 9 years.

So: when Fr. Guest shows up and decides to turn it all upside down while he's there, I find that very discouraging. I could debate the dos-and-don'ts all day with someone like that but the fact is we have a liturgical machine at my parish that chugs along. If you are a mechanic and decide the machine is broken, you should be around to live thru the results of your tinkering.