Tips for Teens (so to speak)
Kasia June 22nd, 2008
Guaranteed ways to not get off on the right foot with The Clam:
1) While standing next to me during the Our Father at Mass, upon noticing that I have assumed a very introverted stance (hands clasped, elbows in, head bowed, eyes closed) rather than extending my hand for you to take so we can all take the priestly orans position and turn it into a hand-holding Kum-ba-yah fest…
Instead of reading my body language and accepting that I prefer a different posture than you…
Put your hand on my shoulder, and keep it there through the entire Lord’s Prayer.
That’s a good start. I might observe that you have a cane and assume that you are using me (instead of, say, the pew in front of you) to maintain your balance, except that you did not do it during ANY of the other standing portions of the Mass, and you did through the Lord’s Prayer from beginning to end.
It’s not the end of the world. It does, however, bespeak a certain disregard for other people’s boundaries.
2) Strike up a conversation with me in which you criticize two of my most-beloved priests, demonstrating both a stunning lack of charity toward both of them and a considerable ignorance of what you’re criticizing them for (i.e. some of their financial decisions and whether they have taken vows of poverty). Then completely ignore my efforts to tactfully hint that you might not know what you’re talking about.
3) Come to think of it, make our whole conversation be, in effect, a monologue in which you vent your spleen about a host of things that displease YOU about other people and their decisions. Like those doggone people who go off to the Third World to do missionary work instead of doing missionary work in their own country, like you think they should. Ignore any of my responses except insofar as to try to redirect and inflate your complaints.
I love not being listened to. It’s one of my favorite things. Just ask my family. (/sarcasm)
If you do all of the above – in fact, just 2 and 3 will more than suffice – you can pretty well count on a slightly tart, firm closure of the conversation, and me suddenly seeing someone that I simply MUST go say hello to. (Actually, that wasn’t put on; I really saw someone I wanted to say hello to. It was simply a happy coincidence that it got me away from the person in question.)
And if you want to ice the cake nicely, when I come back to get my things, start asking me nosy questions about the person I went to greet. I like prying even better than I like being ignored in a conversation. Really.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go start making my list of sins for Confession, with particular attention to my reactions to the aforementioned points.
Who knows? Annoy me enough, and you might end up getting a Rosary prayed for you. Won’t that be nice.
Hmm…. No post about me…and I am *so* much more annoying than that!
I feel weird about the hand-dolding too. I always feel as if I’m squishing the other person’s hand, so I just stand orans by myself, if I can do it.
Who are your 2 favorite priests, BTW?
And, yes, completely ridiculous for anyone to make comments on their or anyone’s financial decisions. Even if they *had* made a vow of poverty and were in violation of it, like any sin, it is between them and God…and their confessor.
Heehee, at the same event yesterday, I was told that maybe I shouldn’t go on WYD, since I was likely to corrupt everyone. Me?!?!?!? Really?!?!?
Hmm…. So, if I want you to pray a Rosary for me, I just have to annoy you…. That’s just asking for trouble….
Let’s get started:
1. So who *was* the person you went to greet?
2. How are they doing?
3. What is their favorite saint?
ROFL.
Jaibee, while I will admit that EVERY person in this world annoys me from time to time…even the people I love best…heck, *I* even annoy myself sometimes!…
…and much as you might like the dubious distinction of being the most annoying person I can think of…
…you just AREN’T. :-p Sorry.
I don’t know if I could narrow down to 2 favorite priests, but these were two of my most dearly beloved priests. Two of yours, too. :-p
Well, that *does* narrow it down a bit — my priest count isn’t nearly so high as yours!
Hmm…. We’ll have to come up with a ranking system….
The Priest Olympics
Priest A has celebrated for me 4/6 sacraments.
Priests B, C, and D have celebrated for me 2/6 sacraments.
Priest E has celebrated for me 1/6 sacraments.
I’ll assume that you are talking about Priests A and B in your article. Although, I can’t really say why anyone would say anything about Priest B — I haven’t seen anything even remotely questionable, but I have to admit that I haven’t been examining the “evidence” so to say, either. Priest A, I would imagine, is a better steward than most people I know, and has made some amazing and selfless decisions, to the extent that I know of the situation, which is little and none of my business.
Priest A was indeed one of the priests she found fault with. And like you, I don’t know a terrible lot about his finances (they’re none of my beeswax), but based on what she was saying, it sounds like she knew less than either of us.
I am not 100% sure which priest you mean by Priest B, as there is no way of differentiating him from Priests C and D based on the available information.
Priest B, as I understand it, could be any of the following:
- a priest whose onetime confessional advice to you is framed on my desk;
- a priest who asks you whether you “have anything REALLY bad to confess today?”
- a priest who looks (endearingly) shocked when he hears that you went 100 on the freeway just to see if your car would do it.
(and Priest E, I would assume, is the one you tried to go see Saturday? Or is he my boss?)
Anyway, assuming that I’m right about the options for Priest B, let me tell you that he has celebrated 2/6 Sacraments for me also – though now that I think about it, that only eliminates one…
…so let’s say that he’s the one I am most protective of right now, because he is arguably under the most pressure of any of them. I would go to the mat for most of the priests I know in a heartbeat, but I’m a bit of a mother tiger about this particular priest at the moment.
Don’t mess with the Clam’s priests! :-p
And no, I don’t know of anything questionable about him or his financial decisions either. I think this woman was just really determined to find fault. A very unhappy person. Which is really why she might end up getting a Rosary (or two) prayed for her.
Okay, so Priest B options as you laid them out:
Priest C – framed confessional
Priest D – REALLY bad to confess?
Priest B – shocked
Priest E – Saturday
And I guess your boss could be priest F with a score of 1/6.
I wasn’t clear, are you tiger-mama about Priest A or Priest B?
I suspect I know the priest who’s inspiring the tiger-mama instinct in Clam, and if I’m correct, it’s well-deserved. I’ve been praying for him (if it is indeed the same priest) for a while now.
Mrs. DJ is likewise protective of her priests, as her Fr. V story would indicate
I was once tempted to ask a lady to leave my apologetics class because she made derogatory comments about how Father was handling the financial aspects of the parish. I suspect that Clam, who knows this priest rather well, would’ve been just as surprised by this comment as I was.
Tiger-Mama about Priest B, though I am a bit tiger-mama-ish about Priest A too. Come to think of it, I turn into Tiger-Mama Clam about a lot of people, particularly my priests…but Priest B is bringing it out a lot more than most.
And you’re right, DJ – I can’t imagine someone finding fault with Fr.’s handling of your parish’s finances. Admittedly I know very little about your parish’s finances, but, well, I don’t know, call me crazy…I usually err on the side of assuming the best about people…and Fr. has NEVER given me reason to be concerned about his judgment. EVER.
So anyone who wants to go stir the pot about parish finances at an apologetics class would probably get, like the woman yesterday, two or three attempts at a tactful response before I turned into a snarling Mama Tiger…
I love code.
I could try and decipher which priest is which, based on my limited knowledge of your interaction with priests. At least, for a couple of the coded letters.
But, on the general points of the post:
First of all, I completely agree with you regarding point 1. I take advantage of having an armful of baby to avoid holding hands with others. I’ll have one of my kids hold my hand, but not a stranger (even a brother or sister in Christ) in an unnecessary and (in my opinion) disruptive expression of unity. Our joint recitation of the Lord’s Prayer should be sufficient unity.
On point 2, it irks me to no end when people see a need to rip on priests. So much for respecting our priests. If a person has such a problem with a priest, then that person should approach that priest or his superior (his boss, the Cardinal), not some stranger who happened to be sitting next to them at Mass today. Such prattling amounts to gossip, and borders on bearing false witness against a neighbor in many cases.
Point 3. A person who complains about the actions of others should look to their own actions. I’m betting the person who was venting to you has quite the beam in her own eye, yet with eagle-eye vision can spot the speck in the eyes of those priests.
Personally, I would have been tempted to tell her how much I love and support the priests, how awesome they are with my kids, how nice it was to have them over for dinner (if I correctly matched Priest B, then he has been over for dinner, possibly along with one of the other priests). I’d then be tempted to add on how my aunt was a missionary nun in Brazil for 20ish years.
I’m not sure I’d have done it, but I’d be sorely tempted.
Speaking of priests, were you able to make it to Father XYZ’s farewell celebration yesterday, and if so were you planning on posting about it? I was entertaining houseguests over the weekend, so we went to St. Edmund’s at 8:30. Between us and the other family there are 9 kids, and making it out for 8:15 didn’t happen…and with expected higher numbers at 10, we didn’t really want to go to that one.
We sat in the first two rows. #3 child decided to have a tantrum during the homily, after needing to use the bathroom during the gospel. I missed both the gospel and the homily (did I still fulfill my Sunday obligation?)
Pan Siekierski! Good to see you!
First, I’m debating whether to just tell you who the priests are, or whether I should let you enjoy the algebraic fun of decoding it…
I’ll put it at the bottom of this comment, with sufficient warning so if you don’t want to see the answers ahead of time, you can probably avoid it.
RE: Point One. I don’t care for the hand-holding. I don’t even care for the lay use of orans. The Canuck has said, in just about as many words, that unless the Cardinal or someone from the Vatican, in an official teaching capacity, says that we should use it, he’s not gonna use it. If he is asked to use it by the Cardinal or the Vatican, in an official document, he will do it, but he will not like it.
I’m a little less extreme – I have done it a few times, mostly because there was some nuance to the situation and I didn’t want to offend or give scandal to the person next to me. One time I was standing next to one of my dearest friends, who didn’t happen to know how I feel about it and who just automatically put out her hand. So I took it. Another time I was at a Life Teen Mass (not my thing, but they needed EMEs and I had volunteered to fill the need) and the man next to me didn’t seem to know what he should do where, so I gathered he might not have been to Mass in a while. When the Lord’s Prayer came up and he stuck out his hand, I took it so as not to make him think he was being dissed. But usually I just steadfastly ignore the hand-holding around me…have I told you about what happened at the Chrism Mass?
RE: Point Two. I agree completely, which was the biggest reason I was so uncomfortable with the situation. It was pretty clearly idle, malicious gossip; if she had any real basis for her opinions, she didn’t demonstrate it to me. What’s more, like you said, if she had concerns about these priests’ stewardship, she should have brought it up with them. Isn’t that what St. Paul says to do? If you have a gripe with your neighbor, tell him so? (Though in fairness, it was at Fr. XYZ’s farewell reception, not at Mass proper. Doesn’t change the calculus much though…)
RE: Point Three. I definitely had the impression that it was a beam/mote issue. Especially when she started complaining about people going on mission trips to the Third World when there was need here in the U.S.
I was tempted to say a lot of things to her. In addition to the things you mentioned that you’d have been tempted to say – and I was tempted to say a lot of them, though I don’t have an aunt who was a missionary to Brazil – I was tempted to say several of the following things:
1) Should Mother Teresa have not gone to India? I mean, she was from Albania. Wasn’t there plenty of need in Albania? Yet she heeded God’s call and went to India, and look at the fruit her ministry bore! Your talk of “taking care of our own” is antithetical to the whole idea of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ. “Our own” is not America, but all of God’s people.
2) If you’re so concerned about the straits of folks here in the U.S. (New Orleans et al), why aren’t you on mission to New Orleans instead of sitting here complaining to me about how other people aren’t doing it?
3) Do you always sit and gossip to people you’ve just met? If so, have you ever found that you sometimes gossip to the wrong person? Both Priest A and Priest B have a sister and a brother-in-law at the parish; how would you like to find out you’ve been maliciously gossiping about someone to a member of their family? Because there’s a real chance of that. And is it so much better to gossip to someone else? I may not know and love Priests A and B as much as their families do, but I love them plenty.
4) Shut up about “God prospering the parish”. I don’t know about you, but I’m Catholic, and the Church doesn’t teach the Prosperity Gospel. And while we’re on the subject, let’s go back to Mother Teresa and remember what she said: “God calls us to faithfulness, not success.”
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I was tempted to say all of that, but instead I kept trying to change the subject and redirect her complaints. When she started on about more generalized mission trip kvetching and the “taking care of our own” stuff, I said as nicely as I could that I thought we needed to be obedient to wherever God was calling us, whether it was to America or abroad. She tried again, saying “But don’t you think that starts here, in ourselves?” I answered, more sharply than I intended and with a definite finality in my voice, that I thought it started wherever God wanted us, and that we should obey His call whether it kept us home or took us abroad.
And then I saw the person I wanted to say hello to, and happily ran off. :-p
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WARNING! ABOUT TO RUIN THE ALGEBRAIC FUN OF SORTING OUT WHICH PRIEST IS WHICH! WARNING! DANGER, WILL ROBINSON! DANGER!
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Priest A is our most recent former pastor (who left last summer).
Priest B is our current pastor.
Priest C is the associate who left last summer with Priest A.
Priest D is the associate pastor who has only just left (who was being honored yesterday – Fr. XYZ).
Priest E you probably wouldn’t know – he’s just finished as an associate with Priest A.
And yes, I’ll post on Fr. XYZ’s farewell…probably this evening…
Well, I failed…I got 40% on the quiz
Buy I can totally hear Priest D saying “Do you have anything REALLY bad to confess today?”
Er…”But”. “But I can totally….”
ugh. me no kan tipe.
Whoo-hoo! Stumped another one with my excellent coding skills! Only 40%, eh? Just kidding!
BTW, wasn’t TODAY the beam/mote Gospel?? Siekierski, you rock!
Never mind priests A, B, and C. If someone put their hand on my shoulder during the Our Father it would be freak out time for me.
I HATE people touching me like that.