When mass attendance became a head trip part 2

So. There we were, minding our own business, and away we went on a tour of mass as head trip, first defining head trip and then expanding on the concept.

Now more expanding as promised . . .

Mass for most of us is a pay-attention time, do this, do that, stand up, sit down, even kneel down but not when you're in line for communion, then DON'T, or so implies our archbishop, who is also a cardinal and close friend and ally of the reigning pontiff, his man in the USA, giving his considered opinion about it in a newspaper column, of which newspaper he's publisher, for what that's worth, and that's a lot, believe me, and I should know because I used to work for one and when asked by a small magazine editor to whom I'd pitched a story, for whom was I writing? whom did I consider my audience? and I said the editors.

Wasn't supposed to say that, he took that as a so-what-else-is-new matter and I forget what I told him after that, but it was the truth, editors decide, some more than others. Got chewed out once by a picky one, not sharpest knife in the drawer, for writing a column for the big paper as if my readers knew a lot of what I knew as ex-Jesuit and before that an altar boy who won the religion medal at graduation from Fenwick High School in Oak Park in 1949.

So. The aforementioned archbishop, also a cardinal and last but not least chief shepherd of souls in two highly populated northern Illinois counties, owns his newspaper and says in it what he pleases, which is only right. It happens all the time.

We can debate this of course, as dozens have done online, making quite a splash, about what he said about kneeling for communion -- stand up and hold out yr hand, mister, look at me and say amen to what I say -- not dropping to yr knees, sticking out yr tongue, to the dismay as he saw it of fellow worshipers and creating chaos where once there was orderly PROCESSING.

So? What now, my friends? Had enough of what's gone bad with mass attendance, yes. So? Look to the ideal, lost in the decades of swinging with the sway, lost in the shuffle of alleged reform of worship which turned out not what was intended, rather something of a betrayal some say of all that was and could be to get you not figuring out via head work but paying attention and lifted out of yourself and into God knows what, in any case nothing touchy-feely but a serious catching hold of What's Bigger Than You in the presence of Whom? The Creator, my friend via the language of love, Latin, which becomes for you, mysterious as it is to 99% of you, an evocation of MYSTERY. Yes.

Nothing you can figure out, you can't, you know, because it's bigger than you by far and what you know so far. Got to watch oneself here, don't get cute. It's a danger, and this writer has no one in mind but himself when he makes the warning. Thing is, you want a liturgy that opens for you something really big, that leads you on gently enough, edging aside the busy-busy, letting, we make boldly to say, the Spirit move you.

Let's stop there for now, take a breath while considering what's to be done about our sit-down, stand-up, kneel-down-but-be-careful-when-and-where problems.

God bless Us, Every One! as Tiny Tim said to a chorus of amens from here to eternity.

Later . . .