I take it you’re not going to back my plan to get it changed to “the Oral Sex of Peace”, then?
Pardon my sacrilege.
Oh, boy, you are going to get smited for sure. 
(Smote?)
Smitten?
Hey, look, is that a meteor? It’s enormous!
OH SHI
Dang. I was kind of hoping for a bolt of lightning. 
The parish was very small, but sometimes the guy may have taken unusual shortcuts. I remember one Sunday at least where he didn’t even bother giving communion! He did spend a lot of time skiing, playing tennis or golf though.
Nothing scandalous at all. I was too young to know why, but for all I know he might have been promoted. Had there been any hints of scandal of any kind, even the children would have heard of it.
Gotcha. I’m not an ogre either, I do hug my family and friends, I just don’t like what I perceive as uncomfortable contact combined with the obligation to act as though we love strangers.
Might have to do with the skipping communion thing…
That’s the thing. I think when we are told to “love our neighbor,” it doesn’t necessarily mean we have to act as though they are our best friend…it’s a little bit of a deeper meaning than that!
In our church, the Parish Council did its best to put a stop to this when it was first suggested by a ‘Faith Minister’. A long-time parish leader said quite bluntly “This is a Catholic church. We don’t do that here. If you wanna do that holy-roller crap, go down the street to the damn Baptist church.” There was significant agreement from others on the Council. That kind of killed it for a while.
Again, only if you have a weak-kneed, rubber-stamp Parish Council. After the above incident, our young priest tried to smooth it all over, saying “well, let’s just let people do whatever they choose to do, and see what they prefer”. But then he kept trying to sneakily push for it, like instead of introducing the Lords Prayer by reading “Let us pray” as the missal said, he would say “Let us join hands and pray”.
So eventually people from the Parish Council confronted him, along with the senior priest, saying that the Parish Council had already decided that they did not want this practice introduced at our Parish, and that it was not part of the official Roman Missal. He argued that “but many people seem to like this practice”. They responded “and many other people do NOT like it. And the people who don’t like it are the ones whose offerings keep this parish in the black!” That woke the senior priest up, and he immediately jumped into the discussion. The eventual decision was that the Mass would follow the Roman Missal, no more, no less.
That worked for a while, but that senior priest is now gone, and this practice seems to be creeping back. Lots of new people moving in are coming from parishes where it was done, and seem to just think that’s the way it is supposed to be.
Probably a losing battle, I guess. Maybe in a couple hundred years, a Vatican III Council will come along and clean all these kind of ‘attachments’ off the Mass, like Vatican II cleaned out a bunch of the junk added onto the Tridentine Mass over the years.
This is so funny to me, because at my last parish it was the opposite…an overly-controlling parish council, and a pastor who couldn’t or wouldn’t stand up to them. There are several people on the council who are very involved in liturgy…one of them is a former nun who is some kind of expert in Children’s liturgy (that’s another whole topic that drives me nutty, but I won’t go there…) And they are always coming up with ideas to liven things up and make it more “welcoming.” I joined the liturgy committee to help put the kibosh on some of it, but it was like swimming upstream. I ended up leaving that parish, but my new one seems to actually be a little worse…the priest tends to make up his own Eucharistic Prayer, for instance. But, I have decided not to get involved this time. It’s too frustrating, and frankly, a little heartbreaking.
Small correction: it was the council of Trent that cleared a bunch of cruft off the mass that had accumulated in the Middle Ages. The Tridentine mass was the cleaned-up mass. From Trent until the 1970s, the mass remained virtually unchanged.
At my church, the two most awkward moments are the peace (shaking hands with everyone around you) and the horrible handholding during the pastoral prayer.
I usually just go along with it. I don’t like it, but I figure it is a very small thing. Besides, I don’t want the person sitting next to me to spend time dwelling on why I didn’t hold hands with them for the rest of the service.
I was born and raised Catholic, and up until 2 years ago, I would routinely get nervous during Mass starting at the beginning of the Our Father in anticipation of the Kiss of Peace. I do have mild social phobia, and it seems this was one of those situations that set it off.
Then two years ago, I joined the Jesuit Volunteer Corps and lived with 6 other people (all Catholic) who insisted on HUGGING during the Kiss of Peace. Oh my God. I didn’t really get along with 4/6 of them, too, which made this gesture even more dread-worthy. There were times when I ducked into the bathroom during the Our Father just to avoid hugging these people (who, naturally, wanted to hold hands during the prayer, as well). (And, yeah, I don’t need to tell you how guilty I would feel about this – so much for loving my neighbor as God loves me…)
So, the point is, after a year of that form of torture, I am now cured of my dread of the handshake. I actually experience a wave of relief each and every Sunday that I, thank God, don’t need to hug anyone today.
And, hey, I’m all for spontaneous hugs. If we like each other, we’re happy, excited, sad or in need of comfort…that’s all golden. It’s the planned hugs, with people I don’t know or like, that freak me the hell out.
That happens after the Spankings of Peace, I take it?