In the Church Basement, Hiding from Mass

On Sundays and other holy days of obligation the faithful are bound to participate in the Mass.
-CIC, can. 1247.

It is Saturday evening, and I am trying to endure another “Sunday” Mass in my hometown. A snowstorm, as well as the sheer cost of hotels and driving, has forced our family to stay at home this weekend, away from our usual Sunday Mass out of town.

The church building seems to shake from the wind and snow hammering its side. On the inside, the unforgiving winds of Vatican II’s spirit continue to batter around the “People of God,” or what’s left of them.

The new priest has put his stamp on the parish in just a few short months. The best way to describe him is he’s the parish priest’s image of Pope Francis. The small, white-haired congregation commonly gets lectured on how we are living in the times of Vatican II, not Vatican I (I’m not sure what that means) and that tradition was stifling the Church prior to Vatican II (again, I’m not sure what that means). Active participation is required now in the parish, particularly through singing Happy Birthday to others at the end of Mass. Meanwhile, we are told that the value of the Mass comes solely from people being in attendance. How ironic, considering how the congregation has diminished since Vatican II. As for Mass being Christ’s sacrifice at Calvary? I guess that’s so Vatican I.

I look up during this Mass and see an altar boy in the sanctuary playing an air guitar while his brothers beside him laugh. It is a far cry from a few months ago when it was my two oldest boys who served. They were good at what they did, I must say. However, they quit. The new priest forbade them to genuflect when entering the sanctuary. No compromise. Better to play a fake guitar than genuflect to Christ.

As the one altar boy slashes out a fake guitar solo, I decide to temporarily bail out of this Mass. Having young children is a blessing. If need be, I can take our baby to the basement of the church, and no one questions why. Just a little pinch, and I’m gone…

In the basement I pray my rosary, while holding our dear, but fussy, little Benedict. It is the only way to pray at such a Mass. Yet even this is disturbed. I hear the echoes of a Broadway musical permeate into the basement. “Alleluia… for the glory… and the honor… are Yours… Alleluia!” I thought I turned down the microphone’s volume last week? They’re on to me. As “and the glory…” powers through again, I picture Hell as a place filled with church microphones–a good incentive to live in the state of grace.

I walk around with Benedict, but soon feelings of shame well within me. My wife and oldest children are upstairs, and I’m downstairs hiding. Is that what St. Joseph would do? Just what would he do in our circumstance? Flee to Egypt? Turn over banners and Glory & Praise hymnals while stringing together a whip? I am not St. Joseph. I go upstairs and timidly hand our baby to my wife. She promptly scrambles downstairs with him. Tag, I’m it. I glance over at our other children. They have a look of extreme pain and suffering. They do not like it here anymore. They have told me so. Each one asked beforehand if we could drive the two plus hours to the traditional Latin Mass at 5am the next morning instead. Snowstorm or no snowstorm. But we cannot. It is not safe. We live where we are, and we can’t afford to live closer to a TLM. Not yet, anyway. Though if readers here were to buy my latest youth fiction novel…

Now the altar boys are giggling away. They are copying the priest’s actions during the Our Father. Not as my three-year-old son does for his hero-priest at the TLM, but as ones who thinks the entire “celebration” is a joke. Arms up. Arms down. Sway here. Motion there. Active participation indeed. It is a game of Simon Says, and I don’t mean Simon Peter. But again, at least the altar boys didn’t genuflect when entering the sanctuary.

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