And thank God I wasn't in this parish yesterday...
Read your comments about the raucous Mother's Day liturgy. Same here in the western suburbs of Chicago, but in addition to the action figure and finger food hoopla, on Mother's Day we are also treated to a mom from the parish delivering the homily. Our pastor has taken to proudly announcing that this has become a tradition in our church (ironic, of course, since Father characterizes most other traditions as the residue of meaningless rules imposed by Rome). So today, in lieu of a sermon on the Ascension (which we were too lazy to celebrate on Thursday), we listened to what has become the annual emotional recounting of some sort of personal crisis - usually a sick child - offered up by a well-meaning woman as an example of what it means to be a mother - results being not a dry eye in the house. Today, instead of a sick child though, we were told, with just a tad too much detail, about this woman's recent hysterectomy and the subsequent discovery of a "disgusting, slime-filled tumor," and about all the nice people who helped her and her family during these difficult times including the friend who came by every day to help change the dressing on the "12" long incision which couldn't be sewn up because . . ." Well, anyway, she summed up this experience by saying how glad she was to be a "member" of this "organization." By which we assumed she meant the Holy Catholic Church, but I suppose it might just as well have been a reference to the local Chamber of Commerce.
At the end of Mass our pastor thanked her again for the wonderful job she had done and told us that the next time "someone in the CHURCH HIERARCHY (the lights are lowered at this point and the Darth Vader Theme is played by our organist) says that the laity, and particularly a woman, does not belong at the pulpit, we should remember what happened here today." An excellent piece of advice that I hope all of my fellow parishioners will keep in mind next month when Father's Day comes around and the calls are made from the rectory for a few dads to do the homily that Sunday.