Remember: Sexual Abuses Are Preceded by Liturgical Abuses - By Dr Geoffrey Brushwood
We were at [...] on the outer banks, off the shores of [...], for a week.
Sadly, the Sunday mass experience at the Holy Trinity Church there was horrendous. Men in shorts, not a jacket and tie in sight. I stuck out like a sore thumb dressed like Prince Philip.
There was a zoo like atmosphere before mass. Everyone talking as if at a bazaar.
Then a man walked to the microphone and suggested we introduced ourselves to each other. I could only manage a fierce stare and held onto my hands when someone tried to grab them.
There was a piano refrain throughout the Mass, at once rising and then quiet just like the waves nearby.
There were no kneelers, and NO ONE KNELT at any point in the Mass, except our family. And people looked upon us with kind condescension as if looking at idiots who don’t know how to behave in polite company.
But the best of the worst was the priest’s performance. He had a severe speech impediment. A stammer that was far worse than the worst I’d seen as a doctor. Sad for him but sad for us too as it was impossible to follow what he said.
If he’d applied to be the ten o clock news anchor at CNN I’m afraid he’d be turned down. Just as a blind man would not be picked for the sniper team in the SAS.
Surely one has to set one’s targets based in reality.
Isn’t there a rule about men wanting to be priests not having speech impediments? Just as they ought not to be habitual sodomists?
By the way, I can sense the palpable anger in ordinary Catholics about all the chaos engulfing the church in the US again.
Picture: Karin Hamilton, cc-by-nc
