This is part of my continuing log of my last winter's vacation. Prompted by the religious beliefs and background of my cousin Louis (both he and my father are former Catholic seminarians), my family, Louis, Cathy, Lynne, and myself ended up going to a local midnight mass on Christmas. We ended up getting there almost late (we got to follow in the priest, making his entrance with a microphone strapped to his head), so we were relegated to standing room in the back. While uncomfortable, this provided an excellent vantage point from which to observe the congregation as well as the service.
Since I am agnostic with strong athiest leanings, religious services are more of interest to me for how people are affected by them rather than for my spirituality. This doesn't stop me from appreciating the aesthetics of well designed rituals, or the weight of centuries of history that can lie behind them; unfortunately, this particular service had little of either. The music was modern (and worse, sometimes horribly inappropriate — although the official website of the British Monarchy claims that the widely-held view that Greensleeves was written by King Henry VIII is almost certainly false, long association makes it a rather poor choice for background music for a Catholic ceremony in any case), and the lyrics put to them were clumsily crafted.
Bad as that was, though, the hypocrisy was worse. A shabbily dressed man, probably homeless, was wandering around the front area as the priest took his seat on the stage. Hands sometimes raised and mumbling to himself, he appeared somewhat mentally disturbed, but was obviously immersed in the comfort his faith was giving him. Just as he was bowing down to quietly ask someone in one of the foremost pews if room could be made for him to sit, one of the priest's assistants (a woman dressed in all white, almost angel-like), came to him and took his arm, not to bring him to a seat, or even to standing room in the back, but to ask him to leave the church entirely, and escort him to the door.
I was so stunned by this, I didn't even move until it had happened. Part of me wanted to intervene, to take this woman aside and ask her how she could do such a thing with a clear conscience, on Christmas of all days, but by the time I could gather my wits, it was over. (This might be just as well; it has been many years since I had an interest in religion strong enough to keep the rules of the rituals and the passages of the Bible straight in my head, and I probably would have looked like an idiot, in addition to being wildly disruptive and an embarassment to family and guests. Despite that, I have since taken the time to review the Liturgy of the Mass in the Catholic Encyclopedia, and couldn't find anything to justify what happened. There have been reasons to exclude people from the Mass, but as far as I can tell being slow in the head and even slightly disruptive as a result has never been one of them.) The priest, likewise, didn't react. He didn't even look at them.
He did go on to open the Mass with a somewhat rambling parable about a dirty, mentally disturbed man who took great joy in the attentions of the baby of a travelling middle class family, comparing the man to humanity, and the baby who practically leapt into the man's arms despite his somewhat foul appearance to God. I couldn't tell if this was a spontaneous attempt at chastisement of his assistant, or if he was completely blind to the irony.
That sense of irony stayed with me throughout the rest of the ceremony (which went otherwise uneventfully), and Lynne told me afterwards that she had been incensed by the matter as well. It took my father claiming divine guidance in order to find where he had parked to lighten the mood afterwards. Ah, my wonderful, Catholic-trained father; every visit is a new lesson in heresy, but the entertainment value is beyond price.
