My ordeal with screaming kids at Mass today.

[MikeG]

Me and my GF arrive late for Mass. The only room to sit was behind a twentyish Yuppie-like couple and their 2-3 year old daughter and son.

The kids screamed and carried on the whole mass. Mom and dad did nothing to stop it. And wouldn't you know, at the time of the Mass for the Lord's prayer, they outstretch their arms like FUNDIES.

Wanna bet who THEY voted for?

I still enjoyed Mass, only less so.

Anyone else ever have this same experience?

[Bouncy Ball]

1. I stopped going to church about

three years ago. I found the highest concentration of hypocritical and judgemental people in CHURCH and that saddened me beyond belief. I couldn't take it anymore.

Sorry to hear of your morning.

[Menshevik]

2. heh

the church I used to attend had a seperate room for parents with little kids. It had glass walls so the people inside could watch the Mass. It was actually kinda weird now that I think back on it...

[Droopy]

3. I haven't been to church in years, but I do remember

a few occasions where the kids got out of hand for a moment, but they were quickly reined in by their parents. Babies crying that sort of stuff. When that happened their mothers would usually take them back to the nursery.

[jobycom]

4. At my church when kids got out of control

they would sacrifice them on the altar to appease the worm god...

Your church is much kinder, and probably easier to clean afterwards.

(I should quit posting such stuff and go to bed. Sorry.)

[DS1]

5. That's strange. My Worm God is backwards - it MAKES kids

;-)

[NMDemDist2]

11. LOL good to have you back DS1 n/t

[jobycom]

19. Jobycom lobs the ball, DS1 slams it out of the park!

And the fans go wild!

LOL

[chookie]

6. Are evangelical gestures more common among Catholics these days?

Honey -- I haven't been to a Mass in ????? years, apart from funerals....

Are Catholics picking up some different ritual gestures -- like the listing up of arms during prayers a la Southern fundies?

A few years ago, I saw some Catholics pray over a seriously ill person by raising their arms as though they were channelling energy from God -- which I thought was something they had borrowed from elsewhere.

I heard probably 20 years ago that Catholic church officials in the US and South America felt they were pressured by protestant evangelical sects, and were going to tap into their more charismatic practices in order to adopt some of the stuff they thought people were leaving the Chirch over.

Well, if you're looking for conclusions based on VERY little observation, there ya go.

What neighborhood are you in, Mike? One of the old ethnic ones, or elsewhere?

[MikeG]

7. Suburbs of Pittsburgh, PA.

The Church frowns on this from what I've heard.

But some kooks still do it.

And think that we all have to be subject to their bad parenting.

[meow2u3]

9. Those fundie gestures by Catholics

They're causing Catholics to leave the Church--they're not bringing Protestants in! The Church in the United States had better quit those practices if they want people to remain Catholic because given the choice between a fundie church and a Catholic church that acts like fundies, they'd choose the real thing, much like the choice between a Repuke and a Dem who acts like a Repuke.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

14. Just because you raise your hands to God does not make you a fundie.

The amount of intolerance when it comes to the experience Christians have at church is amazing at this place. I've been a democrat for a very long time. When we do the Lord's Prayer at Mass, we either Join hands with the people around us, or we will raise our hands in praise. It's not a fundy thing. It's a Christian thing. I think most of the people who say stuff like what you've said, StopThePendulum, aren't catholic, and have no idea what it means to be a Catholic. First of all, I'm one of five people joining a small Catholic church in Western Oklahoma, and I know of several other people, one here at DU, who are currently in RCIA at Catholic Churches across the country. I was attracted to the Catholic Church because they don't just talk about helping the poor, they put it into action. I'm so sick of the way so many people at DU are anti Christian no matter what, yet they want everyone to be tolerant of their views and beliefs or lack thereof. It's so frustrating. Some of us are true believers in Christ and follow His teachings. Please don't let the bad Christians color your view of the rest of us. Because that's not fair.
Duckie

[chookie]

16. Why RU POed at me?

I don't recall putting a value judgement on any of this stuff. I was simply making a few sociological observations. I grew up in the Catholic Church, and the behavior we are discussing here -- the hands in the air, eyes closed -- is simply not what we were taught, or observed in our devout parents, or grandparents, or devout neighborhoods, etc.

They are identifiable however as gestures used by protestant sects in the South, who use a charismatic form of worship.

I am not dissing you or anybody -- I am just making a perfectly justifiable conjecture of the origins of this new ritualistic vocabulary in the Catholic Church.

If you're from Oklahoma, chances are you are from a background very very very different from those of us born in the Ohio Valley. What may be something you are familiar with may be something that appears alien to us, simply because our history and cultural backgrounds are different.

Relax -- no one is insulting you, your religion, religious people, religion in general, or God. We're JUST commenting on seeing stuff NOW in the Church that our grandmothers/great grandmothers, etc would never have practiced, but which were perhaps found in Anglo/Celtic protestantism among the poorer classes.

[YellowRubberDuckie]

22. I'm not POed at you.

I specifically named who I was talking to in my post. I just reread your original post, and I am not pissed off at you. Your post wasn't judgemental, but the one I replied to was.
No Harm, No Foul. At least not from you.
Duckie

[JVS]

8. How far into the service were they before you arrived?

[hoi polloi]

10. It si annoying!

Parents often think their kids are so cute that they just haven't a clue that the little brats disturb others. "Aren't they cute?"
Well, the aren't. All they do is harry me. Why do I always end up at a restaurant with some sniveling, strident brat at the next table to ruin my dinner? Parents should be more considerate.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

12. I've been in that situation many times

My dad (he was a Lutheran pastor) actually used to stop the service if people let their kids go on screaming without taking them out.

However, the former priest of the church I attended in Portland would do nothing if kids screamed through the service, or even ran up and down the aisles squealing and pushing, not even to the point of quietly talking to the parents afterwards. There may have been some fear of losing parishioners, but more people actually left because of the out-of-control kids than left because their kids had been reprimanded.

[AuntieM1957]

13. At a church in Wharton, TEXAS

I attended a wedding - and was a bit confused by the weird hand signals that some of the groom's family was making.

I was like, has it been that long since I went to mass? a 3rd vatican, or what?

Then it dawned on me that it was some kind of fundamentalist move.

Very strange - and they gave me the most un-Christian look when they saw me looking.

[CBHagman]

15. A friend of mine asked me to name ....

...the plagues God inflicted on the Egyptians when Pharaoh wouldn't let the Israelites go. I started to recite, "Lice, frogs," when my friend stopped me and deadpanned, "Wasn't one of them screaming brats?"

So he understands your dilemma at Mass today.

By the way, outstretched hands during the Lord's Prayer have become fairly common, and it has nothing to do with being a fundie. I don't know whether the charismatic movement or something else started it. But I do prefer it to the hand-holding in some churches. :-)

[chookie]

17. "Being a fundie"

I think what people are saying is that it doesn't mean that the people PRACTICING it are true "fundies" -- but I think it is fair to say that it is a ritual gesture taken from southern protestantism of the poorer classes. No Italian or Polish grandma in one of our old neighborhoods here would be caught dead holding their hands in the air during the Lord's Prayer!

Hmm, WHY it was borrowed is very interesting.... I would conjecture it is a manifestation of people, on some level, opting into the southern conservative cultural model -- shall we say, Catholics who voted Bush.

This gesture got in through TV, or maybe people moving from one area of the country to another -- and I would be very surprised if they did NOT, on some level, buy into the southern conservative cultural model, very surprised indeed. That doesn't make them "fundies", but it does remove them from the practice of Catholicism I grew up with in my very ethnic Catholic family, and for some reason, I believe it is significant.

I think there was a feeling that Catholics needed a more emotionally involving and cathartic Mass -- and these charismatic services certainly have a lot of that.

[tjdee]

20. Dunno...happens at a lot of black churches too....

And they're not conservatives, usually.

Would be interesting to know WHY it's being copied at Catholic churches....interesting that people of all denominations do it now...

[WCGreen]

18. Protons have mass....

I didn't even know they were Catholic....

One of my favorite T-Shirts..

Funny, I had a similar experience at Friday's on Saturday night (couldn't resist) and posted about how annoyed all the adults around us were at the parents of these particular devil children because they let the little tykes run rampant.

What about the personal responsibility involved with taming your children.....

I love kids, dearly regret not having any of my own, but let me tell you, I am really annoyed with the way people let their children spoil events from the sacred to the mundane, are people that selfish that they can't see the disruption their unruly children cause in others...

Again, I think this isn't the result of liberalism run rampant but stems from the ""it's mine and I know what's best for me" attitude that is prevalent in the Rush generation and the "no tax" crowd. That type of message hammered away for twenty or so years has sent a much deep and effective message justifying lawlessness and crash and crude behavior. And yet they laugh at a parent trying to govern their children via the timeout.....

[tjdee]

21. Outstretching their hands is a fundie move?

I understand that their kids were brats, but what does their outstretching hands have to do with the price of beans??