Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin

I consider myself a good Catholic, most of the time. I am not the poster boy for Catholicism, but, I am a good person, most of the time. I hold to the Ten Commandments and do my best allow Jesus’ light to shine through me. Perhaps my biggest transgression is not keeping holy the Lord’s Day.
I have never been a big fan of going to church. Maybe it it is the perceived hypocrisy of the congregation that has put me off. The idea of loving thy neighbor while judging and condemning them for their attire or the behavior of their kids. A sin I will easily admit to being guilty of as much as any Holy Roller Church Pillar type. Judging people in church can be a kind of sport for me. However, I feel that I am just doing what everybody else in the building is doing, making assumptions and judgments.
Or maybe it is the conditioned state of fear of misbehaving and being judged by God while under his roof, which makes me rather spend the hour reading the Sunday paper. The Mass has always left me feeling further away from God than prior to going. I always felt closer to God while walking through the woods, looking at beautifully designed and constructed building, listening to music that truly stirred me, or in the healing touch of a loved one.
  And now that I am a father of two little ones, the experience of going to Mass on Sunday has become gut-wrenchingly comical. Obviously, an infant like Reagan, my five-month old, gets a pass in the behavior department – to her, hunger and discomfort are reasons to cry regardless of the location. It is what babies do. As I have said before, God may love napping babies, but He also has a soft spot for babies that cry during Mass and parents with the smarts to know when to say enough is enough, and remove the crying baby from the congregation.
  Reagan the Pagan has not been Christened yet, and this Sunday the priest asked everyone that had been baptized to raise their hands. I raised my hand, Jean raised her hand and instructed Tiernan to do likewise. I pointed at Reagan and in a low silly Daddy voice said, “Don’t you raise your hand. You’re not baptized yet.”
That comment was greeted by a giggling belly laugh from my five-the month old pagan. My wife gives me a look that says, “What the heck are you doing to her?” I shrug my shoulders and mouth, “Nothing.” I look back to Reagan and she starts laughing like crazy again. By now, everyone for five rows is investigating the laughing infant. So, I put my finger to my mouth and say, “Shhhhh.” This only fuels the fire and the laughter erupts louder. At this point, she just has to work herself through the giggles, so I stop looking at her. All is quiet.
  Tiernan, however is another story. He is old enough to understand that he must act a certain way. He isn’t old enough to understand why, but he can understand that different rules apply when we are in church. And for the most part he is well behaved in church. He acts up and gets a bit out hand, and at point we just leave, but 80 percent of the time is a good boy. He just wants to go back to a place where he fully understands the rules and one day, he told us as much. As the priest was consecrating the host, Tiernan says clear as a bell for all to hear, “All done,” indicating that he is all done with church and wishes to go home a play with his trains.
  He spends much of his time in Mass flirting. He flirts with old ladies. He flirts with teenage girls. He flirts with toddler girls. He flirts with awkward girls in their Tweens, (that ages 8-12 for those of you not up on your demographic lingo. Girls not quite teenagers but sophisticated enough to be willing to pay big bucks for in-style jeans, tees and other merchandise that marketers are jamming down their throats.)
He flirts with everyone. He’s charmed many an octogenarian during Mass. He smiles and lets a little twinkle fly from his eyes and women that can barely walk, are pushing their walkers aside to bend down and crawl under the pews to retrieve the toy he just “dropped” in their direction. You can’t teach that kind of talent and I don’t think he got it from his father.
    In an effort to get a better look at one of his girlfriends, he put down the kneeler, on my foot. At first I thought it was just him standing on my foot and then he stepped up on the kneeler and drove the base of the kneeler deeper into my foot, at which point I let out a muffled but audible, “Ouch!!!!” in a stage whisper loud enough to be heard up on the altar. My pain is met by smiles and laughter from the boy.
    He spends the remainder of Mass time, playing with his toys or flipping through the missal books, and crawling on the pew behind me in an effort to get his sister to start to giggling again.
   In recent weeks, he’s taken a keen interest in Communion. At first, as we would go up for communion, Tiernan would just say, “Me too,” as my wife and I would receive. However, this week, he became more aggressive in pursuit of the Host. Jean was carrying him and as the priest reached out to place the wafer on her tongue, Tiernan says, “Me too,” and attempts to grab it out of the priest’s hand. Mom and Dad are mortified. The priest, God bless him, is cracking up laughing. The women standing behind the priest offering Sacramental Wine is doing her best, and failing, to suppress a belly laugh and look dignified. Of course, the boy sees all of these reactions and smiles like a thief that has gotten away with robbery and endeared himself to the people he was robbing at the same time.
  Once Mass is over and we’re walking out, Tiernan is met by his girlfriends of all ages. They wave and tell us, “He is so cute” or “He is such a darling” or “What a handsome boy.” He looks back at me like, “See Dad, I’ve got it all under control. Why do you keep cramping my style, with the ‘Stop that’ and ‘Sit up straight’ and ‘Be quiet.’ See, my public loves me. The chicks dig me. God loves boys who nap. Why do you think I’ve been sleeping so much?”