I tried out a new church on Sunday with my MIL. My wife had hauled our two boys to Saturday mass the day before, so I was child-free. Having to spank the little dudes every 15-20 minutes can be very distracting from my soul savin', so this was a welcome respite. I decided to check out a beautiful place that is run by a group of nuns who also live at the facility. I had not been to this particular church before.
It really was beautiful with a classic apse and gorgeous stained glass. It was built in the conventional style that seemed to work fine for thousands of years until the 60's when things started getting cute (see St. Therese as one example).
With the church's classic architecture, I thought perhaps the service itself might not be marred by the garish modernisms that infect so many masses, so I settled in.
Within I would say five minutes I knew something wasn't right. There was something going on with the language, something that sounded off and dissonant. Within a few more minutes I determined what it was.
SOMEONE had gone through all of the spoken and sung parts of the mass and removed two prominent words: HE and FATHER and replaced them with LORD or GOD. So instead of "Let us thank him" it became "Let us thank God". Instead of "...Jesus Christ, only son of the father..." it became "...Jesus Christ, only son of God..." and so on.
I instantly began fuming at the audacity and seething resentment that must have fueled such behavior. It occurred to me that this is the kind of nonsense that women in the Church can be capable of without strong male leadership (let's just say the priest did not portray the firmest of wrists).
I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that hateful feminism had infected so deeply a place of worship, but I still was. I plotted what I would say to any of the nuns I encountered on the way out of mass ("That way death, sister" came to mind) but settled on just walking out into the bright sunlight and thick air knowing I would never set foot in there again.
