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You may recall that last week I posted a message about our local priest not saying the mass intention. Today in the grocery store, I saw and chatted with the widow of the man whose intention was the subject of my earlier posting.
I told her I had a few feedback messages from this group and was still trying to figure out what I should do. She said I should speak up during the Prayer of the Faithful and mention the mass intention when those five days I requested come up.
To help place this in context about observing church rules, she told me that when she and Jim Hill were married in 1947, their best friends were married in an Episcopal church a few months earlier. Jim and Carolyn were invited to be bridesmaid and usher, but Catholic church teaching at the time forbade Catholics from taking part in the service of another church.
She asked her local pastor in Chattanooga, and he said would it cause more harm to charity to skip the mass or attend it. She said their best friends would be broken-hearted if they did not participate. The priest said she and Jim should follow their consciences, and he, the priest, "would not write this up to the bishop."
When she told me the story, my mouth went wide open in shock. I said "I can't believe the Catholic Church thought it could prohibit its members from going to another church's services, seeing what they were like, or even participating as a bridesmaid at a wedding." She said "Yes. It is true. We (Catholics) were forbidden. It was like the Middle Ages."
Then I told her a professor at the University of Tennessee (now retired and age 80) told me when he came to Knoxville, a priest delivered a homily that said "parents with children who do not send them to Catholic schools are committing a mortal sin." Carolyn said, "Yes, it is hard to believe, but priests used to cross the names of parents off from church lists and bar them from receiving communion." Again, I could only laugh at the sorry spectacle of trying to browbeat parents into sending their kids to parochial school.
I can't believe the Church in which I belong (loosely) tried these extortionate tactics as late as the early 1960s. It just boggles my mind.
On a bit of irony, have any of you seen statistics that show children who attend Catholic parochial school are five times more likely to stop practicing their Catholic faith as adults as those who go to public schools? I don't know how many of my total classmates still consider themselves practicing Catholics, but nearly all those who attended parochial school through grade 8 do NOT attend church. I would be curious if any of you come across statistics on the negative impact of church schooling on subsequent attendance at church.
If my hypothesis is correct, then one conclusion is that the more the children learn about the Church and all its rules and attempts to extort people into behavior by threatening mortal sins, the more they are repulsed and want their freedom as soon as they are adults.
Mike
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