Getting to church

I was home sick today, which meant spending some quality time with Comedy Central. I watched a comedian named Richard Jeni who was brought up Catholic. One of his jokes involved getting the audience to indicate via applause how many believed in God, how many were Catholic, and how many attended church every Sunday.

Guess which category got MUCH less applause than the other two.

"So you all believe that there's a man with a big white beard standing outside some pearly gates, and his friends are all people with wings, and his arch-enemy is this guy who wears a red suit. And the part you can't believe is that you have to get up early on a weekend," he said.

Now, Jeni isn't a practicing Catholic. But he does have a good point. Out of all the things Catholics believe in that others don't - Papal infallibility, praying to patron saints, receiving indulgences, and other things - the idea that I really, really have to be there every weekend is the one thing I have trouble with.

Before we had Philo we were excellent about making it to church. Even when my morning sickness forced us to attend a 7 PM Mass at another parish because I was vomiting too much to attend the morning Masses at our church, we were at church every Sunday. And even after we had the baby and still lived in Milwaukee we made it to church consistently, even though sitting in the crying room was more like sitting in the stands at a football game than attending a church service. But since we moved here we've had trouble finding a good church to attend. We nixed one because there was no crying room, and Philo was at an age where he was as likely to scream as sleep. We're currently attending a church that I'm not crazy about because the congregation seems cold and the priest likes to talk about suffering and sin. That's important, sure, but I'd rather be inspired to be a better Catholic than bullied into it. So we haven't been as diligent about it lately.

That doesn't mean that we haven't been gettin' our churchin' at all. There's actually a televised Mass put on by the Milwaukee Archdiocese on Sunday mornings. We love the priest and we actually look forward to hearing his sermon every Sunday.

Which only makes it all the more heartbreaking to go to actual church on the Sundays where I feel too guilty to watch Mass on TV.

We need to find a new church.