My roommate had never been to a Catholic mass so I took her to Xmas mass at my parents' church, where I grew up. First this lady in a red suit got up and said Merry Christmas," and the whole congregation said "Merry Christmas, sister," so I knew she was a nun. Nuns don't have a dress code anymore, but they usually don't wear red business suits. Then she gave a short speech welcoming everyone. I said "Who's that?" My mom says, "The pastor." Um... okay.
I grew up in this parish and I knew they were pretty liberal because it was us who got the Vatican to allow girls to be alter servers. (Turned out all you had to do was ask. The pope was like, "sure whatever.") But I didn't think even they would let a woman actually run the parish.
Anyway, then the priest got up to say his homily. First he told a short-yet-meandering baseball story. Then he told that joke where Jesus beats Satan at word processing because "Jesus saves." Then, while everyone was waiting for the real homily, he sat down.
So, you know the one thing that my roommate thought was weird? She was shocked when one of the deacons (that parish is big on permanent deacons took the silver-bound bible and carried over his head around the alter before setting it on the podium. Well, they always did that as far as I knew. My mom said it's an Eastern Orthodox thing that they do because that bible was a gift from some visiting Eastern Orthodox priest. With all the weirdness that goes on in that church, the one thing she picked up on as being weird was the one thing that I thought was perfectly normal.
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My roommate had never been to a Catholic mass so I took her to Xmas mass at my parents' church, where I grew up. First this lady in a red suit got up and said Merry Christmas," and the whole congregation said "Merry Christmas, sister," so I knew she was a nun. Nuns don't have a dress code anymore, but they usually don't wear red business suits. Then she gave a short speech welcoming everyone. I said "Who's that?" My mom says, "The pastor." Um... okay.
I grew up in this parish and I knew they were pretty liberal because it was us who got the Vatican to allow girls to be alter servers. (Turned out all you had to do was ask. The pope was like, "sure whatever.") But I didn't think even they would let a woman actually run the parish.
Anyway, then the priest got up to say his homily. First he told a short-yet-meandering baseball story. Then he told that joke where Jesus beats Satan at word processing because "Jesus saves." Then, while everyone was waiting for the real homily, he sat down.
So, you know the one thing that my roommate thought was weird? She was shocked when one of the deacons (that parish is big on permanent deacons took the silver-bound bible and carried over his head around the alter before setting it on the podium. Well, they always did that as far as I knew. My mom said it's an Eastern Orthodox thing that they do because that bible was a gift from some visiting Eastern Orthodox priest. With all the weirdness that goes on in that church, the one thing she picked up on as being weird was the one thing that I thought was perfectly normal.