Humor

The Rev. Myron Flax prepares to deliver Mass on Saturday to a packed house at the Catholic Center, a storefront drop-in site at The Citadel mall in Colorado Springs. (Special to Post / Chuck Bigger)

Colorado Springs – Just outside Mervyn’s department store in The Citadel mall, a brown-robed friar bearded and smiling, waves to shoppers, with absolutely no self-consciousness that here, directly across from Corral West Ranchwear and the gum-ball machines, he is dressed like St. Francis in the year 1209.

The Rev. Matthew Gross, 69, is one of the "mall monks" – the five Capuchin brothers who staff the Catholic Center, their storefront drop-in spot at the mall. The friars are ordained priests who hear confessions, console the troubled, or simply chat.

These Capuchins are an order of Franciscan friars with a strict adherence to a vow of poverty and a tradition of contemplation. What are they doing in the cathedral of consumerism?

"We’re the modern version of Francis in the marketplace," says the Rev. Curtis Carlson, 45, director of the center. He describes how the original friars of Francis’ community in medieval Italy visited the plazas where people bought and sold merchandise.

The people are here indeed. The center has welcomed more than 100 visitors a day, on average, since its opening in November 2001. Many folks come for Mass – celebrated twice each weekday and once on Saturdays – in the center’s 60-seat chapel. Noon liturgies are often filled to capacity.

…Poverty, obedience and chastity notwithstanding, the Franciscans maintain a spirit that appears, above all, to be joyful – playful, even.

It’s a handy trait to have while moving through contemporary society in a hooded robe and sandals. Carlson laughs, recounting a time when he was pumping gas and a fellow customer called out, "Hey, did you just come from the Renaissance Fair?"

"No," answered the friar. "I’m the real thing."

"Cool," said the other fellow. "Accept no substitutes!" [Source]

I think it is pretty cool that the modern temple of materialism should have within it Capuchins with vows of poverty. I could also see some other religious orders setting up their own storefronts. Carmelites could have a shoe store called "Dark Night of the Sole", or maybe that would be too ironic for discalced (shoeless) Carmelites. Or maybe more appropriate would be Carmelite kitchen supply store since St. Teresa of Avila said "The Lord walks among the pots and pans." Contemplative nuns would make good salesmen in a kitchen store since they are used to speaking behind a grill. Dominican’s of course would have a book store specializing in books 1000 pages or more. Possibly a St. Lawrence Barbeque supply store or a St. Joseph of Cupertino’s store that specializes in model airplanes would also be in order.

This morning’s NPR Morning Edition features an interview with Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean, who says he wants to reclaim evangelicals and Roman Catholics for the Democratic Party. This is possible, he says, by emphasizing that the Democratic Party is not the party of gay marriage or abortion. When pressed on this, Dean admits he doesn’t want to restrict abortion or homosexual liberationism. Instead, he wants to show evangelicals and Catholics that the Party "has a soul" and respects the values of "people of faith."

In fact, Dean argues, the Democratic Party actually resonates with evangelical values because it cares for those who are "left behind." [Via Mere Comments]

With good ole Howard talking about how it "hates Republicans and everything they stand for" and recently that many Republicans ‘have never made an honest living’ you can understand why Republicans call him the "gift that keeps on giving." Boy is the pro-abortion PAC Emily’s List confused in giving millions of dollars to the party that isn’t about abortion.

I think the below is the only thing that can fully explain Howard Dean.

Via Musings of an Expagan comes this "not a parody" alert.

This Sunday church service will take five minutes and you don’t even have to get out of the car.

The Metropolitan Church of the Quad Cities, 3019 N. Harrison St., Davenport, is sponsoring “Drive-Thru Church” from 10 a.m. to noon Sunday.

“
Just pull up in our parking lot,” the Rev. Rich Hendricks suggests.

He promises some humor in the offerings. Congregants, for example, will be dressed like anglers in tune with a fish theme.

“
This is a way to try and reach out to people who might not otherwise approach the doors of the church,” he said. “Some people don’t relate to traditional church services at all.”

The Harrison Street location prompted Metropolitan Church to choose Memorial Day weekend for the event, said Loretta Gamble of Davenport.

“
People will be busy doing any number of activities but we want to allow folks to have a moment or two, if that’s what they can spare, to think about worship,” she said.

Clowns stationed on Harrison Street will attract cars to the church parking lot located on West 31st Street. Drivers will be greeted by a team of three “anglers” and supplied with the daily scripture and a take-home homily. Prayer requests will be honored.

Everyone will be given communion, but this will be specially delivered in a tackle box, the minister said, in a clean bait cup.

A station will be set up for an informal church choir, and those interested may exit their vehicles and sing. Participants also will take home a special gift in the form of brightly-colored fish key chains or other accoutrements.

No cost is involved but a free-will offering will be collected with part of the proceeds going to AIDS Project Quad Cities.

While a drive-thru service is unusual for this area, Hendricks said his church is not the first in the world to do one. Congregations on both coasts have established drive-thru services and received national attention for it. The non-denominational World of Faith Family Worship Center in Suffolk, Va., relocated to a former bank building in 2001 and began the practice, according to Jet magazine.

The Los Angeles Times reported in 2003 that the Main Place Christian Fellowship, a Southern Baptist congregation south of Los Angeles, established a drive-thru facility in a former photo kiosk across the street from the main church. It was especially valued by unattached Christians, the newspaper said.

Gamble believes the drive-thru event is a creative way to disperse information about the congregation she’s belonged to for more than 10 years.

“
In our church, we believe that God created each and every one of us as good, and we celebrate that,” she said. [Source]

Make sure you also read John’s comments on the story.

Just the though of a drive-thru service is bad enough and to combine it with clowns to attract "customers" is just bizarre. The road to horrific liturgy is paved with good intentions. It does make me ponder about a Catholic version of this and I have previously covered one aspect of this in my Jiffy Shriven post – which coincidentally was sparked by another of John’s posts. First thing though is that Catholics would need to get their cars fitted with those hydraulic lifts used commonly by low-riders to raise and lower a car at will. By lowering and then raising the front you could simulate a genuflection. Mabye rewire the windshield wipers to wipe in the movement of the sign of the cross. I would think that saying Amen instead of honking would still be appropriate. Would they have an "Eternal Happiness Meal" for those kids not old enough to receive Communion or a simple blessing? I kind of like the idea of something like a St. Francis action figure being included with it or a St. Dominic action figure with reinforced knees for doing theology on. Or possibly a St. Catherine of Sienna action figure with removable head for veneration*. After receiving Communion would the priest ask "Do you want grace with that?" Would a more traditional drive-in Mass require a setup like a 1950’s hamburger drive-ins where cars would park on a communion parking rail and the priest would rollerskate to each car bringing Communion? Besides since speakers at drive thru are so bad you would never know if it was in Latin or the vernacular so that would remove one contentious problem. Of course many Catholics are already selecting their theology like off a menu as it is now so for them it would not be too much to adapt to. So for cafeteria Catholics for ease you could have special Combos for common pairings "I’ll have the #1 Social Justice special. That does come without condemnation of abortion – right?" It would be nice to be able to supersize grace.

*Lauren of Cnytr in an email exchange once suggested something along that line to me before.

Jimmy Akin the other day commented on the practice of burying St. Joseph upside down in order to speed up intercession in selling of your house. Matthew at Shrine of the Holy Whapping concurred that he "always found this one a little too much even for my appetite." I also find this practice to be a little bit annoying (if not downright superstitious) as if St. Joseph needed to be coerced into intercession. I mean if you feel that this tactic would really work then why not threaten to break of a finger each week until the house is sold? Or perhaps suspend him in a vat of hot Wesson oil or attach tiny electrodes to the statue. Wouldn’t the Church’s prohibition against torture also apply to the threat of burying statues upside down to elicit selling of your house?

LONDON (Reuters) – British telecoms operator BT Group Plc has wired up a church in Wales to allow the congregation to hook onto local high-speed Internet connections when they want a break from the sermon. Britain’s largest fixed-line telecoms operator said on Tuesday it had installed a Wi-Fi wireless network access point, known as a hotspot, in Reverend Keith Kimber’s St John’s Rectory church in the city of Cardiff.

"The church has to move with the times and I wanted to make St John’s a sanctuary for everyone, including business people with laptops and mobiles," Kimber said in a statement issued by BT. "I have no problem with people quietly sending an email or surfing the Internet in church, as long as they respect the church."

Wi-Fi — a medium-range wireless network that is often rolled out in coffee shops and airport lounges — allows users of laptop computers and other gadgets to access fast Internet connections without having to struggle with wires and mismatched phone plugs. [Source][Via Musings of an Expagan]

Personally I go to church to help to avoid a hotspot, in fact a really really hotspot if you know what I mean. In fact the WWW that I am interested in at Mass is Worship, Worship, Worship.

In some ways I have thought about the internet in relation to the Mystical Body of the Church. We can see the saints in the role as routers that amplify and pass on our prayers. We can ping a saint for a special request. Everywhere we go we can log on via an IP address (Intercessory Prayer) and be confident that our prayers never bounce or get returned as undeliverable. Though maybe it would be cool to pray for someone in Purgatory and then have it bounce back with a forwarding address when they have moved on to the Beatific Vision. If only we realized how much grace that can be downloaded. The only problem with grace bandwidth is our own disposition which can serve as a bottleneck. In fact I find it quite annoying about myself that when receiving the Most Holy Eucharist that instead of opening up a Transubstantiation 1 (T1) line to Christ I am more like to get a bad dial-up connection especially if distractions are considered as loss of connection. Perseverance in prayer can be seen as continuing to try to log on despite connection problems.

One good thing is that God never spams us, though sometimes he sends things our way that we try to filter or delete like in the case of the rich young man in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew. And the only thing he wants to enlarge is our life of faith.

I also wonder if lesser know saints have referral logs like Sitemeter where they can check to see how many intercessory hits they have had in the last hour. That they would rejoice in a spike of traffic since it means they get to help lend a hand in intercessory prayer. Though I also wonder if St. Anthony gets annoyed when the subject line again and again reads "Find something for me." I mean maybe he would like to pray for a special intention every now and again.

ROME Joseph Ratzinger, as a theologian and cardinal, returned to the question often over the years. And now that he is Pope Benedict XVI, his paper trail on the issue provokes skepticism about him among more liberal Roman Catholics. The question, in his own words: "Is the church really going to get smaller?"

At another point, in an interview published in 1997 in "Salt of the Earth," he explained it this way: "Maybe we are facing a new and different kind of epoch in the church’s history, where Christianity will again be characterized more by the mustard seed, where it will exist in small, seemingly insignificant groups that nonetheless live an intense struggle against evil and bring good into the world – that let God in."

The standard argument is that Benedict "wants a more fervent, orthodox, evangelical church – even if it drives people away," as a New Yorker headline put it recently.

Today Pope Benedict XVI revealed what he really meant and that he is ready for and committed to a smaller church as he presented a prototype smaller church. The large crowd at St. Peters square was stunned into silence as they pondered the meaning of a smaller church and that the idea will get some getting use to. Though some commented that it would sure cut down on maintenance and A/C and heating costs.

Critics have pointed out that even with the declining size of the priesthood that they would still not fit in this new church.

Some might consider this to be a radical idea, yet back in 1991 eminent American theologian Avery Cardinal Dulles anticipated this when he wrote Models of the Church.

Cardinal Mahoney of the Diocese of Los Angeles was also prepared to be in line with the Pope as he introduces his new smaller church which will be much more affordable considering all of the law suits he is going to need to settle. His liturgical scientists are still perfecting a way a way to miniaturize liturgical dancers through a technique similar to the what was in the movie Fantastic Voyage.

The smaller cathedral is also available for a price of $22 at the gift store.

Here is an interesting site called "Jonah on the Web‘ which includes links to over 200 articles and 150 pictures on Jonah. The author of the site emailed me since he had included my "If Jonah had a Blog" as one of the links. This parody was a sequel to my "If Adam had a Blog."

Catholic writer Danielle Bean has this funny prayer up today on her blog.

A MOTHER’S PRAYER OF ST. FRANCIS (STOMACH FLU VERSION)

Lord,
Make me an instrument of Your healing love;
Where there is vomit let me bring Lysol;
Where there are boogers, Kleenex;
Where there is fever, Tylenol;
Where there is boredom, library books;
Where there are chills, warm blankets;
And where there is whininess, Scooby Doo.

O Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek
To be well-rested as to provide clean sheets,
To be appreciated as to disinfect the house,
To be showered as to give warm baths,
For it is in scrubbing out the bathroom that we are cleansed,
It is in sharing laps that we find comfort,
And it is after resting that we will return
To a normal life.

JesterWare introduces the latest in interactive Cafeteria Catholicism using Flash animation.

Updated: Via reader suggestions, for Cafeteria Catholics the first message on the last page has had the Latin corrected and now includes an added welcome message when zero items are selected.

*Descriptions were take from the CCC and Catholic Answer’s Voter’s Guide for Serious Catholics. Descriptions were edited for length and any mistakes made our mine.

A reader, John S, writes saying:

I am hoping that you can help me. I’m trying to figure out what a"
faith community" is. I would be tempted to believe that it is the same thing as a "Church" or a "Parish", except that if someone wanted to say "Church" or "Parish," why would they say "faith community?"

I noted the term "faith community" on Dick Vosco’s website. (I also noted that all of the "before" photos were grainy & depressing, while the "after" photos were bright & cheerful! It’s amazing that his modernist faith community worship center designs even inspire the CCD arrays in digital cameras!).

In order to figure out this whole "faith community" vs. "parish" thing, I propose a Jeff Foxworthy approach:

Faith community seems to be one of those annoying terms used when people are unable to say church. People with this defect will also substitute Presider for Priest. I have wondered if a progressive with Tourette Syndrome might embarrass themselves and other by having the impulse to say things like "hierarchy", "obedience", "dogma", etc. This would be quite embarrassing in progressive company. The term faith community seems to be prevalent in places not exactly faithful to the magisterium, though I am also sure that there are those who use the term that are. I wonder if anybody ever says "It’s time to get up and to get ready for faith community" or "What time does faith community start today?" The following list is some of my reader’s helpful suggestions.

• If you can’t find the tabernacle, you might be in a faith community
• If you don’t know what a pew is, you might be in a faith community
• If you are Catholic and have ever heard the term "love offering", you might be in a faith community
• If your worship center distributes America magazine, you might be in a faith community
• If among the first communicants, more than three boys take the Christian name "Brandon", you might be in a faith community
• If among the first communicants, at least one girl takes the name "Brandon", you might be in a faith community
• If the baptismal font has running or heated water, you might be in a faith community
• If "Lamb of God" is used interchangeably with "Warming Wind", you might be in a faith community
• If the giant LCD monitor falls and crushes more than three liturgists, you might be in a faith community
• If the womens’ club at your worship center distributes native american dreamcatchers, you might be in a faith community.
• If "dark night of the soul" is used as a euphemism for indigestion, you might be in a faith community

To which I will add a few of my own:

• If you believe the "Source and summit of the faith is dialogue", you might be in a faith community.
• If you have a rainbow altar cloth, you might be in a faith community.
• If Father McBrien was quoted so much that you thought he was one of the Apostles, you might be in a faith community.
• If you thought Natural Family Planning meant using organic contraceptives, you might be in a faith community.
• If you heard a scream from the rectory when Josef Ratzinger was chosen as Pope, you might be in a faith community.
• If you have never heard the word "conscience" preceded by the word "informed", you might be in a faith community.
• If those not wearing rainbows sashes are denied Communion, you might be in a faith community.
• If a large part of the church’s budget goes to felt for banners, you might be in a faith community.
• If the kneelers are covered with barb wire to discourage use, you might be in a faith community.
• If after your new church is built you thought that you should recommend the architect to your boss for building the company’s new warehouse, you might be in a faith community.
• If Father, Son and Holy Spirit is replaced by Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier, you might be in a faith community.
• If you thought that you had possibly heard the hymn sung by Barney before, you might be in a faith community.
• If there are Planned Parenthood ads in the back of the bulletin, you might be in a faith community.
• If you have heard of the Catechism, but have never actually seen one or heard it quoted, you might be in a faith community.
• If Ms. Magazine is in the literature rack, you might be in a faith community.
• You see no anti-Catholic bias in the Boston Globe, you might be in a faith community.
• If your usher greets you saying "Hi my name is Bob and my enneagram type is the reformer", you might be in a faith community.
• If you have ever found marbles, sand, or goldfish* in your Holy Water font, you might be in a faith community.
• Your pretty sure the GIRM is on the Index librorum prohibitorum, you might be in a faith community.
• When discussing doctrine you have heard the term "Survey says!", you might be in a faith community.
• If the only Latin term you know is "Sensus Fidelium.", you might be in a faith community.

* I actually heard one caller into EWTN ask Fr. Trigilio about their pastor placing goldfish in the Holy Water font.

Recently Jimmy Akin posted in his Classics of Internet Humor series You might be a redneck Jedi if ... Here are some of my own additions:

• You have a lightsword rack in your pickup.
• You outfitted the Millennium Falcon with an 8-track deck.
• You used the force to crush a beer can on your head.
• You have tried to engage Yoda in a burping contest.
• Your X-Wing Navigation unit uses the term ‘over yonder’
• You were trained by a Jedi Knight named Bubba
• Your R2D2 unit has a cup holder built in.