I’ve been incredibly lax in taking my children to Church. If you’ve ever sat through a Catholic Mass with a rambunctious 5 year old and a 1 year old, with no crying room, you’ll understand that getting up and going to Church with the lot of them is not a pleasure.
Eilis started kindergarten this fall, though, and I have decided that it is high time she get her act together and learn to sit through Mass. Our Church has what they call the Children’s Liturgy of the Word. During two Masses each Sunday, the children can go out of the main Church and into a room at the back where the readings and the Gospel are explained to them in language they can understand. I figured my best bet with Eilis was taking her to a Mass that had CLOW, so at the very least, there’s a good 15 minute span where she could go out and stretch her legs and be somewhere where she understood what was going on.
Well, I am hoping by next Sunday the 15 minutes is expanded to about an hour and 15 minutes. When she was in the pew with me, it was all I could do to keep from strangling her. She sat when she was supposed to stand. She stood when she should have been kneeling. At one point, she was laying on the floor. I’ve never been so embarassed in my life as I was with this behavior.
I get her outside, where I promptly remark that had she been better behaved in Church, we would be going to the pancake breakfast, but since she was not on her best behavior, we would be going home. That is when I was informed, in no uncertain terms, that we should not go to Church. We are not Church People, we are Irish People!
I spent the rest of the morning explaining to her that anyone can be “Church People”, whether they are Irish, Italian like Nannie, German, even Japanese people can be Church people. She’s not impressed.
There may be two people hanging on the cross in our Church next Sunday.