Right now it is a gorgeously bright Sunday morning. The air is warm and inviting. You step outside and are immediately overwhelmed by the accent of summer. The dew has yet to dry on the grass, so it glistens gaily as the sun’s rays hit it at every angle. There’s a whisper of a breeze and it envelopes you, gently tickle your nose and ears. You smell the faint scent of daisies, mixed with the faint pong of manure. Across the street, your neighbor is teaching his son how to use the lawnmower for the first time. It roars to life, and the boy grasps on to it with both hands, afraid it’ll take off without him when his dad pulls the cord. When it roars to life, the birds in the nearby trees abandon their nests, startled by the disruptive noise. They squeak and squawk in a frenzy, until they find their respective seats on telephone wires and fine-tune their chirping harmonies. It’s a beautiful morning, you’re going to enjoy every last drop of it, while I am stuck inside this stuffy old Church.
It’s a Sunday morning ritual. As good Catholics, we must give at least an hour of our time to worship God every week. One hour of one hundred sixty-eight, and usually it’s over after forty-five minutes. It’s not a bad deal. I just have a couple of problems with it.
The first is the entire atmosphere of the place. It has a very stale, elderly musk to it. It makes you question how long ago it’s been built, and why no one has thought to Fe-breeze it yet. The seating is arranged in a very systematic fashion. Row by row the pews line up behind each other. They are all made of cheap birch wood. They all have rounded edges, but with no cushions, there is no comfortable sitting positions that won’t make your butt go numb after a few minutes. I think this is secretly why you stand up and sit down so much during Mass; they need to keep the blood flow going.
It’s never a comfortable temperature either. During the Winter, it is absolutely way too hot in there. And in the summer, it’s ridiculously freezing. It’s as if they’re trying to compensate for the extreme weather outside by taking it to the other extreme inside.
My second problem is with my fellow patrons. Believe me when I say, I completely understand that the appeal of waking up early on a weekend to sit and listen to a monotone priest narrate the same Gospel stories we’ve all memorized is very low, but aren’t you doing God a disservice by not paying more attention?
I don’t know, I just don’t get it anymore.
Prose
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Could you please not laugh at my religion?It gets on my nerves.Sorry I said that well it does a little.
Catholic churches aren’t musty. In fact the people who have to take care of the parishes light them up with beautiful flowers arranged on the altar or adorn the main altar with side altars which are dedicated to certain saints. And you know how you say they are so simple? The traditional Catholic church where I went to camp had richly polished pews, marble altar, and Communion rail. It’s not about how rich they look for even the humblest, most poor church will be welcomed by God. As long as it was made to honor, love, and adore him. No cushions means you have to suffer up your sins for Jesus. You kneel and stand for the important parts of Mass and to respect Jesus, the church, the Gospel(etc.),and the priest. I just think you have a problem with Catholics. And so much so that you have to go against them at ever turn in your life.