Furthermore…

When I was in grammar school one of the nuns who was teaching us singing said that in some groups and choirs it is sometimes the custom to appoint one person to loudly and clearly enunciate the ‘t’ sound at the ends of words, because otherwise (I think this was the reason) the t’s aren’t heard clearly.
I think I’d rather do the regular kind of singing than be the one selected for enunciating the t’s. It would be, in one way, like being a cymbal player, who only gets to do his thing every once in a great while, but the t’s person would have to be alerT At every momenT trying to spoT t’s, because there are a loT of words thaT have thaT letter aT their end are there noT?

One kid to another, about their church:

“It’s a nice church, but it only has 14 stations. My Dad’s car gets over a hundred!”

They had a discussion page at my Catholic Friends group about friends. A lot of the contributions were quite thought provoking. I got to thinking about the different meanings ‘friend’ might have. I remember a big kid in my neighborhood I would pass on the street who would always say “Hello, friend” in a somewhat unusual, grown up tone. Then one day I found out he had fellatio on his mind.
Some of the Internet businesses make the suggestion that all you need to do to succeed is sign up a few of your friends. They, supposedly, will sign up a few of theirs, so that a massive network will get formed. I always say to myself, “If I sign up my friends for that deal, they won’t be friends any more!”
Social networks on the Internet are set up so that members want to have a large number of ‘friends’ to feel proud of, even though they might be mostly people one never met and never will meet.
Salesmen appear to want to become your friend, if only until the deal is closed. They sometimes even ask to have a list of your friends, so they can be temporary friends with them too.
A different kind of friend, the truest of all, comes to mind on recalling the old Christian song, What A Friend We Have In Jesus. He is a Friend in need, and a Friend indeed!

Girl going to Confession:

“I didn’t help with the housework, and I got mad when my Mom said my hair looks like a mop. By the way, what’s a mop?”

I got a new car a month ago. My old car didn’t have a (working) radio, and I’m a radio person, especially talk shows. There’s an outlet for Ave Maria Radio here in West Coast Florida, but most of my home radios don’t pick it up predicatably, if at all. So I was pleased to dial it up on my car radio and get some good listening. After a couple of week, though, the signal didn’t come in as well, and had to battle a rock station, creating some rediculous juxtapositions of talk show words and music lyrics.
My fall back position was Sirius Satellite Radio, which came with my Ford Focus but I didn’t intend to activate because I didn’t know how and I had (at first) all I wanted without it. So I fooled around a little and got it going and tuned it somewhat uncertainly to the Catholic channel, so I’m good for almost 6 months until the free subscription runs out.
Oh, I like music too, but getting what I want on the radio is a most uncertain affair. It’s great when one of my favorite plays, but it’s dullsville when most everything else is Somebody Else’s Favorite.

Kid to Mom as they leave church:

“I saw the picture of the Father, and the Son, but I didn’t see the holy goats!”

Last night I was at a charismatic prayer group I have gratefully attended a few times. Toward the end one of the members had a heavy burden, and we all gathered around to pray for it being removed from the person. I wanted to suggest we say a Hail Mary, which I remembered reading is particularly effective against such problems as the one we were praying against. But the others started praying as in tongues, so I joined in after a fashion, saying the Hail Mary but in a kind of garbled, unrecognizable way, so that it blended in with the other wordless voices satisfactorily. My “prayer” over, the others were still continuing. So I repeated mine, and again, and again. I’m not aware of having the tongues gift, or inclination: the nearest I come is an emotional ‘ooooh’ and ‘ohhhhh” once in a while as the others do it, and maybe a somewhat reserved ‘Yes Lord’ once in a while. It’s not much, but it’s all that I’ve got.

Kid trying to recount the story of the Samaritan Woman at the Well:

“Well, Jesus told her to go get her husband, and so she said, um, which one?”

The subject of the state of the faith in different countries came up during one of the exchanges of comments within the Multiply Catholic Friends group which I visit. A lady from Poland, a schoolteacher in a public school, painted a bleak picture, especially as she contrasted the state there with what appears to exist in the Philippines. A correspondent from the Philippines spoke of how churches there are nearly filled, attendance is high, and not only at Sunday Mass, but also at Daily Mass and at other services.
In Poland, “the latest statistics about Sunday mass attendance … said that 30 % go to mass regularly. It varied in some regions. There were some that had 25 % and others that had 45%. In Warsaw region it is about 30% but in Lodz … it is less than that.”
It reaches into the schools: “When asked during a catholic religion class (that we have at school!) who was to church last Sunday, out of 20 kids just 3 or 4 , sometimes 5 raise their hands.”
Regarding her own parish: “The problem with my parish church is that the priests cannot attract kids into the church. There is no special mass for kids on Sunday unlike in some other parishes. There is also almost no link between the parish and the school.”
More generally, “the mentality of the people … is changing. We cannot have any obligatory masses. And parents now place great importance on education for their kids. Apart from school, they send them to numerous extra paid classes such as language courses, music lessons, various sports, drama etc and care very little about their religious education.
“I live in Warsaw region, which is much worse about it than some other parts of Poland as you can see the rat race starting very early here. Not whole Poland is that secular yet, but the trend is increasing. Still plenty of people stick to faith on the great feast days (Easter, Christmas, Corpus Christi) but more because of tradition than their personal involvement.”
I imagine Polish-American people returning for a visit will be struck by the new state of affairs regarding the faith. It is closer, they might conclude, to what obtains in America now.

Man reading church bulletin sees:

The plan to form an Investors and Savers Group has been cancelled due to low interest.