Back when I was a "Professional Christian" employed as a Southern Baptist minister, I often attended Mass at St. Martin de Tours Catholic Church in Louisville, Kentucky where my friend Father Vernon Robertson was the Priest.
I did the readings and got to know the Liturgy and to this day I have a fondness for Mass.
When I miss organized religion I'll often find my way into a Catholic Church and celebrate the Eucharist.
I've been to Bar Church on Tybee Island several times over the past year but here I am in Ireland with a bunch of Irish Catholics so I had to go to Mass.
Sarah stayed in bed.
We make our way to St. Fin Barre's Cathedral.
The Priest was a young red head Irishman who was very serious about things. He never smiled and didn't have any Good News for the several hundred of us in attendance.
He did have a lot of Bad News.
Apparently the Irish are thinking about legalizing abortion which has the Catholic Church in a tizzy because the Bishop wrote a letter for the redheaded Priest to read.
It was a great letter!
The Bishop wrote if abortion is allowed then women can't have boys and then the pool to select Priests from will diminish and there's already of shortage of Priests so ... everybody go out and make more Priests!
"What'd you think Micheal?" Tony Ryan asks as we make our way back to retrieve the sinners who'd slept through Mass.
"My favorite part is always when the Priest cleans the Chalice after the Eucharist and that red headed boy did a Hell of a job! He cleaned and scrubbed as though, if Jesus really was in there, he was going to get every drop out. It's like cleaning up Christ!"
This was met with stony silence until my friend Bill Shearouse turns, looks me in the eye and says, "What do you mean 'IF'?"
"I was trying to be respectful," Tony chimes in, "so I didn't want to say anything."
"Oh come on," I shoot back. "There's more than one way to look at Transubstantiation (the belief that the wine and the wafer actually become the blood and body of Christ)."
"No there's not," Bill and Tony reply at the same time.
As everyone knows, when it comes to religion, it's often best to keep your mouth shut.
I love Bill Shearouse and like Tony a lot so I nodded in agreement with them.
But I enjoyed Mass immensely, like St. Fin Barr a lot and his Church, laughed at the wicked intensity of the red headed Priest with no Good News and the several hundred good Irish Catholics who stared intently when I passed the collection plate without putting anything in it ... twice!
That'll probably do me for a while in terms of organized religion though eventually I'll start to miss it a little and will hit Bar Church and then likely a Mass somewhere.
Maybe next time Sarah will go with me and I won't offend anybody.
Or maybe I'll just stay in bed with her.
