Today in the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, a Holy Day of Obligation for Catholics.
Almost every weekday Catholic holy day I think about posting something like this, and then never do. But on this occasion, I'm going to.
I don't resent the holy days, and indeed, it would be wrong to do so. But, in this very localized post, I don't like the way that the parishes handle scheduling Masses for them, or at least I'm whining about it.
Indeed, as this one follows a Sunday, I was hoping the feast had been transferred so there would by no obligation, but it wasn't.
Catholics are required, under the pain of mortal sin, to attend a Mass for a holy day of obligation, assuming that it's possible to do so. What I think is the case is that sometimes the Church doesn't take into account the daily lives of Catholics, at least here, to make it a bit more easier to fulfill that obligation. Or maybe it figures that it being difficult is part of the point, I'm not sure.
Anyhow, what the situation is, is as follows.
Like a lot of Catholics in this region, I worked on Saturday. I took time out of my work day, however, to go to confession. I went, and then went back to work. The confession schedule at the Church I normally go to makes getting to confession very easy. There's confession on Saturday mornings at 8:00 a.m. On First Saturdays there's a Mass at 9:00 a.m., although I don't attend it. There's confession again at 1:30 p.m. The two other parishes have confessions at 3:00 p.m. on Saturday. One parish has confession on Sunday at 4:00 p.m. and again on Wednesday evenings, and the big across town parish has confession on Thursday evening. So every parish is making it easy to get to confession.
It's easy to get to Sunday Mass as well. One parish starts its vigil Mass at 4:00 p.m. on Saturday. The other two are about 6:00 p.m., I think. Masses resume at the big parish at 8:00 and run them through the day with two of the three concluding with Masses in the evening, with the earliest being 5:15 p.m.
So far, so good.
All the parishes have weekday Masses, which is where this begins to break down in my view.
One parish has a morning Mass at 6:30 a.m., way early. Another one has daily Masses at 9:00 a.m.. Not so early. Another has one at 8:30, but today, on the holy day, that's been moved to 9:00 a.m.
I used to attend daily Mass. . . at noon. The downtown parish, which has a morning Mass at 6:30, had one at noon as well. It was well attended in relative terms. It was also quite short, as the two Priests who conducted the Masses (they now have one) knew that almost everyone there represented foot traffic from downtown.
Okay, so what is the problem?
This is.
I could have made the Mass last night, the vigil Mass. I thought about it.
But I also attended Mass at 8:30 in the morning, and then headed out to look for elk on my one day off. It's not so much that Mass twice in one day is too much, but for people who have a single day off, and that's a lot of people around here, what that effectively does is to devote the entire day to Mass.
There is something charming about that, and I think some people do that very thing. But for a feral person like me, bookending the day that way means that pretty much the rest of the day is lost.
To add to it, while I did bet back in town in time, on this day, like a lot of Sundays in the fall and winter, that would have put me in Mass wearing tiger stripe cargo pants. . . which would look a bit odd.
It might be possible for me to make a 6:30 a.m. Mass, but it would be pretty difficult. I'm usually still downing coffee at 6:30 a.m. and my days are really long. If I did that, particularly because of that location, I'd be at work before 7:30 and therefore be putting in a default 12 hour day with no break, most of the time.
And when I had school age children here at home, it was an absolute impossibility. When we still had a dog here, which we did until quite recently, it would have been as well, as my long suffering spouse, who has the temperament of a grizzly bear if she's awakened early, and who is not Catholic, would have had to been poked awake.
And 6:30, frankly, is absurdly early. Is there a reason this can't be 7:30? A 6:30 Mass will draw people, but it will tend to draw the retired elderly who don't have much else to do at that hour and who have given up sleeping, as the elderly tend to do. I know that, as in spite of my whining here, I'm always up early.
I have, I'll note, attended that Mass when I had no other choice. I frankly was darn near asleep, but it was interesting as I sat right behind two young women who were friends, one of whom was a trad, sort of combining a mochila with a leather skirt, and the other who was wearing street clothes. My guess is that they were on the way to high school or community college, probably the latter.
I'll also note that when I made that 6:30 a.m. Mass it was before they were worried that I might have intestinal cancer and then thyroid cancer. My stomach has never been the same and mornings is generally where that shows it. Enough said.
I'm grateful that there are two parishes with evening Masses I can make, although I with the one that has 5:15 Sunday Masses still had a holy day mass at that time. Now it does not. It's 6:00 holy day Mass is a Spanish Mass, which is also fine, so I suppose the time was moved to accommodate Spanish speaking Catholics on their way home from work.
What I really wish, however, is that one Parish had a noon Mass.
Any Mass after 8:00 on a weekday really isn't very well scheduled to accommodate working people, or students, in this region. When I was a student, I was nearly always at school by 8. I'm nearly always at work by 8, if not 7. By the end of the day, I'm nearly always beat down and just want to crawl home (a coworker who occasionally does the "let's go get a beer" nearly always gets the reply "I just want to go home). I'll make one of the evening Masses, but I'll be pretty worn out by that time.
A noon Mass would be ideal. And not just for me, but for others like me, who work in town. The downtown noon Mass was great, as I could and did walk to it, but I could drive to any of them.
I know, in no small part due Fr. Joseph Krupp's podcast, that Priests are grossly overburdened, so I shouldn't be complaining at all. But I am a bit. Masses at 8:30 or 9:00 can only be attended by people, for the most part, who aren't working, and who don't have children. Masses at 6:30 will probably only be attended by the elderly and the other very early risers, who can accommodate getting something to eat thereafter.
For most working people these just don't work. Noon won't work for everyone either, but it'll work for some who might otherwise have a difficult time going.
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While waiting for Confession to commence on Saturday, I was stunned to find a large crowed of people in the Church. It soon was obvious it was a Baptism, and had just concluded.
Quite of few of the men were wearing hats, with at least one wearing a cowboy hat. This is inside the church.
I've grown used to declining clothing standards, and frankly I'm not exactly that well dressed most Sundays. But wearing hats indoors was something I was taught to never do as a child. In the service it was normally absolutely prohibited. "Is your head cold?" was a question addressed in the form of a snarl by sergeants to enlisted men who forgot to remove their hats.
Now people wear hats indoors all the time. I don't like, and I still don't. I never see Catholics do that inside of a church, if they are men (and for that matter its pretty rare with women), so my presumption is that these were people who were largely unchurched.
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In looking for Mass times, I looked to see what was offered by the by The Ukrainian Catholic Church's mission to Casper. I suspect they don't have a service today, but looking up their information is always a problem. I don't know if its because its a small community and they know what they're doing, and therefore don't feel that they need to publicize it, or if its something else.
The Eastern Rite churches of the Catholic Church are growing, and it'd behoove them to at least make the dates and times of their services known, I'd think. So far they've also been holding services in non Catholic buildings, which I also don't get. I don't know what's up with all of this, if anything at all, but here I wish that they'd make use of one of the Catholic Churches and make it easier to find out when they're holding services.
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It's interesting, at least to me, to note that the word holiday obviously comes from Catholic holy days. Most of the original holidays were in fact holy days and in Catholic countries, that's still very much the case.
This is a Protestant county.
That gives rise to part of the problems noted. The US has a hardcore Protestant Work Ethic pounded into the culture by the Puritans, who got it from Calvin. It's part of the crappiest aspects of Americans culture. It doesn't add a day to our lives, probably shortens them, and makes them a lot less enjoyable.
Calvinism, from which that comes, really has threads of steel throughout the culture. John Calvin was a fun sucker, but he believed in work in a major way. He also believed that being well to do showed that you were probably amongst the elect. The Puritans themselves were big on the marital act, but by the time of the English Civil War prominent Calvinist in England figured that if they were well to do, that was proof enough they were amongst the elect, and so pick up a mistress on the side was okay.
You can see a lot of that in the culture today, particularly amongst those in power. People don't mind the concept of telling you to work harder while the engage in serial polygamy. It's strong in the American Civil Religion and some strains of Evangelicalism as well, where some "faith leaders' who have had morally dubious lives see nothing particularly disturbing about that.
The culture lost a lot in the Reformation.
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Finally, this is not only holy day, it's a feast day. The difficulty of getting to Mass will take away from the feasting aspect of it, as will the fact that in a Puritan Protestant county we're not supposed to be feasting on a Monday. Everyone has to be at work again, bright and early in the morning.
