Today was the beginning of Catholic Schools Week, therefore Aquinas deemed it necessary to have a "mass" with the entire school, as well as all of Nazareth Elementary. As it can be imagined, this went about as well as the last one, if a bit worse.
Father Bob Werth said the mass. I didn't realize how much this would change the entire mass until he opened his mouth. In the opening prayer it was mentioned somewhere about that we shall be solemn "for the next hour or hour and a half." I thought they were joking, but the mass started at 9:30 and ended at eleven. Long masses are wonderful when they're, say, Latin mass, but the Father Werth Long Mass is painful.
Father started the FWLM by encouraging us to do the "big sign of the cross," whereupon he scooped his hands in various ways that vaguely resembled the sign of the cross but seemed more like he was warding off an impending attacker who stood five feet away from him, and somehow his feet were glued to the floor.
The Opening Hymn was, "Shine, Jesus, Shine." during this hymn, the Nazareth dancers (the same ones from last time, only there were more of them and their dresses contained less fabric.*)paraded around the congregation in the center of the gym, waving their arms in some sort of weird ritualistic dance. This time, they looked less like zombies and more like they were offering up the corn harvest.
*I don't know why it's so hard for the little Nazareth dancers to wear sleeves. I understand that ladies no longer wish to wear hats to church, and, as painful as it is, I think it's not something that can really be controlled anymore. But please, ladies, cover your shoulders when you go to mass. If I could have, i would have given all those girls the Paper Sheets of Shame, like they do in Italian churches.
Father then opened the mass and commented on the situation in Egypt, and somehow the phrase, "it's not all about the money" sneaked into his speech about three times. It was hard for me to see how it was related because it was hard for me to listen to him at all.
The reading(first and only) and the responsorial psalm went passably, in that they weren't mentally scarring. The Gospel was from Mark, and it was a good reading. The mass really sterted to go awry at the beginning of the homily.
Father began by discussing the importance of Catholic schools, which is a good thing, since it seems like our diocese doesn't really seem to get that. He didn't talk about the fact that they needed to stay open, though. He spent quite a lot of time praising Aquinas and nazareth for being such good schools and then began discussing his opinions on money. The phrase, "It's not all about the money" was most of the next part as he said it, then muttered some point about how parents work hard to keep kids in school (which is true), uttered the phrase again, said something else that didn't really seem related, then shouted the phrase a few more times.
Somewhere in the homiliy Father Werth stopped talking about schools and started talking about weather. He was annoyed, he said, that people care so much about weather when it doesn't really matter. At this point I was on the verge of hysterical laughter and had to struggle to maintain silence.
The rest of the homily was him again screaming, "It's not all about the money" a few hundred times more for good measure and then saying some other stuff. One of these other things was him talking about how Jesus is such a crucial part of our life that he should be the answer to everything. He then began asking everyday questions and encouraging the congregation to respond with, 'Jesus!'. It went as follows (With FW ans the priest and C as the congregation):
FW: What's up?
C: Jesus!
FW: How's it going?
C: Jesus!
FW: What's the weather like?
C: Jesus!
FW: How are you?
C: Jesus!
There were more casual questions that made no sense with the answer as Jesus, but I think the point is there.
He then went on to give five questions that people should be asking themselves daily. I don't remember exactly what they were, but I can assure you that they were cheesy things such as, 'How do I see the world differently?" and "Who is in heaven that I should be looking to?" [Both the answers were, of course, Jesus.]
Eventually, the homily ended and after some other, less significantly painful parts of mass, we arrived at the Eucharistic Prayer. During this prayer, the Father would change the words at will, both to change the meaning and to remind everyone of his homily. There were, in the end, maybe two or three sentences of the prayer that were completely unchanged, if that.
The Communion song was, "Lean on Me, " and I still have no idea how that is a church song. After that song was the song, "Seasons of Love," which was apparently from the musical Rent. It made me ashamed of the Aquinas choir, because usually they're pretty okay with at least singing fairly religious songs. Their voices were amazing, but, again, I failed to see how it was related to anything else.
After the usual dull "Post communion reflection" and prayers was the graduation of one of the Chinese exchange students, Joyce, and it went acceptably. Once that was over, however, the mass again became awful as the little dancers gathered again, dancing to the song, "I Send You Out," which is one of those songs upon which dissertations could be written about how awful it is.
In short, the mass was terrible. None of the elements tied together, the homily made absolutely no sense, and the words were changed for all of it. I don't feel "churched," and I don't think anyone else does either,
Monday, January 31, 2011
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
MOS and Cathedral Schools Closed, stuffed in Holy Cross
I'm sure that anyone who reads this already knows that both Mother of Sorrows and Cathedral's schools have closed and the kids are being sent to Holy Cross's newly opened parish school. I don't see how this can possibly be a good thing.
I went to Mother of Sorrows. My siblings go to Mother of Sorrows. It's really terrible to see it closing. There are also some factors that should be taken into consideration:
1) The elementary schools are considering making themselves k-5 instead of k-6 - This means that the 5th graders will be the big kids at their schools, which doesn't really work. 5th graders aren't exactly the age that kindergartners should be looking up to (I'm not insulting them, I was one once.)
2) That means that the junior highs will probably add a sixth grade. While I know this won't really apply to Aquinas, considering they have that whole Nazareth thing, but for other schools this could be really problematic. When I went to MOS, the teachers changed after all the school closings, a lot of the junior high teachers couldn't continue to teach at MOS because their certification didn't include 6th grade. I wouldn't be surprised if this applied to many of the junior high teachers at other schools, just further complicating things and losing jobs for people. Great.
3) Think of how the kids feel after all of this! They're hopping around from school to school, and eventually (if not already) they'll have no sense of belonging to anywhere. They won't really be able to look at one school and think, "Yeah, that's my school," because it'll be closed. That gets rid of the sense of togetherness that the kids have, because who knows if they'll be going to the same school as each other next year? It negatively affects their development.
Personally, I was already sad that there is no longer a MOS junior high for me to visit. Now there's not going to be a school at all. That place, as well as other schools, still means a lot to some people. The people who previously went to those schools still have fond memories of them, and closing the schools obliterate that. I was really looking forward to being older and seeing how MOS would have changed and how it would have stayed the same, but now that's impossible. I know that this isn't new, that it's been a fact since the closing of the 13 schools three years ago, but it's growing more and more apparent and widespread.
It seems like there's something bad that hugely affects the Catholic schools every year. I'm not looking forward to next year's.
Bishop Clark retires in 591 days, guys. Happy December.
I went to Mother of Sorrows. My siblings go to Mother of Sorrows. It's really terrible to see it closing. There are also some factors that should be taken into consideration:
1) The elementary schools are considering making themselves k-5 instead of k-6 - This means that the 5th graders will be the big kids at their schools, which doesn't really work. 5th graders aren't exactly the age that kindergartners should be looking up to (I'm not insulting them, I was one once.)
2) That means that the junior highs will probably add a sixth grade. While I know this won't really apply to Aquinas, considering they have that whole Nazareth thing, but for other schools this could be really problematic. When I went to MOS, the teachers changed after all the school closings, a lot of the junior high teachers couldn't continue to teach at MOS because their certification didn't include 6th grade. I wouldn't be surprised if this applied to many of the junior high teachers at other schools, just further complicating things and losing jobs for people. Great.
3) Think of how the kids feel after all of this! They're hopping around from school to school, and eventually (if not already) they'll have no sense of belonging to anywhere. They won't really be able to look at one school and think, "Yeah, that's my school," because it'll be closed. That gets rid of the sense of togetherness that the kids have, because who knows if they'll be going to the same school as each other next year? It negatively affects their development.
Personally, I was already sad that there is no longer a MOS junior high for me to visit. Now there's not going to be a school at all. That place, as well as other schools, still means a lot to some people. The people who previously went to those schools still have fond memories of them, and closing the schools obliterate that. I was really looking forward to being older and seeing how MOS would have changed and how it would have stayed the same, but now that's impossible. I know that this isn't new, that it's been a fact since the closing of the 13 schools three years ago, but it's growing more and more apparent and widespread.
It seems like there's something bad that hugely affects the Catholic schools every year. I'm not looking forward to next year's.
Bishop Clark retires in 591 days, guys. Happy December.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Aquinas/Nazareth Opening School Mass
The Aquinas/Nazareth opening school mass was so terrible that I felt the need to resurrect a blog that had not been posted in since Christmas simply to describe it in full, painful detail.
My first impression of the mass was that it was densely packed with students, as it contained all of Aquinas and all of Nazareth. Throughout the mass the students where I was standing were packed extremely tightly, and I found it easiest to stand sideways.
After my homeroom finally discovered where we were supposed to sit, I started to look around. I glanced at a group of girls wearing sleeveless (but high-collared), short, sparkly peach dresses, and i got a sinking feeling that they would dance. And dance they did. During the opening hymn, the girls (and one boy who was wearing a blue t-shirt and black pants) started slowly walking through the isle of Nazareth students, their arms in front of them as if they were zombies. once they reached the front, they stood in a formation and moved oddly in something I would not consider a dance in any context. While they moved, a teacher, presumably the Nazareth music teacher, was standing at a microphone, rocking back and forth and bouncing up and down with a guitar, singing. There was also a teacher (whom I'd heard was a Spanish teacher) on drums. The entire thing looked terribly un-Catholic, and I found myself rather glad that the mass was in the gym - I didn't want to have bad associations of the Auditorium and I would never wish that on a church.
After this Opening Dance of Paganism (ODP) the bishop gave a short welcome and expressed his pleasure that everyone in the mass seemed to be enjoying themselves. I would like to take this moment to point out that most of the Aquinas teachers had a look on their face that showed they were both confused and mortified while trying to be charitable. The Aquinas choir, both at this moment and throughout the mass, would have momentary looks of confusion flash across their faces before resuming a blank look. It is my belief, then, that Bishop Clark was merely addressing the Nazareth teachers. He thanked the girls (and boy) for the ODP and began mass, arbitrarily paraphrasing prayers the entire way through.
At some point during the mass, Nazareth teachers directed a horde of little, adorable students to the front and began leading them in odd hand motions that I doubted were actual sign language, judging by the fact that they didn't match up with the words in meter or meaning. I found it less unorthodox than the ODP, but only slightly.
The bishop's homily seemed to be about angels, but, try as I might, I could not listen to what he had to say, so I busied myself mentally writing this post and noticing that some pre-schoolers were wearing suits (they were adorable). I think somewhere the bishop stopped talking about anything remotely relevant and started talking about football, and I became glad that looks couldn't kill, because I would be facing murder trials. At the end of this homily, they blatantly skipped the Nicene creed, despite its being written in full on the program and proceeded to the general intercessions. I mumbled the Nicene creed as fast as I could, pausing for the "Lord, hear our prayer"s.
During the consecration, while the bishop paraphrased the Eucharistic prayer and I tried not to collapse into a heap and die, I had a sudden worry that they would make us do the 'wave'. It may have been due to the bleachers. They did not make us do the wave, but it would not have been out of place in that thing which they called a 'mass'.
During communion, they re-summoned the hand-signing horde for a mercifully brief song, and after this the Aquinas choir sang. They sounded absolutely amazing, and the only problem with this was that the students in the bleachers kept clapping.
The bishop casually dismissed the students after a 'Post Communion Reflection'. For the recessional hymn, they brought back the ODP (which should probably be called the RDP now) and the hand-signing horde for a jumbled festival of painful 'celebration'.
I've decided to forgive Aquinas. Their input into this mass was okay, and the choir didn't do anything weird. I'd almost gotten used to AQ school masses. No, this problem seemed to be rooted in Nazareth - their students were participating in the ODP and the hand signing horde, and the teachers were constantly urging the high school to clap along with anything that happened. I feel very, very sorry for all Nazareth students who probably have to put up with this every school mass. Nazareth students, you have my condolences. Welcome to Aquinas, please don't make our masses worse.
My first impression of the mass was that it was densely packed with students, as it contained all of Aquinas and all of Nazareth. Throughout the mass the students where I was standing were packed extremely tightly, and I found it easiest to stand sideways.
After my homeroom finally discovered where we were supposed to sit, I started to look around. I glanced at a group of girls wearing sleeveless (but high-collared), short, sparkly peach dresses, and i got a sinking feeling that they would dance. And dance they did. During the opening hymn, the girls (and one boy who was wearing a blue t-shirt and black pants) started slowly walking through the isle of Nazareth students, their arms in front of them as if they were zombies. once they reached the front, they stood in a formation and moved oddly in something I would not consider a dance in any context. While they moved, a teacher, presumably the Nazareth music teacher, was standing at a microphone, rocking back and forth and bouncing up and down with a guitar, singing. There was also a teacher (whom I'd heard was a Spanish teacher) on drums. The entire thing looked terribly un-Catholic, and I found myself rather glad that the mass was in the gym - I didn't want to have bad associations of the Auditorium and I would never wish that on a church.
After this Opening Dance of Paganism (ODP) the bishop gave a short welcome and expressed his pleasure that everyone in the mass seemed to be enjoying themselves. I would like to take this moment to point out that most of the Aquinas teachers had a look on their face that showed they were both confused and mortified while trying to be charitable. The Aquinas choir, both at this moment and throughout the mass, would have momentary looks of confusion flash across their faces before resuming a blank look. It is my belief, then, that Bishop Clark was merely addressing the Nazareth teachers. He thanked the girls (and boy) for the ODP and began mass, arbitrarily paraphrasing prayers the entire way through.
At some point during the mass, Nazareth teachers directed a horde of little, adorable students to the front and began leading them in odd hand motions that I doubted were actual sign language, judging by the fact that they didn't match up with the words in meter or meaning. I found it less unorthodox than the ODP, but only slightly.
The bishop's homily seemed to be about angels, but, try as I might, I could not listen to what he had to say, so I busied myself mentally writing this post and noticing that some pre-schoolers were wearing suits (they were adorable). I think somewhere the bishop stopped talking about anything remotely relevant and started talking about football, and I became glad that looks couldn't kill, because I would be facing murder trials. At the end of this homily, they blatantly skipped the Nicene creed, despite its being written in full on the program and proceeded to the general intercessions. I mumbled the Nicene creed as fast as I could, pausing for the "Lord, hear our prayer"s.
During the consecration, while the bishop paraphrased the Eucharistic prayer and I tried not to collapse into a heap and die, I had a sudden worry that they would make us do the 'wave'. It may have been due to the bleachers. They did not make us do the wave, but it would not have been out of place in that thing which they called a 'mass'.
During communion, they re-summoned the hand-signing horde for a mercifully brief song, and after this the Aquinas choir sang. They sounded absolutely amazing, and the only problem with this was that the students in the bleachers kept clapping.
The bishop casually dismissed the students after a 'Post Communion Reflection'. For the recessional hymn, they brought back the ODP (which should probably be called the RDP now) and the hand-signing horde for a jumbled festival of painful 'celebration'.
I've decided to forgive Aquinas. Their input into this mass was okay, and the choir didn't do anything weird. I'd almost gotten used to AQ school masses. No, this problem seemed to be rooted in Nazareth - their students were participating in the ODP and the hand signing horde, and the teachers were constantly urging the high school to clap along with anything that happened. I feel very, very sorry for all Nazareth students who probably have to put up with this every school mass. Nazareth students, you have my condolences. Welcome to Aquinas, please don't make our masses worse.
Friday, December 25, 2009
Merry Christmas
I would just like to take this opportunity to wish you all a blessed Christmas. May you all truly feel the feel of Christmas and enjoy it immeasurably.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Something to ponder...
Presently, in my Theology class, we are learning the 7th commandment. In our notes today was the statement, "The rights of all people must come before the rights of one." It was, of course, referring to material objects, but it started me thinking on a broader scale. For example, what if one person needed to die in order to save many people? Should the one person be sacrificed? It seems that a lot of people would choose the 'easy' answer: Kill the one to save the many. My opinion, on the other hand, is that the involved parties should collaborate(if they aren't already) to find a way of saving both the person and the many. There is always a way, and we shouldn't give up hope. In my opinion, this applies to anything, not just that particular circumstance.
Just something to think about...
Response to Comments
When I get around to it, I will always respond to comments in a separate post, simply because I think things are easier that way.
By post;
"Hello"
First of all, thank you, everybody, for the warm welcome to the blogosphere.
Also, in response to the comment by 'In the choir loft' ("Keep posting about what non-orthodox happens you run into at Aquinas and Mother of Sorrows too."): It seems that you misunderstand the purpose of this blog. This blog is not in existence to insult and complain about Aquinas and Our Mother of Sorrows. It exists instead to notice anywhere where orthodoxy is lacking and to point them out and speculate how we can fix the Diocese of Rochester's flaws from the inside. We are not called to run away from unorthodox parishes and schools but to try to change them to become more orthodox.
"Is it the time for drastic action?..."
In response to the comment by 'Sonja' (You should interrupt that woman during the very next class you have and challenge her to explain her false statement regarding intercessory prayer.): As much as I would love to, that is very forward and also very late. If she had mentioned it within the previous three classes from now, I would do just that. However, presently it has been weeks since she said such an atrocious thing, and if I were to argue my point now, she would ask why I hadn't said something sooner, take me for a fool, and make me less than inclined to change her opinion in any way, shape, or form. However, if she brings up the issue again, I will not hesitate to interrupt her spiel and "pummel her with questions," though less loudly and violently than the quote implies.
Also, thank you to the people who wished me a happy Thanksgiving. I do hope that yours was full of family and fun.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Is this the time for drastic action? It looks like it.
A few weeks ago, I stopped merely being disappointed at the education as far as Theology goes at Aquinas and started being furious.
This happened one day at the beginning of class, where the teacher always starts with a prayer. In the middle of the prayer, she decided to explain intercessory prayer. Everything was fine until she said, "Intercessory prayer doesn't actually do anything. It's just to make you feel good." Words cannot describe how furious I was at this statement. I was at a loss for words. I would have started an argument- oh, excuse me, debate- right then and there, but it was in the middle of a prayer. I'm starting to think she planned it like that just so that there wouldn't be any objections, because the students who care enough about that to argue are also the ones who respect prayer.
Ever since that class, I've been wondering what ever made her think that. We are surrounded by evidence that intercessory prayer does in fact work. For that matter, why wouldn't it? That statement almost seems like denying that God is there listening to our prayers. A THEOLOGY TEACHER saying this. It is simply abominable.
It is a shame that good teachers of theology are in such short supply, especially when they must have the credentials that Aquinas requires.
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