Before the “Happy” Church
September 15, 2015
ALEX writes:
Shall I say what the Church was when I was growing up in Chicago in the late ’50s?
Six a.m. mass said in the cold, dark of winter with one little old lady dressed in black occupying the back row.
Ringing the church bells for Mass and allowing the rope to carry you up 15 feet to the ceiling.
Christmas High Mass at midnight with hundreds of parishioners and many altar servers.
The doors to the church open late everyday so you could pray when it came on you.
Dreading confession.
Genuflecting as you walked passed the church doors, even if you were on the sidewalk outside.
Intense three-day wakes for a dead relative, with prayers said over and over.
Priests who were sometimes tough and drank too much, mostly Irish.
Nuns who were tough and could play baseball in a habit.
These are the memories of a child. Memories of a world that was hard but made sense, memories that make today’s world a nightmare which reinvents itself daily.
