Bit of a frustrating day yesterday for me with regard to Our Lady’s feast. Parish had two Masses yesterday, 11:00 am for our school children and 6:00 pm at the sister parish. Both were somewhat poorly attended by the public, at least compared to a regular weekend Mass. That in and of itself is not surprising, but what was more frustrating was the fact that a) we forgot in scheduling Mass times that most practices/extracurriculars go until 6ish at the local public school, and b) even if we had considered that, the three-hour dance team practice ran from 5:30-8:30 p.m. To that end, I only saw two of my 30+ Faith Formation students at the evening Mass (I’m the DRE).
On top of that, I reached out to a mom on behalf of her daughter who is having somewhat major surgery today on her vocal cords (please pray for her). Father said he’d be willing to anoint her beforehand, and I, forgetting to send the email until yesterday, said that he could do it at their parish before or after the evening Mass. Mom responded and essentially said (albeit nicely and gratefully), “thanks, but no, this is her last dance practice for a while.”
When are we going to stop sacrificing our children on the altar of the Almighty Sportsball? Your kid is going under the knife tomorrow for a surgery that will probably be just fine, but you never know, but heck with that, we have to go to dance practice. Also, the Church asks us to go to Mass 5-6 days other than Sunday out of the entire year, and parishes accommodate as best we can, but heaven forbid we miss one practice. Christians in Nigeria and China and wherever else risk their lives, but we can’t be bothered to miss a practice.
And, yes, I understand that coaches, rightfully so, make students sit games for missing practices. (I was an all-conference football player in high school—I get it.) However, looking at some of the numbers on some of these teams (dance in particular), they wouldn’t be able to have practice if all the Catholic kids (aka their parents) stood up and said “sorry, we’re going to Mass.” Moreover, it would be just great optically for the schools if some of our kids, the stars on the team, were benched the next game for going to church—I think there’s still enough brain cells in this country to be mad over something like that. One shortened/cancelled practice is not going to sink your entire team’s season.
I know I can’t save all these kids—that’s Christ’s job—nor can I control their decisions. But, man, I really continue to wonder what the course of action is here, besides prayer, as it seems like pure memery to just sit around and pretend everything is fine with regard to Sunday and holy days. Ironically, I think the course of action I’ll suggest going forward is that students ask their parents to skip school to attend the Mass during the day—not great, but I did this for our patronal feast a few weeks ago and it yielded more results. Go figure.
