Posted on 05/16/2015 11:45:58 AM PDT by bad company
Bishop Thomas made me cry.
I was in the chapel at Antiochian Village. It was during the St. Emmelia Homeschool Conference. The chapel was packed full of families. Families with children. Children who were happy to be there, and children who were not. Children who were quiet and well behaved, and children who were not.
I was standing in the back. In front of me, the nave was like the ocean on a rocky beach: constant motion, constant noise. Sometimes it murmured. Sometimes it growled. Sometimes it crashed and roared. But the noise never stopped. The motion never stopped.
Parents handed little ones off to each other, hoping that a toddler who wouldn’t be still for mommy might be still for daddy. They took the loudest, most boisterous children out into the narthex to try to settle them down. They did everything they could do to keep the atmosphere in the chapel prayerful and worshipful.
And yet the chapel was full of children. And so the noise never stopped. The motion never stopped.
And in Bishop Thomas’s remarks at the end of the service, he told the assembled parents that their children belong in church. He said that God Himself welcomes them, that they belong in the church. How could they learn to love the church, he asked, if they were forbidden from being there? He talked about growing up in a church where children were not permitted to attend the Liturgy.
He talked about how much he hated cry rooms, and how he wished he could demolish all of them.
And then he told the parents assembled there that no one should tell them to take their children out of the church. He said if they go to church, and their child is behaving like a child, and someone tells them to take the child out, they should say, “Bishop Thomas told me I shouldn’t do that.”
And that’s when I cried. I cried, even though I no longer have young children. I cried because, when I had young children, when one of my children struggled with being in church, when I was doing everything I could to keep him in the church, I was told to take him out. If he couldn’t be quiet, he couldn’t be in church. And he couldn’t be quiet.
And so I cried. I cried for my child who, now grown, was sent out of the house of God. I cried for my child’s pain. I cried for my own pain, for the embarrassment and shame I felt when the priest told me to take my child out. I cried for all the little ones who have ever been told they were not good enough to be in church.
I cried because Bishop Thomas said they are welcome in the Church.
They are welcome in the Church.
Let the little children come to me, and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of heaven.
This is a false dichotomy. Children can be trained to behave.
Infants and toddlers chortling and chattering are not a problem. Those screaming at the top pf their lungs can be brought outside for a moment, calmed down, then brought back inside.
I’ve known parents of large families, some of their children with handicaps leading to behavioral problems who worked hard to keep their children under control and in church during mass.
It’s common sense and common courtesy, but it takes an effort on the part of the parents.
So please don’t make it a choice between no children or mayhem. There is a third option: good parenting.
But I do agree about the cry rooms, but for a practical reason. It is nearly impossible to train children how to behave in a room where they are isolated from the Mass and the other children are screaming.
The method we used was to sit up front where the children could see the altar, yet off to the side where I could slip out the side door with an anxious little one. I also knew during which parts of the Mass to scoot out. When there was music and singing, noisy kids are no problem. Depending on the child and her behavior, I would slip out during the homily, then return during the consecration, unless the tyke was particularly active. Then I would hover in the narthex until the singing started again.
It takes effort to train children.
Wonderful, scriptural, and Christian response from Bishop Thomas.
If you chose to disregard the advice of our Bishops, then perhaps it is someone other than than the child who needs to be removed until they learn how to behave.
I choose to disregard their advice on unilateral nuclear disarmament, open borders, socialized medicine, condemnation of free market capitalism, and Global Warming.
Don’t make up such things. It makes you look silly.
That I made it all up?
I wasn’t talking about the Bishop of Rome in any way.
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