Thanks be to God! This hand holding business is outside the norm and quite out of hand (pun). One wonders why there wasn’t a “duh” moment the first time someone grabbed your hand. The laity had no business starting it in the first place and why the priests have stood there watching it increase over the past ten years without correction I’m sure I don’t know. It is a jarring imposition on those who are in thoughtful prayer and adhering to the norm to have to be banged on the arm with some rube standing next to you, maybe stretching four feet down the pew to reach you, with their hand out. Mass has become an occasion for sin as those of us irritated by it are irritated and distracted from our proper recollection, and the goofs participating in the hand jive may well be too ignorant of Ruberics to even be attending Mass without a Ruberics refresher course to inform them of the difference between propriety and the bizarre.
God forbid the behavior, the dress, the lack of respect in postures our young have to witness. Our foolishness will be judged.
The Sunday before last, there was a woman in the frong pew raising her arms completely straight up in the air. It was quite distracting, and I am sure her exposed cleavage was distracting to the priest. When she turned around while standing and reached for something on the pew, I was stunned to see how low cut her dress was. Good grief. She did not look familiar, so I hope she was just passing through.