Perish the thought
Posted on 08/06/2017 3:49:20 PM PDT by ebb tide
Marriage and baptism are not bourgeois rites of passage. We need to make them easier
There are plenty of things for which I thank God: good friends, the health of my children, the glorious tenth anniversary of Summorum Pontificum, the fact that the Detroit Tigers will not be trading their star pitcher Justin Verlander. Another is the fact that my wife and I were never made to attend a Catholic marriage preparation course.
If we had been members of a parish where the mind-numbingly dull half-year of expensive weekend retreats had been required, we would have gone through with it, obviously. Offering up suffering is a gift of the Holy Ghost denied even to the glorious angels in heaven.
I say this because it is only as a kind of purgative trial justly demanded of the pious faithful by Mother Church in the exercise of her disciplinary infallibility that it is possible to make sense of the six-month-long exercise in mandatory tedium known in the US as “Pre-Cana” (the mawkish reference to Our Lord’s first miracle is worthy of Hallmark). The spiritually edifying qualities of these rectory chats on subjects such as “Conflict Resolution Skills” and “Finances” are best summed up by secular interpolators at a website called BridalGuide.com:
You may be wondering, what exactly is Pre-Cana? Don’t worry … you won’t be hearing lectures about going to church every week and going to Confession. It’s more like pre-marital counselling, to help prepare you for marriage.
In our case, marriage counselling meant two 20-minute conversations with our pastor. This is as it should be. When it comes to marriage, Shakespeare’s Friar Lawrence is a model shepherd of souls. A good student of St Paul, he knows what marriage is for, which is why his first priority is the avoidance of sin, not the maintenance of community standards. Indeed, I have always found modern-day adaptations of the play implausible, because today’s Romeo and Juliet would have had to spend a considerable portion of their young lives taking quizzes on “Spirituality/Faith” and “Careers” in order to get the go-ahead from their diocese.
The way the post-conciliar Church cordons off the sacraments is a perfect example of how she has become insufferably middle-class. Working-class people and bohemian misfits like me are not community-minded. We loathe the notion of therapy, especially if it involves making small talk with people we don’t know about things that are very dear to our hearts. People with real jobs often work on Saturdays; they haven’t got time or money for couples’ weekend retreats to horse farms with Fr Dialogue.
Meanwhile, middle-class people enjoy being treated like (rather stupid) children. They like play-time and share-time and snack-time and loathe the idea of privacy; they enjoy shaking hands and holding hands, which is why their favourite parts of the new Mass are the Sign of Peace and the standing-up Paternoster. They take positive delight in these things for the same mysterious reasons that they enjoy working for those companies that require semi-annual “team-building exercises” – scavenger hunts and other pre-teen activities between mandatory presentations on LGBTQ sensitivity.
The only thing worse than current Church practice regarding marriage is the preposterous bureaucracy that prevents children from being baptised in a timely fashion. Requiring Catholic parents to take courses on the subject is ludicrous and a deathly waste of time. All that the average layman need know can be gleaned from the old Baltimore Catechism. “Baptism is a Sacrament which cleanses us from original sin, makes us Christians, children of God, and heirs of heaven.” It would be very difficult to stretch that into a four-weekend course.
A friend of mine in Texas has been waiting six months to have his daughter baptised. First he was required to take a class, even though he and his wife are on their third child. Then after wasting time over the course of several successive weekends, he was told that the girl’s prospective godparents also required instruction, despite they themselves being the parents of several Catholic children. Now he finds himself waiting for a ‘‘slot’’; apparently in some dioceses, it is expected that only a predetermined number of children – around four per weekend at most, unless it is done in Spanish; apparently this makes a difference to Our Lord – can be cleansed of original sin and initiated into the Christian faith.
This is nonsense. My older daughter was baptised when she was a week old. All I had to do to secure for Thisbe Perpetua the remission of sin and an heirdom in the Kingdom of Heaven was to call Fr H down at the rectory to let him know that my wife had had the baby (he was expecting my call: good priests know things like which of their parishioners are pregnant): “How does Saturday at eleven sound?”
That, and one piece of paper from her godfather’s parish attesting to his being a communicant, were the only requirements. He supplied the salt and the chrism and a Latin pamphlet with the Exorcízo te and all the other forgotten glories of the Roman Rite; we brought the baby. Afterwards we drank champagne.
To treat matrimony and baptism as if they were bourgeois rites of passage – like finishing secondary school or moving into one’s first apartment – is not only ugly. It is a denial of the efficacy of the sacraments.
...but a friend of mine who is a solid and doctrinally-sound Catholic -- and a catechist in his solid parish--- holds the view that it's so hard to get Catholics to go to Adult Ed classes, that the only time you can "catch" them is by pressing them pretty firmly into Sacrament Prep when they or their children are up for Matrimony or First Confession/Communion or whatever. Your one,-and-only chance for Remedial Catechesis.
Thoughts?
In my family, if you waited too long to have the Baptism ( according grandma\aunts), they’d take the baby into the bathroom and do a quickie baptism.
Perish the thought
From an online parish record (different location, dated 1815): "Antonius...statim ac de ventre matris egressus susceptaque baptismae sacra in coelum evolavit" = "Anthony...immediately coming forth from his mother's womb and having received the sacred things of baptism flew up to heaven."
(Thanks to FamilySearch.org for making these records available online)
My children got the full-blown Latin baptism.
thanks for sharing that.
It always bugged me about the parishes.
Christ is the solution. Why do they wait so long to bring us to Him ?
Years ago my future-wife and I were given the option to attend a one-time, full day, pre-cana class on a Saturday, which we opted for.
It was taught by a married lay couple. They talked about balancing a check book for the first half hour. Then, all they talked about was natural birth control; about how they used to practice artificial birth control but had now gone natural and how to do it.
After two hours of this crap, I politely told them, at a break, that my fiance and I were not interested in birth control and I asked if they would they be talking about anything else. They said, “No”. I then asked if we could then be excused. They said they would not give us pre-cana credit if we left.
We then sat through 7-1/2 more hours of natural birth control movies and lectures.
No priest or deacon ever addressed the class.
As far as baptismal classes, I can understand a one-time class for newlywed first-time parents maybe OK (but this is what should have already been taught in an orthodox pre-cana class).
But when subsequent classes are required for the baptism of subsequent children, I consider it child abuse.
The abuse being the Church is delaying the essential baptism required for the salvation of those newborns, even after seeing the couple in Church, with their older children, at Mass every Sunday.
To sum, it up: I think their both jokes.
Sorry for the rant.
Are the classes pro bono?
If not, I’ve got a pretty good idea why they’re “required”.
Good for you!
So did mine.
I read this a couple of times, and I honestly have no idea what he is complaining about. Sacraments are too bourgeois and middle class?? What the heck is he saying?
Perish the thought
It’s not the sacraments, it’s all the BS that goes with it. And I agree with him.
Thank you, stylin. I have years of Baltimore Catechism under my belt. You are correct. Anyone can baptize anyone-—with tap water or anything with water. Iced tea, Diet Coke, or a Gin & Tonic will do just fine.
So bag the classes and do a home Baptism.
Although home baptisms are valid, one will have problems when it comes time for First Communion, Confirmation and Marriage.
Baltimore Catechism...yikes...learned by rote. retained very little. The filtered version of the bible.
If one commits a sin knowingly taking a living sacrament while in the state of mortal sin,
Can I administer baptism, a sacrament of the dead, while I’m in the state of mortal sin ?
No, that’s OK. That’s not a rant, that’s just an honest reaction to what sounds like a very irksome imposition on the part of the parish.
Plus, I hadn’t thought of Baptism classes happening after the baby is born, thus delaying the baptism by weeks or months. I’d thought maybe the classes were offered for expectant couples.
If somebody had insisted on delaying my newborn son’s baptism in this way, I’m pretty sure I would
have baptized him myself.
Not if you a do a home First Communion, Confirmation, and Marriage as well !!
How are you going to do a First Communion/Confirmation without a priest/bishop?
Are you a Catholic?
How annoying and uncaring that is, seriously.
Baptism is the one (at least out of the two-and-a-half Sacraments for us Lutherans) Sacrament that you DON’T need instruction for. I mean, seriously, if baptismal faith is a gift from God and not an intellectual work, why?
If it was an adult convert, I’d probably want to educate someone before baptism unless they were insistent on getting it RIGHT NOW, but for a baby? There’s no reason to wait unless they’re deathly allergic to water or something!
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