"CHANGES IN THE CHURCH"
Before I retired, I used to teach a seminary class about the transitions future priests would be going through when they left the seminary and entered ministry. Part of the class included planning their First Masses. From what I heard, no wonder so many of them want to escape the chaos of their upbringing that those of us with our upbringing cannot comprehend. Some of them yearn for "the good old days" they never knew. Most of us who grew up in "those days" have no desire to go back there!"
Questions asked by class participants. "Where do I seat my father's new girlfriend in relation to my mother? My parents haven't been to church since my First Communion. What do I do if they come up for communion? My father can't be there since he is in prison. What can I tell people if they ask where he is?"
Obviously, these questions would never have been asked in the past. With all that going on in families today, those seminarians would never have been accepted in the seminary to begin with!
One of the reasons I built "Jack's in the Commons" coffee shop was to get the guys out of their rooms with the possibility they might run into a live human being. Many of them had grown used to texting each other with questions in another room down the hall!
Whenever, I was Vocation Director and they started idealizing "the old days," I would say to them, "OK, hand me your car keys! You would not have been allowed to own your own car back then!" "OK, how are you going to buy gas, snacks and pizza at the Unstable pub? Since you want to go back to "the old days," I will ask the bishop to rescind all monthly stipends. Back then, there were no stipends. Of course, I could have kept going, but if they knew what I knew, they would know they were being selective about what they were willing to go back to!
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One of the "changes in the church" that I personally find distressing is the practice of family members giving "eulogies" after communion. You never knew what to expect and sometimes you did not know how to handle some of what you heard. I can still remember one couple in particular. The husband died first. At his funeral, after communion, his wife approached the pulpit. She started off with words like this: All of you think he was such a wonderful man? Well, let me tell you what a pain he was to live with and then you can let me know whether you still believe that!"
She obviously thought it was a great occasion to "cash in her chips" and "get even." The congregation sat there with their heads down and their mouths open until she was finished. I was tempted to go over and intervene by announcing "let us pray" thereby cutting her off, but she managed to empty her angry feelings about him onto all of us! Satisfied, she sat down! The rest of us looked around in disbelief at what we had just witnessed until the service ended.
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There were lots of things I did as a young priest that I look back on in amazement - things I would never have gotten to do unless there had been "changes in the church." Before those changes, the archdiocese would never have sent a young priest down to the home missions to live by himself.
I remember going up into "the hills" to gather some testimony for an annulment. I did not want to go. In fact I was scare to go. It felt like I was risking my life in a scene from the movie "Deliverance." I felt I was "dropping in unannounced" at the home of the banjo player in that film. I knew enough no to pull out some forms to fill out and sign. I just asked some of the questions as indirectly as possible. They were cautious, but more helpful than I had expected. I was happy when it was over and I am certain they were happy to get rid of that "Catlick" guy who was here "snoopin' around" and "askin' questions."
For a while, I served on a Social Service committee to suggest ways to help a young woman who had at least one child by her own father, who had been raised in a cave, who could not read or write and who had never seen things like a traffic light or a TV.
I taught a class at Somerset Community College called "Modern Social Problems." We covered contemporary issues like abortion, capitol punishment, child abuse and poverty. As a Catholic priest teaching those topics, I was told that I could not mention them as "moral issues," because it was a public college. I could only mention the effects they had on society. Being in the 'Bible Belt," I remember correcting papers the students wrote that began with phrases like, "I just don't think it's right....." and "The Bible says......" I felt the pressure of being "monitored" by other teachers who didn't trust me as a Catholic to begin with!
I was invited my the owner of the local radio station in Monticello, Kentucky, to offer an ecumenical Sunday radio program. I called it "Morning Has Broken." I simply played recorded music from various Christian traditions and commented positively on them, only to be thrown off the air by the complaints of some of the local ministers who had to pay for their denominational airtime.
One year, I remember being invited to a public high school as a guest speaker in a senior English class. They were reading the classic piece of English literature called Canterbury Tales. Since there were no Catholic students in that public high school and may have never been. They invited me in to explain what a priest, monk and nun is that were mentioned in Canterbury Tales. I did that for three years. A side affect of my visits was the fact that the students got to pick a minister to preach the sermon at their Graduation Prayer Service, the day before their graduations. The graduates picked me three years in a row! This caused the School Board to intervene. They students the fourth year, "You can pick anyone, but Brother Knott!"
One of the Sisters of Saint Joseph from Connecticut who volunteered down in Whitley City, in the other county I served, taught mathematics at the local Job Corps school. Some of the youth there were from "up east." A few were black and Catholic. The Sister who taught there invited them to church on Sundays. I did not know it at the time, but we were the only church in the county to welcome black people to church. The news got out and racism raised it's ugly head. I heard indirectly through a student at Somerset Community College from that county that the local Ku-Klux-Klan was taking about confronting us. That worried me a lot. I had to travel for an hour back to the other county where I lived by some dark winding roads. I never knew when the Klan would block the road and "deal" with me. It never happened, but I was scared to death to travel that road at night all by myself.
In my time in Wayne County. Kentucky, I volunteered to be a "chaplain" on Sundays at the Lake Cumberland Youth Development Center - a juvenal delinquent facility way out in the countryside. I conducted informal "ecumenical services," mostly teaching them to sing along with recorded hymns and then commenting on them. I seemed to work and I got the feeling that some of the youth actually looked forward to those services. I am convinced that teaching them to sing hymns, rather than a lot of preaching, is what made it work as well as it did!
I still remember listening to one of the young "innocent looking" boys as he told me about beating up his grandmother, tying her to a bed, robbing her and then killing her!" I desperately tried to hide my shock and talk to him in a calm collected voice. It took me months to "get over" that experience. I learned to have great respect for that old saying, "You can't judge a book by its cover!"
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As I wrote about these experiences, I realized clearly that I would never ever have had these experiences unless there had been "changes in the church" when I was a young priest!
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