Thursday, February 04, 2010

Mass at St. Anthony's.

Rocky works on Saturday and Sunday so we usually go to the Saturday vigil Mass. Well it snowed so much that we couldn't make it and had to go to the 5:30 Mass at St. Anthony's. When we arrived Rocky noticed that Bishop Loverde's assistant was there.

As it turned out our wee bishop was the main celebrant. Fr. Grinell, the pastor was very subdued which was quite nice and dear Fr. Nicholas, who is Haitian gave the homily.

The choir was dreadful. Over amped music, a cantor wailing into the mike, a guitarist who is NOT the second coming of Jimi Hendrix and tuneless tunes. One thing I found interesting was that nobody was singing alogn with the choir or the psalms. Old, young, black, white, Asian, Indian, Philipino, African... nobody was singing. We all just silently endured the noise.

I was very annoyed by the jolly old man who stood at the ambo before Mass to tell us what the readings were and what they meant (essentially he gave us a mini homily.) He then instructed us to all stand and greet our neighbors. After that business was done the clergy processed in. Despite having a bishop and four priests we still had a small army of eucharistic ministers. Were they really, really needed?

After Mass the rush to get out was like a cattle stampede. People only slowed down to greet the bishop and Fr. Nicholas and getting out of the church parking lot was like Death Race 2000.