Have you ever gone to mass and wanted to be somewhere else? Have you ever gone and loved every second of it? I have. And on both occasions I sat in two entirely different locations.

When I was an undergraduate, I rarely attended mass. I was spiritually adrift and couldn’t bear the thought of listening to some guy pontificate about a mustard seed for a half hour. On the rare occasion that I did go to church, I wound up sitting somewhere near the back.

But now that I attend mass on a weekly basis, I make sure to find a spot on the left hand side about halfway up the nave. I like to sit directly in front of the celebrant when he is giving his homily from the pulpit and want to be close enough to the altar so that I am not easily distracted by the other churchgoers.

Yet whenever I attend mass with a friend or a sibling who hasn’t been there in a while, we always end up sitting in the back. After this happened to me on several occasions, I wondered if their reluctance to sit in the front had anything to do with their relationship with God. In short, I think it did. Allow me to explain.

When I was in high school, I took the bus to school. Everyone who has ever taken the bus to school knows that the back of the bus is where the cool kids sit. The back is also where you have a better chance at getting away with something you probably shouldn’t be doing. Sitting in the front, on the other hand, means that you are much closer to the bus driver and that if you do something wrong there is a better chance that you are going to get caught.

I think this is similar to what my friends were going through. They thought that if they sat too close to the front they would feel awkward and uncomfortable. But if they sat in the back, they could just blend in with the rest of the congregation. I can’t say that I blame them for feeling that way, a similar situation happened to me while in college, and I did the exact same thing they did.

When I was a freshman, the last thing I wanted to do was to take a morning class. But for some reason I scheduled an 8am humanities course that met three days a week. I was never really interested in the Venus of Willendorf or the Mesolithic era, but the professor was on cloud nine. So when I strolled into class fashionably late with a coffee in hand, I did my best to find a seat in the back of the room. I figured I could blend in with the other students and if need be nod off for a quick nap undetected.

As destiny would have it, I am now a part-time professor. And one of the things I have come to realize is that students really can’t hide from you, nor can they take a nap unnoticed. So when I engage my students in a discussion, I’ll call on those who sit in the back row first. If they don’t cooperate or are oblivious to what’s going on, I’ll let those students in the front row whose hands went up the very second I finished asking my question take over.

Given this anecdotal evidence, I began to wonder if there is any relationship between where people sat on the school bus as adolescents, where they sat in class during college as young adults, and where they sit at mass as adults.

I think there is and I think it has to do with how we relate to authority.

I’ll let you decide if where we sit at mass is a direct result of our relationship with God (the highest authority) but next time you attend mass, make an effort to think about where you are sitting and try to understand why you are sitting there. Is it out of habit? Is it because you like sitting under a certain stained-glass window? Is it because you want to be next to a friend? Or is it because you haven’t been to mass in over a month and feel bad for skipping out the past couple weeks? Is it because you haven’t been to confession in a while and don’t feel comfortable sitting in the front? Think about these questions and see what you come up with. I don’t think there’s a wrong answer, but if you’re like most Catholics and sit in the back of church, scooch up a couple rows next time. Moving closer to God is always a good thing.

Stephen Kokx is an adjunct professor of political science and featured columnist at RenewAmerica.com. Follow him on twitter @StephenKokx

We have a tremendous opportunity this week, as we enter into the glorious gift of the arrival of the Christ child, to truly prepare our hearts and cleanse our souls and celebrate the Greatest Miracle with a full surrender to its call. I keep hearing from readers and friends and strangers about long Reconciliation lines. Priests overjoyed by the added work!

It’s necessary for the sake of our souls. And it isn’t bad prep for an election year, either, at a time when so many self-identified Catholics are leading the way in making some radical changes in our culture—redefining marriage and liberty, reworking the concept of rights in violation of our consciences.

More here.

Hotels and bars made out of ice have been common for a while — now a church is the latest project to get the cold treatment. In the Bavarian Forest, one congregation wants to build a place of worship out of 1,400 cubic meters of snow, just as their ancestors did 100 years ago.

… Stiefvater wants the snow church to serve as a reminder of an extraordinary event in local history. At the beginning of the 20th century, a trip to Sunday mass for people living in the remote mountain village of Mitterfirmiansreut meant an arduous 90-minute walk to the neighboring town of Mauth. After their pleas for a church of their own fell on deaf ears, the villagers decided to mount an unusual protest during the Christmas season of 1911: They built their own church out of snow. [Der Spiegel]

The visuals are impressive:

The original 1911 Snow Church:

The article mentions the original church was a place for “Mass” but the writer out of ignorance may not know that protestants do not refer to their services as Masses.

Can anyone help me find out if this is actual going to be a Catholic Church? I tend to doubt that.

UPDATE – it appears this snow church could well be Catholic. Plus, there’s a snow church in Japan, too!

Word for Word [Edge] from Life Teen on Vimeo.

Found at Msgr. Charles Pope’s blog for the Archdiocese of DC (ph/t: The Anchoress).

There will be resistance to the new translation in places, especially because some liberal catholics are attempting to foment this hesitancy to accept the new translation as an excuse to rally catholics in the pew against their bishops (Bryan Cones at U.S. Catholic, for example). How petty.

My simple take: this new translation is better than the one we have now. Not perfect, but it’s moving in the right direction. We should welcome it with open arms, and to that end, sharing this video (especially with the youth group at your parish) may be a good way to jump start the conversation.

You can read the new translation here on the US Bishops website, along with lots of other helpful materials.

She is also a first generation American — her family fled pending death in Lebanon and then the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Last weekend she wrote about her gratitude that she can worship in peace:

As I was walking to Church this morning, I couldn’t help but think how lucky I am.  I was not followed or harassed by the police on my way; I did not have to pay off anyone to let me worship my God; throughout Mass, I did not worry that my small place of prayer may be a target of a suicide bomber; and I live in a country where Sunday exists within the weekend, an observed day of rest.

…

In 1914, my great-grandfather, Alfred Gemayel, sought refuge in Egypt after he and his brother, Pierre, were sentenced to death in Lebanon for opposing the oppressive Ottoman Empire.  In Egypt he was able to raise a family and they lived in relative affluence and peace. When the Muslim Brotherhood became prominent in Egypt and threatened the Christians during the Arab-Israeli War, my grandparents, Elie and Jacqueline removed their family from danger by seeking refuge in New York, where my great-aunt Mary took them in.  They left everything behind them so that their children and grandchildren could continue the practice of their faith without fear.

I don’t know if I would have had the courage to petition a king for my colony’s religious freedom as Lord Baltimore did. I do not know if I would have had the courage to sign the Declaration of Independence as our founding fathers have done. I do not know whether I would have been courageous enough to fight against an unbeatable army, nor have had the perseverance or energy to not lose hope for seven years as the American patriots did. I don’t know if I could have left my country of birth, my home, my family, my friends, my job, my language, to secure freedom for my posterity as Grandpa and Grandma did. I don’t know if I could have sacrificed space within my home, attention from my children, and money from my salary to ensure that others could enjoy my freedoms as Aunt Mary did.  But the least I can do to show my gratitude, is drag my hung-over butt out of bed every Sunday morning and thank God for the blessings I have and do not deserve. So that’s why I go to church – because so many people have sacrificed everything they had so that I can.

May we all approach out Lord in gratitude today and everyday. And keep our fellow Christians in much more precarious situations throughout the world in our prayers.

The common victim for our secular eucharist

Thanksgiving: the most Catholic of the national holidays that don’t coincide with an actual Catholic holiday. The reason is simple: everyone wants to be Catholic, whether they realize it or not.

Here we are celebrating the day when our nation “gives thanks” for all the stuff we’re thankful for. We know we’re giving thanks for the cooperation between the Pilgrims and the Indians to bring about a good harvest and a mutual understanding of some sort back in the day, but we’re also giving thanks that this nation, under God, dedicated on the proposition that alllll men are created equal, provides the protections and the opportunities of liberty and freedom from tyranny.

All discussions about the ever expanding government encroaching upon those liberties aside (I’ll sheathe that sword for now) just think about what this day entails…

A tradition: Celebrating the end of the harvest, even though so few of us harvest any longer, and sharing a common meal with family and friends.

Processions: Thanksgiving Day parades. Macy’s being the iconic one.

A ritual: Prayer, listing things we’re thankful for, setting aside old grievances, preparing the meal, carving the turkey, Detroit Lions football.

A shared meal with a common victim: Think about it: the most basic item menu for Thanksgiving is that turkey. We all eat the meat of a turkey that was slaughtered for our common feast. And we share this meal with our closest friends, recognizing the importance of this shared meal, this shared moment in our familial and national life.

Local customs and variations: Can’t list them all, but I’ve heard stories about different families with their ethnic customizations of the Thanksgiving feast, while still retaining that turkey.

And we call it “Thanksgiving.” But consider: the Greek for “To be grateful, feel thankful,” is εὐχαριστέω, which transliterates to “eucharisteo,” from which we get the word, “eucharist.”

What the turkey wishes it could be.

The Mass, and the eucharist we receive from it, are the supreme act of thanksgiving: God offering Himself to Himself on our behalf, and we participating out of humble gratitude, bringing our contribution of service.

Yes: everyone, every nation, every people, every yearning for the Divine, wants what we have in our Catholic faith, whether they realize it or not: the desire to give thanks in the most fitting way possible; the recognition that thankfulness is a necessary and hallowed disposition. As a nation we set aside a day to give thanks for the harvest and the goods of nature and our labors, and it is good and proper that we do so. It is very eucharistic.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Thank God for His providence in this land and in so many other places, that no matter where one lives, no matter the government, no matter the times, His peace can be found, can be effective, can be transformative, provided one maintains a disposition of thankfulness for His uncountable and unimaginable gifts.

Let me suggest one specific, concrete way that Catholicism in America can begin to mount a campaign of resistance to the flattening-out of our common life by the ambient culture: Restore a distinctive sense of time to Catholic life, and do that by reforming the reform of the liturgical calendar.”

Many Catholics are already passionate about reclaiming the liturgy, and I believe this worthy goal is best achieved within the context of also reclaiming liturgical time throughout the year. Weigel writes:

As things now stand, the Church has bent its sense of liturgical time to the imperial demands of that modern cultural artifact, the weekend. The Holy See has permitted local churches to lower the bar of liturgical expectation by transferring solemnities like Epiphany and Corpus Christi to Sundays, and the bishops of the United States have gone a step farther by lifting the obligation to attend Mass on certain holy days if those days fall on a Saturday or a Monday: thus, just a few weeks ago, the Solemnity of All Saints dropped off a lot of Catholic radar screens because it fell on a Monday, and was thus not a holy day of obligation.

These are very bad ideas, it seems to me. If the time we spend worshipping God through Christ in the power of the Spirit is, in truth, an experience of enriched time (because it anticipates the time-beyond-time,) then we should not look for ways to cut temporal corners by shifting to Sunday long-established feasts whose celebration during the week once gave a unique rhythm to Catholic life. So let’s put Epiphany back where it belongs, on January 6, and let’s get the Solemnity of the Body and Body of Christ, Corpus Christi, back where it belongs, which is during the week.

I completely agree with this. It is not too much to require Catholics to occasionally go to Mass two days in a row. Weigel says that instead of removing holy days of obligation from the calendar, we should be adding them back: Epiphany, Corpus Christi (which promotes Eucharistic devotion and belief), the Annunciation (“which could become an annual celebration of the inalienable right to life from conception until natural death”). Two more holy days could be established:

And if the late John Paul II was right in lifting up Our Lady of Guadalupe as a special Marian gift to the Church in the Americas, then perhaps we should consider making December 12 a holy day of obligation, focused on the New Evangelization. I would also be tempted to add to an expanded list of obligatory holy days the October 19 feast of the North American Martyrs, as a reminder of just how challenging the proclamation and defense of the faith can be.

Weigel is also counseling us to be sensible about reintroducing the obligation to attend Mass on these traditional holy days:

As for the practical problems of distance involved in some rural areas, these can be easily addressed by the local bishop dispensing from holy days of obligation when he sees fit. Nonetheless, the Church as a whole ought to make a countercultural statement by the reforming the way it orders the rhythms of its life.

I would add, to respond to a question that is sure to arise, that Catholics are already permitted to miss Mass if it is simply impractical for them to do so. Holy days of obligation during the week would therefore operate according to the same principles that already govern the Sunday obligation to attend Mass.

I have a personal story to contribute. This November 1st (18 days ago) the solemnity of All Saints, which is ordinarily a holy day of obligation, fell on a Monday. According to ecclesiastical decree in the US, whenever this feast falls on a Monday (or Saturday) Catholics are no longer obliged to attend Mass.

Well, I still went to Mass. I’m blessed to work within easy walking distance of a daily Noon Mass and so I attended during my lunch hour. It was packed, far more than a typical weekday Mass. Many other local Catholics had obviously decided they still wanted to attend Mass on this day, even though they probably do not make a habit of attending Mass daily. It was wonderful and uplifting to witness so many other Catholics forming their priorities this way. I departed and returned to my job thankful for the unique privilege Catholics enjoy in being able to worship and receive our Lord in the Eucharist.

Restoring liturgical time, and beginning to do so by reclaiming our traditional holy days of obligation, and even adding a few more, is a way to encourage more Catholics to share in this grace-filled experience.

I think there is everything good about such a proposal.

Looks like AmP readers are strong supporters of the new translation of the Roman Missal into English, based on the results of last week’s poll.

A majority (53%) are strong supporters, 37% are open to it, 5% want to learn more and about 4% are against it.

Learn more about the new translation here on the USCCB website and by reading Louie Verrecchio’s series of articles on the CNA website explaining it in greater detail.

Old-time Pittsburghers remember when a church in the city offered services in the early morning hours for employees who worked odd hours. One church is now bringing that tradition back with a 2:30 a.m. service.

… The early-morning Mass tradition began in 1905 and was frequented by employees from seven daily newspapers. Some of the employees had just finished their shifts while others would attend Mass and then go deliver newspapers. (Beauer County Times)

The reason, however, for bringing back this early, early morning Mass is different today:

The Rev. Carmen D’Amico says he’s adding a weekly Mass on Sundays just after the bars close. The church is located next to the new Consol Energy Center. D’Amico is hoping to attract those out for a late Saturday night and officials have been handing out fliers at local colleges to publicize the new service.

I don’t think this is a good idea. Do we really expect 20-somethings who have just finished closing down a bar to be prepared to participate at Mass worthily? Do we want them passing out in the pews instead of getting themselves home safely? Shouldn’t we rather encourage them to hit the sack earlier and (if they have to) attend a later Mass on Sunday afternoon? Or attend a Saturday Vigil Mass the day before? It’s not like people who want to go out on Saturday night don’t already have plenty of ways to attend Mass while, ahem, sober. Offering a Mass at 2:30AM encourages them to think this sort of weekend habit is appropriate.

I’m all for ministering to people where they are at and making it easy for Catholics to fulfill their Sunday obligation, but this seems like a needless concession to young adult culture’s obsession with spending weekend nights in college (and beyond) carousing.

I think we should challenge young people to make Mass, not closing down the bar, their Sunday morning priority.