It's That Time of Year ... When Part-Time Church Goers Bug the Hell out of Me

For those of you reading who are Catholic, you know that Advent starts this week. It's the four-week period before Christmas that the church uses to prepare for the birth of Christ.

As the Church prepares, so does its parishioners, who decide that after neglecting the Church for most of the year that they'll grace the house of God with their presence, lest they burn in eternal damnation. So, they start trickling in this week, and then by Christmas day, the Church, which usually welcomes around 300 people per mass, is busting at the seams with more than double that.

This puts a terrible strain on RoadRage. All year I work to keep the Sabbath, as the Good Book tells me to do. While I'm there I usually sit in my personal favorite spot, I have room to move around, and I'm not forced to commiserate with my fellow Christians in tight quarters.

But, Christmas reminds these part-time Christians that they haven't paid their respects to their maker for sometime, and that this is the perfect time to do it -- kind of a birthday present for Jesus.

That's all fine and good, and I'm sure the Church enjoys getting the extra revenue in their coffers to help them stay in business, but for people like me, it's a pain in the ass.

First off, trying to find parking becomes hell on earth. Then, during mass, the seat that I was in for the previous 48 weeks, suddenly is gone, or the pew that I am in is so packed with you heathens, that I don't even want to sit there -- so I'm forced to sit farther back.

Then, as the mass goes on, I'm forced to hold hands with people during the Our Father, when in weeks past, there was so much space between me and the next person that it didn't seem like I was blowing the person off closest to me when I didn't participate.

This year, as a little holiday gift to RoadRage, why don't you part-timers treat mass like a health club membership -- send in your check, and just stay away. The Church will be happy to get the money, you'll be happy to not have to give up a whole hour of your time each Sunday and, most importantly, RoadRage will be happy not to have to look at you all the next four weeks.

But, I'm guessing I'll have to see you through Christmas and again at Easter.

Merry Christmas, losers!

RoadRage

Catholic Church has Forgotten the Golden Rule

My dad works at a Catholic church as a custodian, and this week has had to go to work early to attend sensitivity training courses. A good portion of the class deals with educating the adults who work at the school about appropriate and inappropriate ways to interact with the students at the school.

It's a great idea, and the Catholic church should have incorporated it decades ago. There's only one problem -- the priests at the school are exempt from attending.

That's right. The Catholic church, which has had to pay millions to the families of kids who were previously molested by priests, says that the one group that has been convicted the most for inappropriate interactions with students is exempt from the courses.

It's like the federal government requiring all of their employees to attend a session on the perils of drinking and driving, except for those who have been charged with a DUI. It's ludicrous.

I am a Catholic myself, and things like this are getting pretty tiring. Priests charged with crimes are sent to other churches to get them out of harm's (the law's) way, half-hearted apologies are issued to families who don't feel it's right to sue the church; and then there are things like this happening.

Meanwhile, the Catholic church sits there and wonders why attendance and more importantly, donations, are dwindling. As far as attendance, parishioners are tired of hearing the endless stories about sexual predatory priests, and the reason why donations are down is because parishioners know that much of the money they give will be used to fund the livelihood of those priests who have sexually assaulted children, or to pay for the lawsuits being filed.

I still attend church on a regular basis with my family, because I feel the lessons of the Church are still important, and that the priests are flawed, not the Church. Those in the Church need to start following the Golden Rule, and do unto others as they would have done on to them -- and that means that priests should start attending these courses now.

RoadRage