Why I Do Not Go To Mass Regularly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                       Despite the headline, there is a Catholic still deep inside me, and, yes, I do think we are the church, but what happened last Saturday shows why I don't go as often as I should.

                        This weekend was a special one for me.  February 11 was the 165th Anniversary Of The Apparition Of Our Lady Of Lourdes, when the Virgin Mary first appeared to Bernadette Soubirous.  You all know me on that one, girls. But the next day, February 12, was the fifth anniversary of my father's passing.  So, I decided to go to mass on Saturday, to honor Mary, Bernadette, and my father.

                          The church was St. Anselm's on 82nd Street and Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn.  I have been there before.  I have found the church beautiful; when they decorate, they go all out, darlings!  The congregation, some of whose members I know, are very accepting of both David and me.

                           The Saturday service was actually not bad.  My problem was with the priest's sermon.  It was all the standard stuff about sin, hell, damnation; not a thing affirming, and, worse, not one reference to Mary or Bernadette, or what this date means to us in spiritual history.

                               If my intentions had not been so important to me, I would have gotten up and walked out.  Now, David, who, I have to admit, is more up on world matters than I, said that the church is transitioning, losing congregants and priests.  It is very short staffed, so they have had to reach out for Africans to come here and say the masses.  And he says those Africans tend to be archly conservative.

                               I have no problem with an Afro American priest.  Girls, over half a century ago, in Highland Park, NJ, Saint Paul's Church had one--Reverend Robert J. Butler.  He was fine.

                                  But this kind of hate mongering, reprimanding dogma is not what I came to mass for.  It made me upset then, and it upsets me now, as I am writing this.  And when I was in Dignity, even I gave sermons from time to time, and they were more affirming than this.

                                    As for life, I will continue in my own way.  Now this experience has ruined St. Anselm's for me.  So, this coming Saturday, I am going back to Saint Andrews--where I used to go, and which, as a small church, Covid kept me from attending.  I will go masked.  Before I move to Bay Ridge, some in Dignity told me St. Andrews was the most gay-friendly church in the area.  So, I will give it a second chance, and let you know.

                                      Sister Camille doesn't preach hateful rhetoric.  Why are some Catholics still insistent on this approach?  Don't they realize the number it does on some people?  I don't get the idea Jesus would have taken this approach.  Instead of fostering congregants, it drives them away.

                                       May God forgive me, a lapsed Catholic.  But I cannot tolerate this kind of anti-spirituality anymore.