View from the Pew

BY jAKE THACKRAY MY THREE SONS are big hairy muscular handsome young men. They all play guitars and piano and very rowdy drums. One of them has grown a sort of Mexican moustache and wears an earring and I think the one smokes the occasional joint. Peter Robert, who is the youngest, has a girl friend, Louise who looks terrific. She is lovely, is Loulou. She turns heads, she is shocking. She is also Catholic.
We often all meet to go to Mass together on Sunday and, fair play, we do look a queer bunch especially baulou and the big hairy one with the moustache and the earring.
We are not the only odd ones. The Armitages go to Mass in trainers and matching sports leisure-wear which often includes Man United shirts. Mr and Mrs Ruddock have not bought any new clothes since 1947 and travel on twin zimmers. Harry Pargiter is stone deaf and says his prayers in a very loud voice that is out of sync with everyone else. Old Reggie Evans has an enormous blue conk that drips.
I am not making these people up, I promise you. The Good Lord made them up. From the holy end, from the altar, from the priest's eye view we must look a pretty funny flock. But we are the faithful. We are the people in the pews. We are the Church.
Last Sunday in a church in West London there was an ordained man in sacerdotal robes who read us the Gospel and then climbed up into the pulpit and bored us silly for 50 minutes.
He rambled and he dithered and he said the first thing that came into his head and then the second and the bloody third and it was all pretty opinionated holy stuff, then had the brass neck to tell
us to go in peace and believe in the word of the Lord.
We believe in the word of the Lord alright, pal, and always shall but we're not necessarily going to go in peace on the say so of a stiff like you just because you've got a pulpit and a biretta.
Nobody heckled him, of course, although he deserved it, because the cloth he wears is to be respected. But there's no law against yawning.
Sermons, sermonisers, . sermonising. Most of our priests are holy men and we listen to what they say to us because we need their holiness and wisdom and their ministration.
That is one reason why we go to church and take our children with us and our Yorkshire terriers and our Louises.
Our own parish priest, Fr Michael, like so many others is so obviously saintly man that words come of him like lucid drops of pure water. We stand and say our Creed afterwards cleaned and fresh.
The first sermon I remember really listening to and thinking about afterwards, I was very small, was in St Anne's cathedral Leeds. It was done by Fr John (later Bishop, later Archbishop, later Cardinal) Carmel Heenan.
He just stood and spoke to us in a quiet voice for about five minutes. He had no body language. Some preachers clasp their hands others wave their fingers, some hide their arms under their chasubles. Heenan just stood still.
"I shall not say much to you that you do not know already. We are sharing the sacrifice of the Mass together and soon we shall be sharing the great sacrament. When I look out at all you faithful people I begin to understand what a Mass and a communion really is. Bless yJu for it and pray for me."