"The Lord be with you" - "And... fart... also with... shit, you smell that?... you."

The following is taken from a commentary that was written in response to an article which described a kind of "Come as you are and do what you want"-liturgy (including four-letter-words) on a webpage which shall remain unnamed because I'd feel kinda guilty to make the life of these dillweeds even more miserable by exposing them to the public. But if you ever wanted to know what is wrong in the Church today, you can stop asking. Just read.

"Worship has to be more than routine liturgy. The goal isn't to complete a cheklist of todos -- but to be authentic people in relationship and worship with God.

I have a friend who asks his congregation not to edit their behavior in the church versus outside the church. If you cuss, drink, and cheat on your wife outside the walls of the church -- might as well do it inside the church walls. What do you think -- God can only see you in the church? God is everywhere... and wants us to be faithful everywhere too.

Worship should be human.. and unpredictable."

There is this sentence echoing somewhere in the back of my head: "Clericalism is destroying the Church, by driving a wedge between the allegedly superior priestly class and the people and thus seperating the well meaning fluffy lay kittens and the dogmatic blockheads of the hierarchy" (or something tear-wrenching like that, I am sure most of you heard similar stuff).

Well, dear laypersons, I can assure you that there always will be a handfull of Catholic Priests that will indeed feel superior to a bunch of farting, belching and swearing mass-visitors.

My favorite part is of course the "God wants us to be faithful everywhere". Depending on how you define "faithful" this does indeed create a nice opening for behaving like a pig in Church instead of behaving like a Catholic striving for sainthood in everyday life: "Of course I know this is your wife. But God wants it. And now shut up, I cant do it when somebody yells at me. Besides, the homily is up."

And no: The page I copied the comment from is not a satire on lay-participation gone haywire.