{"id":2694,"date":"2015-09-08T07:05:39","date_gmt":"2015-09-08T13:05:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=2694"},"modified":"2015-09-08T07:27:18","modified_gmt":"2015-09-08T13:27:18","slug":"one-easy-trick-for-a-better-sunday-mass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2015\/09\/one-easy-trick-for-a-better-sunday-mass.html","title":{"rendered":"“One Easy Trick!” for a better Sunday mass"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"Church<\/a>
Church of St. Luke and the Epiphany, Philadelphia (public domain via Wikipedia)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Fun fact: \u00a0Catholicism and me go way back. \u00a0True, I didn\u2019t make an RCIA profession of faith until graduate school, but Dad was Catholic (Mom Lutheran), so they were married in a Catholic church (St. Louis\u2019s Old Cathedral, in 1966, in that in-between time, when the Tridentine mass had been translated into English, but not revised into the Novus Ordo), my siblings and I were baptized in a Catholic church (the now-closed St. Bede\u2019s in Southfield), and, growing up, we alternated between Catholic and Lutheran services on Sunday, with greater weight given to Lutheran services and Catholic mass coming into play when we had something going on that necessitated convenience.<\/p>\n

So I am certainly used to the Catholic practice of high-tailing it out of church the instant the closing song starts, or maybe after the priest walks past. \u00a0But that doesn\u2019t mean I like it.<\/p>\n

And, to be sure, the Catholic church we attended was particularly bad, and Catholics in general have improved \u2014 at my home church, for instance, at my husband\u2019s behest, some years ago, the prior pastor began to linger at the altar so that he\u2019d only start the outbound procession towards the end of the closing song. \u00a0But it drives me batty when we\u2019re at a church where the pews have emptied out before the first verse is over, and, truth be told, there is still a fair degree to which I don\u2019t feel myself to be \u201cone of them\u201d when it comes to my fellow Catholics, and this is a part of why.<\/p>\n

But this is the answer: \u00a0a postlude<\/em>. \u00a0A little bit of organ or piano or other instrumental music after<\/em> the closing song.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s it.<\/p>\n

It cues the congregation that \u201cchurch isn\u2019t over\u201d until the postlude starts. \u00a0Protestant churches do this as a general practice. \u00a0The Catholic church we attended in Grand Haven<\/a> had a postlude. \u00a0And the church by my parent\u2019s house that we attended this past weekend, not the one I attended growing up but a different one roughly the same distance in the opposite direction, had a postlude.<\/p>\n

And \u00a0everyone waited until the postlude began (in this case just a bit of organ music) to begin before leaving.<\/p>\n

Now, if this was just the \u201cbest vacation church\u201d (as I called the Grand Haven parish) I\u2019d say this isn\u2019t proof that the postlude is the \u201ceasy trick\u201d because the priest was energetic and the congregation was enthusiastic in general. \u00a0But this weekend\u2019s church? \u00a0They\u2019d had to reinvent themselves a couple years ago when two parishes were obliged to merge, and the congregation that Sunday at 9:30 was relatively old, with only a few younger families.<\/p>\n

So there you go: \u00a0spread the word. \u00a0Add a postlude.<\/p>\n

(Oh, and I\u2019ve been trying to add pictures for visual interest. \u00a0But \u201cCatholics high-tailing it out of mass after the first notes of the closing song\u201d as a search term doesn\u2019t yield any good results.)<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fun fact: \u00a0Catholicism and me go way back. \u00a0True, I didn\u2019t make an RCIA profession of faith until graduate school, but Dad was Catholic (Mom Lutheran), so they were married in a Catholic church (St. Louis\u2019s Old Cathedral, in 1966, in that in-between time, when the Tridentine mass had been translated into English, but not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":2735,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n"One Easy Trick!" for a better Sunday mass<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Fun fact: \u00a0Catholicism and me go way back. \u00a0True, I didn't make an RCIA profession of faith until graduate school, but Dad was Catholic (Mom Lutheran), so\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" 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