This Saturday Night Live skit is irreverent but funny nonetheless because of the liturgical stereotypes that is made into satire. But more importantly, the creative minds behind it and the laughter at it indicates why it is that perhaps 88% of Catholics no longer attend Mass today. This is important because it indicates how far we as a Church have come when our Holy Mass was considered sacred because it was reverent and serious to how it is portrayed today and perhaps by creative former Catholic minds at Saturday Night Live who think the Catholic Mass is a joke!
Do 88% of Catholics who no longer attend Mass in the Ordinary Form think the way the creative minds at Saturday Night Live think about the Ordinary Form of the Mass?
7 comments:
They nailed it.
I think I was at that Mass...
The kicker jus that, because of the realities of today's Church, it is really no longer possible to do a parody of the Mass. The Mass itself is a parody. Just like in our culture, it is no longer possible to write a comedy of manners….ain't no manners to satirize. No one would understand it.
Eh. I must be getting old. I didn't think SNL skit was very funny.
It's obvious they haven't been to a Mass in a REALLY long time, because what should have also been in there:
-People talking to each other incessantly, both when entering and leaving and just before Mass begins, the inside of the church sounding like a town hall meeting. And holding conversations in a whisper all during Mass.
-Kids under the age of 12 acting like they're at at Chuck E. Cheese; running up and down the aisles; trying to see if they can get their leg over the pew back in front of them; brother's playing "got you last" by punching each other in the arm; little kids with sippy cups and Cheerios falling all over the pews; during the Mass kids leaving the pews walking up and down the aisles in droves like a migration of gazelles; and of course the mandatory 2 year old's bloodcurdling scream during the Consecration as if Satan has just given him a pitchfork in the derriere.
-Parents staring straight ahead as if they don't see any misbehavior. Except when they see a look or sounds of disapproval from a fellow pew sitter. Then they go into defensive mama bear mode. (There's nothing the matter with their hearing or eyesight. They see and hear the "tsk, tsk" all right.) And their love of citing the "Jesus said, "let the little children come to me," to justify their kids being there and acting like maniacs.
-The old guy who looks like he just fell out of bed, threw on a coat and who kneels with his butt against the pew during the whole Mass.
-The family that is dressed to the nines, and doesn't know the responses or when to sit, kneel or stand.
-The teenage girl who flips her hair every 15 seconds.
-The priest who has to give a speech of "welcome" at the beginning of Mass. "Good morning everybody!" and the "farewell" "Have a great day everybody."
-The free for all at the Handshake of Peace, that's reminds me of how people act at a pancake breakfast.
-The middle aged and old ladies in their finest polyester pants suits who hobble up to the altar and surround the priest to be Eucharistic Ministers during the Invitation to Communion.
-Altar servers who look like waifs who bounce around the altar when moving and slouch in their chair when not, resting their elbow on the arm of the chair and their head on their hand. They look like kids in the waiting room of a dentist's office.
I must say, the skit was spot on with their portrayal of the readers. And the musicians.
Ah, such is the Sacred Liturgy of Our Lord in the modern age.
Okay, I sound like a real curmudgeon, and don't mean to. But all these behaviors I mention show even the people who DO come to Mass have lost their sense of sacredness and expectations of reverence before God. It takes a certain amount of self discipline to focus and realize where you are, what you are doing there, and how you should be behaving. I'm sorry to say it begins with the clergy, and this seems to me to be the natural outcome of a loosey goosey liturgical style.
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Bee, I get the impression that you're describing not the annual Mass attended by Christmas-Easter only Catholics, but the every-Sunday experience of many ordinary faithful Catholics.
But regarding the "teenage girl who flips her hair every 15 seconds", you might have wondered also why she always seems to be one of the servettes up there at the altar.
Actually, the first female altar server I ever saw was at a wedding Mass in a midwestern state. She started the Mass with her hair tied neatly up, then during the Mass she undid it and shook it out to reveal long hair hanging beneath her shoulders. Then later tied it up again, thus finishing the Mass looking like she did when she finished. Even as a refugee from the avant garde Georgia parish Joseph Johnson vaguely alluded to in a comment last night, I was shocked. (Now, it might not seem all that unusual.)
That skit took place in an Episcopal Church, you can see the American flag next to the Episcopal flag when looking at the choir loft.
It's also funny how TV and movies never seem to get the details of the liturgy or clerical dress right---even in a comedy skit (in this skit, for example, purple antependium but red/gold stole--concluding acclamation sung from the pulpit, etc.) In the movie "For Greater Glory" (set in the 1920's Mexican Cristeros War), Peter O'Toole (in what was probably his final role) wore a tab clerical shirt with a period correct black Roman chasuble (tab shirts didn't come out until about 1960 and most priests back then would have worn an amice to cover their collars when vested anyway).
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