Good news for progressive church ministers everywhere, and my bank balance!
After a series of highly dubious experiments, Young Keith has managed to genetically engineer a particularly specific form of woodworm. Anobium x pinarigida, the "Pitch-Pine Beetle".
The Pitch-Pine Beetle is unique in being a voracious consumer of only one thing - the wood found in church pews. Any vicar wanting to develop a more innovative liturgical life, but having trouble with the Diocese of Gloucester, for example, has only to let this little beastie loose in the nave. Within three weeks, all that will be left is a series of piles of sawdust - but oaken doors, pulpits and rafters are left intact!
Oh yeah. Mail order only, we'll let you have twenty beetles through the post. Your Faculty problems will soon be at an end.
I take it you've patented this discovery, Eileen?
ReplyDeleteYour problems may just be beginning. You may be required to restore that which is destroyed with true and faithful copies of the original. You may also be disciplined/sued for not having exercised due diligence in stewardship. Aren't most pine pews Victorian and therefore easier to get permission to remove than oak Tudor ones?
ReplyDeletePlease ask Young Keith to undertake further research. How about another variety which finds oak to it's liking but discriminates between seating and structural timbers? Now, there's a real challenge!
ReplyDeleteSerious Catholic question here: why do Novus Ordo pews (so constructed of slippery, plastic-looking wood) have the ledges provided *just* too narrow to balance one's missal or Mass card securely thereon? This resulting in at least one thunderous crash per Mass, especially if you are using the combined Daily and Sunday CTS variety, which is a hefty piece of work let me tell you. Unless you perch it sideways and twist your neck likewise to read, or perhaps the assumption is that we are all too busy shouting Hallelujah and dancing in the aisles to bother reading silly old texts.
ReplyDeleteAs an outstandingly serious Catholic, I am well-placed to answer this question. If I may be so bold, I suggest it betrays a complete (and quite possibly neo-Pelagian) misunderstanding of contemporary Catholic liturgical praxis. Of course the shelf isn't there for a missal! The very idea of a missal would restrict the innovative work of the Liturgy Committee. The shelf is there for your gloves (which fit perfectly, and won't make a noise even if they do fall off) so that you can have your hands free for the most important part of the Mass: the handshaking at the Sign of Peace.
ReplyDeleteAnd presumably for you to put down your reading glasses, which you won't need as you'll be looking at the OHP.
DeleteProper Catholics don't need Mass cards and missals are for priests. Make the ledge any wider and you will only encourage Protestants.
ReplyDelete