Counter Cultural at Church, too

Our poor parish priest. In one way, we look a bit like the kind of family he wants (and there are precious few of them at our parish): we go to Mass every week, sometimes one of us is at weekday Mass, our teenagers are happy to come to Mass, we go to confession regularly, turn up at Benediction, BUT...

We’re just the sort of family he doesn’t want: I kneel to receive communion, and the others all genuflect first; Ant covers her head in Church; we only receive under one kind, and never from extraordinary ministers; we won’t let our girls serve Mass, and set conditions around Charlie serving that means he’s not welcome either (eg not being required to do anything that would have been unacceptable before the liturgical changes of the 1960s, such as touching the sacred vessels); Dom and Charlie never go to the ‘children’s liturgy’, but sit through the Mass with us; we’re in the Life group rather than the Justice and Peace group; I’m organising a plainchant choir not a parish choir to sing banal songs unworthy of Church let alone an hour’s practice every week...

My contention is that there is a connection between our traditional approach to our Faith and the fact our kids are still keen on it when they get to be teenagers. They respond to the demands and challenges of a robust faith far better than to the ‘warm and cuddly all-inclusive, don’t believe anything that might upset anyone’ version...