The Atomic Church

I usually sit in nearly the same place every time I go to church. I'm single, so I go alone, and when I'm in the midst of a lot of people my body temperature seems to rise, so I like to sit on an end. Apparently, I'm not alone, for I noticed that there was one single person in practically every pew, sitting on the end, just like I wanted to.

It seems to me we could be accused of somnambulism. We pray for new vocations at the end of almost every Mass- when exactly will we start praying for new families? That's a vocation. Indeed, I heard the direction to 'go sell all you have, and give to the poor' again recently, and it struck me- this is exactly what parents do for their children, through time, with added levels of pain and responsibility!

Just the simple idea of Catholics having the right to marry in the Church without reference to a state that increasingly disregards the very definition of marriage- even something as simple as this appears not to occur to anyone. We could do without exposure to the divorce industry.

There is a solid and time-tested tradition of married priests in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, not to mention bishops who have enough authority in their own diocese to respond to local conditions, but unfortunately, we seem stuck in a dream, while we fragment. Often folk blame individualism, but they don't give individuals anything to hold on to. There are still plenty of families in church, and I'm sure some who were there alone were simply there without their families for one reason or another. But I noticed all those individuals lined up in a row, and I was one of them, and I knew it was significant.