It’s a fine, sunny day, after a not too hectic week, and so, basking in an incipient ebullience, you receive with equanimity your wife’s suggestion that you accompany her to Mass tomorrow morning. She promises “something interesting” will happen; you’re sure to be surprised.
The mood of ebullience starts to attenuate perceptibly. You are well aware of what “something interesting” usually means: They’ve added a ukulele to the folk Mass again. But no, your wife persists, the surprise concerns a new mission of the Church, like the old days when visiting missionary priests would regale the parish with stories of roughing it pro Deo et ecclesia in some unpronounceable corner of the Lord’s vineyard. That doesn’t sound half bad, you muse inwardly. You cast your mental gaze once again over that wonderful Sunday when 60 Minutes—60 Minutes, for God’s sake —pinned the tail on the clerical donkeys running the World Council of Churches. Nothing so fine has happened in your church, but John Paul still seems to have things under control. So why not go? She’s already got you contributing on a regular basis again anyway. You say you will.
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