I know the link isn’t working as of this writing, but when it does, you need to see this post on “liturgical dancing” by Fr. Rob Johansen. He mentions that we should put all liturgical innovations to the “15 Year Old Boy Test” because most such people have very well-tuned B.S. detectors. Given that I have a cousin who will be 15 in December, maybe I’ll get to test this out. However, I’m really using this as an excuse to tell the story of my B.S. detector.
I was baptized as a 15-year-old boy. To be honest, in many ways I was pretty stupid. I actually enjoyed those “religion” classes that taught little about the Catholic faith because I felt that, if it was sponsored by the parish, it must be something we need to do (I told you I was stupid.). I came of my own free will. This persisted through Confirmation classes. The next year, we got our weekly update on the Church teachings, but the teachings were largely mocked rather than taught as true. This did bother me.
However, during those high school days, there wasn’t much B.S. to detect, just stuff that was without content. When I went to college at the University of Mississippi (aka Ole Miss), I saw things that ought to have sent me on a hunt to find the bulls. I felt that something was wrong, but I suppressed my detector when it went off. Here are some things that happened:
- Freshman year: We had a penance service where we wrote down our sins and showed the paper to the priest. I was very uncomfortable. The next semester, we basically had to confess while sitting in a meeting room, and really they only wanted to hear one sin.
- Holy Thursday: I went to a Holy Thursday Mass where the readings were read “dramatically.” Instead of the washing of feet, we had the washing of hands (which I never thought anything about until later).
- The practice of greeting one another before Mass was instituted.
- Parish town hall meeting (first year of pharmacy school): We had a parish survey that almost no one answered. I didn’t return it because none of the questions pertained to me. I somehow got the idea to stand up and say that I had to search the Internet and other sources to really find out what the Church taught. Everyone laughed at me. Then, we had a prayer service where some women came up to the front of the Church and mimed to a John Michael Talbot song. The song wasn’t bad, but the miming was kind of stupid.
By this time, I think I was already known as a crank due to some other things that I talked about. Somehow, I was miraculously elected to the parish pastoral concil after the survey. The tenure consisted mostly of discussions on racism that never bothered to identify any specific problems in our area. A friend of mine identified it as a filibuster.
All this time, I suppressed my B.S. detector at least somewhat, but it was there. Others knew it more than I did. I finally learned that my intuitions were not too far from the truth after all. Now, though, I fear that I have gone to the other extreme. I am still regarded in some circles as a crank. However, I am glad that my B.S. detector hasn’t completely died. I know many in the Church who have none at all.