Fr. Longenecker over at Standing On My Head has an amusing, and useful, entry!
Lovers of the TLM might want to read this and pay careful attention during High Masses in the future.
A New Solution for the Sign of Peace
Ladies, are you sometimes disappointed with your hubby’s response to those weepy chick flicks you like so much? Does he yawn and scratch just when the girl is about to get her man? Even worse, has he dropped off to sleep? Is he snoring?
Does he prefer Monday night football to a nice gossip about children and who is going out with whom? Does he do manly things like hunt little baby deer and repair the lawnmower in the living room and drink beer with his buddies? Is he unconcerned about the really important things like the color of new drapes, selecting wallpaper and shopping at the mall?
Maybe you need a new product that has just come out in Europe. It’s a handy hormone spray that promises to make your man more sensitive and cuddly. You can read about it here.
This could be the solution to the world’s wars. Instead of spraying the enemy with machine gun bullets just roar over with a crop duster and douse them with the new hormone spray that makes men go all cuddly and sentimental and lovey dovey.
The army chaplains could have a special role in this. Once both sides are doused with the hormone cuddly spray the padre could jump up from the foxhole and cry out, "Let us share with one another the sign of peace!" Both armies would down their weapons and rush out into the field to hug one another.
For that matter, it could be just the solution for those uptight traddy congregations…you know the folks who look like part of the Eucharistic fast is to suck a lemon for an hour. The handy hormone spray could be produced in an incense form and when the thurifer comes down the aisle swinging the smoke, everyone would inhale the feel good hormone and suddenly all the rad trads would be swaying and singing, "We are one in the Spirit We are one in the Lord Bind us Together Lord Bind us Together He will raise us up on eagles wings here I am Lord it is I Lord…"
An interesting application of oxytocin, according to that story in the Daily Telegraph.
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you know the folks who look like part of the Eucharistic fast is to suck a lemon for an hour
Is he implying it’s not?
Is it possible to posthumously test Bugnini’s body for exceedingly high levels of this hormone?
That may work, of course it would probably require one of us uptight, lemon sucking traddies to explain what a thurible is and how to light the coal…
An hour?! Good Grief! I suck on my lemon from midnight the night before.
On a practical level, I think one would need to at least suck on the lemon for three hours in order to be sufficiently bitter for Mass — but I do admit that there are those whose natural dispositions may require either more or less.
If, however, I know that I am going to have to assist at a N.O. for a wedding or the like, I have to start the lemon-sucking months in advance; it takes quite a high bitterness level going in to escape with Catholic sensibilities in tact. I have even tried basting myself in lemon juice for the few hours leading up to the event. It’s really impossible to overdo it.
…It’s a handy hormone spray that promises to make your man more sensitive and cuddly. …
Heck, according to Evo Morales, we could eat chicken, instead, to explore our feminine side! “The chicken we eat is loaded with female hormones. So, when men eat it, they tend to deviate from their manhood,…”
http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2010/04/evo_morales_says_eating_chicke.php
Of course, nobody accuses him of eating chicken … even after seeing him wearing all his bling (see photo in above url).
–ghp
What an offensive concept.
The implication that Father Longenecker is making is that to combat masculinity, all men need to do behave like they were at a Novus Ordo Mass. Thanks, but no thanks.
Saturday Night Live had a spoof ad for a product similar to this. It was called “Ballzoff“.
I apologize for any offense I may have given to readers with more delicate sensibilities.
Re: Fr. Longenecker’s post —
It’s a joke. Fun-nee. Laugh, people.
Re: Empathy and oxytocin —
Obviously, both men and women can be very empathetic, and both men and women produce oxytocin in their bodies. Women have various ways to get it that men don’t (ie, men don’t breastfeed), but that’s all part of vive la difference.
It is probably true that women are more likely to get a bit addicted to artificial substitutes and attempts to get that warm and fuzzy bonding feeling on demand. But guys do it too.
Warm and fuzzy prayer is part of traditional devotional practices, in fact to an extent unequaled in the contemporary stuff. The Rosary and the Way of the Cross is all about empathy, on the most visceral level. So are May crownings. So is magnificent sacred music, in part. So is mysticism, at least in the consolations bit.
But obviously, you can overdo it and forget fasting and sacrifice and suffering are also part of Christian life and being close to Jesus Christ. So in both the old days and the new, you get people trying too hard and getting goopy, or forcing some weird distortion of love on people in an attempt to demand consolations and warm fuzzies. And it’s not just women, either. Human nature is the same for everyone, in this.
But you can also overdo it the other way, trying to be Super Austere, under the impression that being mean is holy sternness, and that being a big elitist jerk or a nose-in-the-air know-it-all is holiness itself. We can drive away souls with the drive to show off our own greatness. I know I’ve done it.
So be careful when pointing fingers about who is “goopier than thou”…. :)
Now I have a bunch of really awful music stuck in my head and it won’t leave.
He did however leave out “Taste and See.”
“Maybe you need a new product that has just come out in Europe. It’s a handy hormone spray that promises to make your man more sensitive and cuddly.”
According to my observations, given the preponderance of “metro” quasi-males running around these days, this stuff might be in the drinking water in many places already. (Although rumor has it it’s been shipped to the White House in bottles only since late January 2009.)
I’m already sucking my lemon for Sunday-I’ll be trapped like a rat a modernist 1st Communion when I could be serving the EF.
But seriously, it’s easy to take this joke too seriously. Fr. Longenecker speaks in jest-although the hormone attack might actually work in war.
I just realized something…sucking a lemon actually breaks the fast…so much for my lemon.
This is so funny!
But I still get sad sometimes when people make fun of the songs I like. I know a lot of them are silly and innapropriate for Mass but I’m still attached to them. They were some of my first inspirations and made me an enthusiastic Christian and made me like going to Mass when I was young. And now I’m not sure what to make of the fact that my faith was strengthened by something silly.
Don’t feel bad, Elly. I liked Donovan and Herman’s Hermits when I was a teenager. What could be worse than that?
One of our priests who taught a two-part class on the meaning of the Mass the last two Sundays made a good point: a lot of Catholics still think of the Mass in terms of their teenage years when they went through Confirmation (and haven’t paid much attention since). In fact, he asked anybody who had had a class on the meaning of the Mass since they were confirmed . . . and nobody’s hand went up.
What was good for us when we were young is not necessarily good once we get older. 1st Corinthians 13:11.
When I go to Masses said in the OF without kneeling (except for a few here and there) and with hand holding during the Pater Noster, I make a special effort to seem cheerful during the Sign of Peace.
It takes a considerable amount of effort to not swallow the happy pill I keep pouched in my cheek earlier in the liturgy…
All I can say is that incense, except for some varieties I was able to bring home from Europe, make me go into an asthmatic attack…sorry…we still use it…I could do with some kind of “whatever” in the mix. It might help me from becoming ready to pass out or become a bit more euphoric…mystical?…silly me, its not about ME, its the Mass…cough!
Ermm.. concerning the ‘cuddle’ spray thing… this is just scary!!!
Cuddly girlie-men??! OMG!! Please! NO!! We want real men!! It’s bad enough as it is already!
lol
I went to Mass tonite at The Sacred Heart Cathedral of New Zealand here in Wellington. At the beginning of the sermon we were told to turn to the person and people sitting around us and say “hi”. That resulted in everyone feeling very awkward but it got worse. Father then told us to turn to the person next to us and tell that person about our own personal acheivments in life. Everyone cringed and thought it was odd and it resulted in lots of awkward laugher and chat. Father was at the lectern thinking we were enjoying ourselves. Where do Priest dream up this kind of crap?
Hello NZ,
If I’m not mistaken, the pastor at Sacred Heart is a…1967 man. If that’s who the celebrant was…
Where do they dream up this stuff? Part of the therapeutic culture, it seems. And possibly a reaction to evangelical and pentecostal churches, which are very “welcoming” – right in the service. A lot of hugging and handshaking goes on – even in the most conservative baptist churches.
We could stand to be more welcoming. But there’s a place for that. It’s the narthex, not the nave.
You know, most men in combat say that their motivation to fight is to protect their buddies. They also fight for the people they love far away, of course, and for their beliefs and country.
Oxytocin makes you feel protective.
I bet soldiers thinking warm fuzzy thoughts are more warlike, not less.
Creepy. But it’s chemical castration, not a lobotomy. There is a difference.