Wednesday, May 27, 2020

Even fake 'water pistol baptisms' are disedifying

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A very un-socially-distanced baptism, back in the days of innocence.
The priest annoints the candidate.
My latest on LifeSite.

 Photographs have been proliferating of clerics of some kind aiming water pistols at babies in order to baptize them. Some of these seem to be fake news, inasmuch as they did the baptisms in the ordinary way but then staged the photo afterward. This makes a difference, but I’m not sure how much. Should clerics be clowning around in church after baptizing a baby? Again, there’s the photo of a priest wearing vestments using a water pistol to bless adults with holy water. If that was staged, it almost makes it worse.
Sometimes it is said that the era of the “clown mass” and other extreme examples of disrespect for the liturgy is over, but it would appear that its spirit lives on, among Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Those who published these photographs, and the people in them, clearly think this is all terribly funny, and that that is fine.
Before anyone suggests that the use of water pistols is a serious response to the coronavirus, let me be the thousandth person to point out this is not so. At the “asperges” before Mass people have been blessed at a distance for centuries, with a liturgical implement called an aspergillum; as for baptisms, it doesn’t need to be the priest doing it anyway. 
Read the whole thing.

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1 comment:

  1. In general, I think I know, but what causes this seeming abject terror of treating anything seriously or with decorum? It infects a vast majority of our people it seems. Holy things are for the holy. Even priests it seems, spend far too much time trying to be chummy and approachable, than dealing with the most serious topic of eternal life.

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