Weirdness

I was talking to a friend the other day about Mother's Day, and we agreed that people who say that "once you are a mom, all the pain of infertility goes away" are just wrong. It isn't that you aren't happy, but you still remember it all. So, I did have a lovely Mother's Day today--Mr. X gave me tulips and a card yesterday (I saved the card till today), and I got a card in the mail from my parents. Lots of people wished me a happy Mother's Day at church, which was really sweet, and I stood up for the blessing at the end. I did remember vividly how I felt last year, and I prayed for all my friends (blogging friend and other friends) who are waiting.

The weirdest thing happened today, though. After singing for mass at my own parish, we went across town to another parish for a family friend's first Communion. And we heard the worst homily I've heard in years. Seriously. It was so bad, Mr. X finally got up and left for a few minutes. The priest was talking about the importance of community, and he talked about how we need to have dialogue in order to grow in our faith. He talked about how we are the church. He said that to blindly accept something the church (meaning the Magisterium) teaches even if you don't really believe it lacks all integrity, but to say "what I believe must be right and the church must be wrong" lacks all humility. Then he gestured to the white wall behind him and asked if he told us that the Magisterium had just infallibly stated that the wall is red whether we would believe it. What??? He said that, if the Magisterium tells us the wall is red, but everything in our experience of life tells us the wall is white, and that's what our community believes, then, since our community is the church, the wall is really white. Huh??? (This is the point when Mr. X couldn't take it any more.)

He never gave a concrete example, just talked once about "proposition A" versus "proposition B" and then spent the rest of the time on the whole white-wall-is-red thing. It was a total straw man fallacy--I mean, how often is the church going to give us a teaching on faith and morals that is demonstrably, objectively false? Though Mr. X pointed out that it's particularly insidious to be giving this kind of homily at a first Communion, where the children's senses tell them that the Eucharist is bread and wine, but the church tells them it's the body and blood of Christ! I'm not up on these things, but is it actually heresy to tell the congregation that we can reject an infallible teaching of the church if we come to a conclusion as a group, based on our experience, that it's wrong?

Just had to get that off my chest. For the most part, it's been a really nice weekend!