It is Advent, dear readers, and I urgently feel the obligation to write something really edifying instead of coming up with another story on the theme of “how bad things are today”. In my defense I must say that I went to Mass this morning with the view of being edified myself and was also disappointed to no small extend. For, alas and alack, our parish priest’s stand-in, about whom Seraphic reported, was saying Mass today. We were spared a homily, however, by the local kindergarten taking an active part in the service. Not only by singing a song during the offertory, but also by acting a play instead of the homily. It was about a selfish giant who had a beautiful garden in which children played, but who built a big wall around it with the consequence that it stayed winter inside and neither flower nor bird came there anymore. In the end he sees how selfish he was and lets the children play; and so we all learn not to selfishly build walls around us.

Liturgically, this was a disaster which needs no comment. But is it even in any way justificable “pastorally”? Last week, in conversation with a wise old man and philosopher, the topic of children’s relationship to the holy came up. He said that children generally have a very strong sense of the holy and that it is often adults that destroy it. He told how once he had seen a family going for a walk and a young boy kneeling down in front of a wayside cross. “Will you get up!”, the mother said, “You are making your trousers dirty!”. Now what will the boy have learnt but that clean trousers are more important than reverence towards our Savior.

What will the children have learnt today by having danced around the altar during Mass? My own dim childhood experiences of churches refer mostly to touristical visits with my (non-believing) parents, who nevertheless told me that this was a church, and you did not run around or talk loudly and the like. Apparently when three years old  I insisted in going into the village church of the place where I was on holiday with my grandmother whenever we passed it. Later, at the age of nine years when I started to attend church services, I was fascinated by the difference of this place to the normal world and by the awe it inspired. What put me off in the very formal liturgy of Eastern German Lutheranism was a) that the pastor hardly spoke about God and b) that I did not understand three quarters of what was going on. So if somebody had told me why we sing “Lamb of God”, I would have been less confused and more moved by it. And so on. I remember that we once were allowed to climb up the pulpit one afternoon – I was impressed no-end, and when for confirmation we knelt down before the altar, I was quite overcome with awe.

As a consequence, I do not think we do children a service by letting them run around the altar and making the choir a place like any other. Yes, let them sing a song during Mass (not from before the altar, from the side like any other choir), even if the melody is hardly recognisable. And by all means explain to them all the things the priest does, and why he wears purple right now, and why we pray this or that during Mass. But do not steal from them that sense of the church being a somewhat different world, at which one is at home but which is also pleasantly awe-inspiring.

I only speak of my own experience here (“it is all about me”…), so anyone who has children and disagrees please correct me; but I do not see that the way we try to lead children to God in our mainstream Catholic churches is quite the right one. (I also disagree with the Trid approach to the problem, but that is quite another topic.)