Late Slips

Hugh McNichol at Pewsitter.com recently went on the assault with people who show up late for Mass.
His argument is, essentially, that tardiness is a scandal because it suggests that you value something very little if you show up late for it.

I'm a bit ambivalent about his approach. I hate it when I end up scrambling in late for Mass. This happens...er...happened frequently for me at the noon Mass on campus (I always seem...that is...seemed to just underestimate how long it takes to walk across the endless quads).
And, Father forgive me, I'm not always the first person at Church on Sunday (unless, of course, I'm supposed to be setting up or something). As with the recursive quads, Isabel and I sometimes underestimate how long it will take to drive to one another's respective abodes early on a Sunday morning.

Mass is extremely important to me, and I suppose that makes it all the more scandalous when I stumble in red-faced and sweaty in the middle of a procession. It's all part of my absent-minded professor character flaws (not to say that I'm not working on it).
Granted, I must have valued something more than getting to Mass on time...maybe I valued an extra fifteen minutes of sleep...maybe I valued an extra fifteen minutes of virtual warfare on the Internet the night before which led to valuing that extra fifteen minutes of sleep. I have no one to blame but myself for that problem, and it's not an excuse. But I wonder if the same is necessarily true for everyone else.
Might it be that some of my fellow latecomers undervalue the Mass because the Mass to them seems undervalued by everyone already there?
McNichol makes the unlikely comparison to a Madonna concert, suggesting that people wouldn't arrive late to an event like that. In certain regards, however, concert organizers make sure that you know Madonna is worth coming early to see. That is, a Madonna concert is going to transport willing audience members into a realm outside of their daily experiences...whereas contemporary liturgy often does quite the opposite. Obviously, I'm not suggesting we start singing Madonna covers at Mass, or that we have lectors simulate kinky bondage acts in the sanctuary. Mass should not be a rock concert. While the Mass certainly offers people something truly transcendent, most "contemporary" Masses don't really leave that impression. The informality of liturgies and "worship spaces" (as opposed to the formality that used to be associated with going to Church) have trained people to be more casual.
People don't value Mass because a) they haven't been taught to appreciate what the Mass is on an intellectual level, and b) liturgists often strip the Mass of its rich signifiers that once pointed to something transcendent.

Rather than scolding naughty children for being rudely late, we should work on building a liturgy that people don't want to miss.

Comments

[Hugh J.McNichol]

Peter, I absolutely agree with the premise that we need to work on better church buildings and better quality to our sacred liturgies. Please send your comments to my blogsite..I want to publish them for all readers. Thank you for getting the message:)
Hugh

[PeterTerp]

Hugh,
Thanks for the comment and the initial column! I'll send the response your way as soon as I figure out where to send it!