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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Win Smith who wrote (19571)	7/28/2001 1:48:38 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

it's a little odd that the local Catholic representatives made a big thing about a (presumably mostly secular) high school commencement exercise but didn't have a more general position on school prayer Win, I understand your question. There's more to the story of my graduation. I've told it before on SI, someplace or other. Bear in mind that this is just my recollection from 40 years ago, as perceived by a girl who had just turned 17 and her parents, who were simple people with a grammar school education. With those caveats... The pastor of my church was a monseigneur, a mammoth person in both height and width, a deep voice, and a very commanding presence, although the church was very small. He was also secretary to the Bishop and went off to Rome every now and then, so he was obviously quite well connected. There was another Catholic church in town, which was larger. The other parish included Irish and Italians and mine was for Slovaks. Ethnicity was a big deal at that time. My father was a construction laborer when my church built it's school. I remember my father complaining that the priest always went to the construction site when the workers were playing poker at lunch and that he cheated but no one said anything because he was the priest. I also understood that he had a drinking problem. My high school traditionally had one each Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish speaker at the baccalauriate service for high school graduation through some kind of rotation. No, it wasn't a particularly religious event. My understanding was that, the year of my graduation, it was my priest's turn to represent the Catholics but that he wasn't going to get top billing at the service despite his high rank in his church so he boycotted it in a huff and sought revenge. I remember that the Catholic kids in my class met jointly, which was really unusual because there was no love lost between the parishes, and we were told that the graduation service had just been designated a non-Catholic religious service, which, of course, was verboten, and that anyone who attended would be excommunicated. That's all I remember about it. I attended. I don't recall much about how many others, if any, did. I didn't stick around to see if I had been excommunicated or not. I went off to college and never looked back. I haven't even been to a high school reunion let alone to a mass ever since. My assessment of the situation was that the priest was a pompous ass who had some power and used it badly. But that's just my judgment at the time based on what I knew, which probably wasn't the whole story. Tis incident took place seven or eight years after they quit praying in the public schools. My priest was the same person throughout, although I don't remember when his promotion to monseigneur and his position as secretary to the bishop occurred. That may have been after the school prayer change or about the same time. Karen