( First Published in St. Monica's Tablet, June, 1997, and Reprinted with Kind Permission )
If you didn’t see me at Mass the other Sunday, it’s because I wasn’t there. Some of you already know about my little adventure, including Father, but in case you haven’t heard yet, read on.
My cousin Mike Connelly, who was over from Kilkenny (Ireland) for his granddaughter’s wedding, was supposed to be getting to my place at nine thirty so we could head to ten Mass. But things didn’t go as planned, and instead I had to go down to Police Headquarters at Hastings and Main to pick him up. They called me just around the time I was starting to wonder if he’d been run over by a cement truck. I knew I should have gone and get him in the car in the first place, but he said he wanted to take the bus from downtown (where his daughter has her new condo in Yaletown), and he can be a stubborn old goat.
Well, it should have been easy enough, but it seems things started going wrong for poor Mike when the bus broke down and everyone had to get off and wait for the next. Well, this was on Hastings Street, which is probably the saddest place on Earth on a Sunday morning, rubbish everywhere, drug addicts lying on the paths like peeled banana skins, and women probably not half as old as they look out walking already before nine a.m. There’s not a lot of that in Kilkenny unless it’s changed since I was there. I guess Mike got an eyeful.
Next thing you know, this pimple-face punk is asking him if he knows any banks open Sunday morning because he needs to get twenty dollars out of his bank account which is in England to pay for something called the Airport Reprovement Fee or they won’t let him on the plane to fly back home. A wolf never met a sheep more innocent than Mike, and before you know it off they’re going to cash one of Mike’s traveller’s cheques at one of those 24-hour cheque-cashing places to give this joker. The joker’s telling him he’s going to mail him the money when he gets home. I asked Mike if he had a brain in his head, but he said it was the Christian thing to do even if he was English.
After they come out of the cheque-cashing place this young smoothie thanks him and makes off double quick you can bet, and Mike finds out he’s not too sure how to get back to the bus stop. He’s got a map, but Mike’s eyes are so bad now from diabetes he could have been staring at a blank sheet of paper.
I guess he wandered around that neighbourhood awhile (if you can call that part of town a neighbourhood), and when he seen the cheque-cashing place again he figured he was going in circles. So he went back in to ask directions. Then he come out again.
Well, at nine o’clock on a Sunday morning, and not a lot of people about, some dithery old fellow coming out of a cheque-cashing place by himself, it’s not too hard to guess what comes next. The Police said that establishment is particularly watched by the drug addicts. I suppose he’s lucky he only got mugged. I told him afterwards, I guess that’ll teach you a lesson to go out on your own in this City. It’s not like taking a stroll down a country lane back home, I said. There’s lots of people lying in wait to fleece you, and they fleeced you twice in one morning! Well, he said, it was the Christian thing to do, even if the youngster was lying. I said, See that bum lying in that doorway? (This is when we were walking back to the car and they were lying everywhere.) You’d be a millionaire like him with that attitude in this City!
Of course we were too late for St. Monica’s, but there was a church we come to just before the car called St. James, and this is the main point of my story, so as to warn any of you who might happen to be down that end of town (God forbid!). Mike thought we could just go in, but I said, Hold it. You know, you can’t just go into any church over here and hope to hear Mass, it’s not like Kilkenny. There’s lots of loony cults going by the name of Christian. Baptists, Jehovahs, you name it! But I noticed this church had “Mass Times” posted beside the door, and there was one just starting up, so I said, Let’s go in. Now this St. James was a beautiful old church, white outside like a wedding cake, and beautiful gleaming wood inside, and I was thinking as we knelt, if only those people out there in skid row knew about the precious gift they were missing out on in here, they wouldn’t need their drugs or booze.
Well, the thing that tipped me off was the title on the spine of a hymn book when we got back to the pew after communion. As soon as I saw the word Ancligan, I spat out what I had in my mouth, and told Mike to do the same, and we stuck them inside the hymn book.
It turns out from talking to Father that some of these High Ancligan folks put on what they call a High Mass, just like Catholics before we got rid of that business during the renewal, only I guess it’s counterfeit because they haven’t got real priests. They sure had me fooled with all the incense they had floating about. They go the whole nine yards but it’s a case of having all the trimmings but no turkey, because I asked Father if it still counted towards my Sunday obligation and he didn’t think it did. I guess I earned a few more months in Purgatory for that.
They invited us back for coffee and some of their Christian fellowship after, and I figured we should go, so I could ask their so-called priest what the big idea was trying to lure Catholics in with that sign outside. Mike said after it was just like the English to pull a stunt like that. This smarty pants priest starts going on about Episodic Succession, and I said he could stuff his Episodic Succession because we’ve got the Pope. Those jokers aren’t any better than the Jehovahs. I asked him, Do you get a prize for every Catholic you catch?
Well, I said to Mike afterwards, I guess we both were had now. You see what I mean. He said, No kidding, you need to be cunning as serpents in this neck of the woods. I guess he was relieved when he planted his feet back in Kilkenny.
