Civic duty

I've gone to church most Sundays in my life. According to my mother and father, I was a well behaved little flirt of a baby. I never cried much or made noise, but I was plenty distracting to the middle-aged envious women of the congregation. I was not annoying for the most part and people distracted themselves from mass to talk to me. Most babies are not like me. Most parents are not like mine in mass. People need to control their babies in church or stop bringing them.

When I outgrew my cuteness and demanded stimulation that couldn't be found in the attention of baby-snatchers (my mother has become one- a woman who loves babies and wants to hold every one she sees), I succumbed to the power of the coloring book. My parents knew me well enough to see that I was going to be a problem on Sundays if I didn't have something to do. Seeing as how the complexities of Catholicism were beyond my mental range, they brought coloring books. I was an aspiring comic book artist (my talent for drawing tapered off after age 6) and coloring engrossed me. In mass these days, I see an astounding lack of coloring books. People are afraid that a coloring book is disrespectful of the institution. They assume the sight of a child coloring a dove purple and green would be too distracting to prayer, so instead they allow their rambunctious little cherubs to scream at no end. These children are not filled with the spirit of the Lord, they are simply bored by Him. Parents pick up their children and stare at the priest, trying to comfort the child and still Receive the Word. What they fail to realize is that when they pick up their screeching spawn the people in the pew behind them are now faced with a temptation of mortal stature. The only way to really get anything out of going to church is to devote one's whole mind to the Word. I can only get at the lessons of the Bible when I am clear mentally. For every screaming baby, one prayer is wasted hoping that the baby will stop crying. It will not, all ye faithful.

I cherish the sight of a well-behaved baby in mass so much that it is more distracting than the screamers. This is only the case because of the screamers themselves, but it has created a lose-lose situation. The only solution for this problem is to either occupy the baby with an activity, understanding that the net total of disrespect is lower for the distracted and silent child, or to take the baby out into the front of the church until it calms down. As a parent, your first responsibility is your child. If the child is screaming you need to calm it down, but that process takes a long time more often than not. The good people of the church have gathered to hear God's message and that becomes impossible when a parent is trying too hard to multitask. Take your baby outside and calm it down. Give it a pacifier and take it back inside.

A few weeks ago, I saw a man give his kids his iphone to play with. He had a silly little game that had the kids tapping the screen when an animal came up or something to that effect. The previously ill-behaved kids shut right up and everyone in the family's minds all went back to where they should be. I'd prefer it to be a coloring book because of the artistic seed that can be planted by that route, but either way the child needs something and Jesus isn't doing it for them.

Bear in mind that I never sit in the back of church. The last time I did, my mother and I vowed that we never would again, dubbing it Pee-Wee's playhouse. At some points it became impossible to hear our priest speaking. We were unsure whether we should be standing or kneeling as the kids around us were doing both, as well as standing on the pews, running in the aisles until their irate parents shepherded them back to their places, and (my favorite) climbing over pews. They fell over into the pew in front of them and looked back for acknowledgment from their parents who had decided to ignore them. Of course this neglect prompts further displays of athletic prowess. This exemplifies the problem. Parents don't want to think about their kids during mass, but they don't know how to make it so they don't have to.