By Rose Madeline Mula

The church I attend these days isn't the Roman Catholic Church of my parents — or even of my youth.No, despite my profound disgust with the pedophile priests horror and the Church’s anti-woman and anti-gay leaning, I haven't converted to another religion. But if the 20-year-old me were to come back to visit me today, she would be sure I had defected.

A confessional at the Church of St. Francis Xavier, Manhattan, New York, taken by Kwok-Chi Ng, Wikimedia Commons

If she came to Mass with me, she'd be very confused. First, it's probably Saturday afternoon — not Sunday morning. What's with that? That wasn’t an option in her day. And how come I'm wearing slacks and sneakers? Yes, it's Saturday but shouldn't I be wearing my Sunday best dress to church? And gasp!No hat! Not even a little lace square bobby-pinned to my head? How disrespectful!

The 20-year-old me would also wonder what happened to the altar rail. It has disappeared, and the altar itself is no longer up against the back wall but is now facing the congregation. What’s more, the priest is speaking English — not Latin! And though said priest is still a he, he is often now assisted by altar girls — not always boys. And shocker of shockers — yesterday's sonorous organ music is often replaced by rocking guitars. Can it be? The 20-year-old me remembers weddings where the leading lady's entrance could not be heralded with Here Comes the Bride, which was considered secular and thus banned from the church. Bummer! A wedding without Here Comes the Bride was like lasagna without ricotta cheese.

Also, when I was young, a cousin married a non-Catholic (shameful!), and the ceremony had to be performed in the rectory. Such a "sacrilege" could be permitted only in the priests' house — not God's.That it was allowed at all was probably to prevent the couple from seeking a non-Catholic church to marry them. A few years later, however, still another cousin had the gall to fall in love with a Protestant, and they actually were allowed to take their vows inside the church — but only outside the altar rail — not on the altar itself.

Since the altar rail has disappeared, we no longer kneel to receive communion. Instead, we now stand with hands palms up, and the priest or lay minister (yes, an actual lay person — sometimes even a lowly woman!) places the host in our hand, instead of on our tongue, and we transfer it to our mouth. My 20-year-old self would be horrified. It was sacrilegious to touch the host back then;  and once it was in our mouth, we were supposed to let it dissolve without letting it touch our teeth. And unlike today we never sipped the consecrated wine from a common chalice. (To tell you the truth, I still don't do that. I know I should have more faith that God won't let me catch the cold of the person in front of me who is coughing, but still... It's bad enough that I now have to shake that person's hand during the peace-be-to-you exchange). We also had to fast from midnight the night before receiving communion. I remember being in a quandary at Mass on New Year's Day, which is one of several holy days of obligation. I disliked going to communion because I felt I was advertising the fact that I hadn't been partying after midnight on New Year's Eve. I figured it wasn't anybody’s business that I may have been dateless on the big night.

Our pre-communion fasts were not the only times we were deprived of sustenance. We also had to fast between spartan meals during the forty days of Lent.

As for that New Year's holy day of obligation, it was ... are you ready for this ... the Feast of the Circumcision. Fortunately, the church has now renamed this to the Feast of the Holy Family, a much more decorous designation, I feel.

Oh, and I can't forget another ritual of my youth — weekly confession. Yes, weekly! I was such a goody-goody that I used to have to make up sins to have something to tell the priest. "I disobeyed my mother three times." No way. I told you — I was a goody-goody. I never disobeyed my mother. And "I lied twice."To tell the truth, the whole confession was a lie.

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