Good Friday Reminiscence
I’m not sure if it’s because I don’t mix with Catholics of a certain age or if it’s the sign of an increasingly heathen nation or if I had a particularly twisted religious upbringing, but I never meet anyone these days who’s heard of, or participated in, the veneration of the cross.
One of my indelible memories is of attending the Good Friday service at St Joseph’s church in Blackpool aged about six or seven. There’s nothing like having to kiss the feet of a life-sized crucified Jesus - perfect in every bloody detail - to instill the requisite religious awe required at this time of year. Or terror, as I now call it.
I can’t remember what I got for my sixth or seventh birthday but I can still see and feel myself queuing in the aisle to kiss Jesus’s feet. My heart thumps like it did then. The altar boy had a cloth and wiped Our Lord’s instep after every kiss. No anti-bacterial spray in them days.
Are there any other recovering Catholics out their who want to join my group and help each other through it?
Hi, I’m Justin and I’m a Catholic.
Posted on March 21st, 2008 at 10:22 am
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Filed under Pooterism, Theology |
Raised a Catholic (more or less), went to a few Catholic schools, did the First Communion and Confirmation, drank the wine, chewed the wafer, got the charcoal on the forehead, but never did the cross-kissing thing. So I guess it’s not universal — or catholic, if you prefer.
Left it all behind long ago, fortunately. What fools these mortals be.
Ah, Ash Wednesday - another character-building experience. Mortifying. I remember being little one year and so embarrassed that I told a curious shopkeeper I’d fallen down in the street.
Easter greetings from Catholic Spain. Jesus H Christ.
On a popsicle stick.
It remains an integral part of the main Good Friday service in every Catholic church in the world. Which service is the most heavily attended service of the year.
Still - better to kiss the foot of a graven image than to lick the ring of a fleshly priest, I suppose.
RC born and raised (and disbelieving).
I’ve venerated crosses in my time, and I sort of approve of it, in that if your religion is based around death by crucixion, and it doesn’t contain a fair amount of horrifying and traumatic material, then you clearly aren’t doing it properly.
That’s why I like this sort of picture (detail) more than this sort.
RC Mother and a socialist father left me kind of torn between Church and State. Done the Holy Commotion, Veneration and various other arcane and obscure rituals designed primarily to put the fear of God into us.
Escaped the Catholic Church (for now)for a more modern pantheistic religion involving the Deity of the Recalcitrant Computer, the God of the Oppressed Car Driver (whose many weapons include speed cameras and fuel duty) and the Lord of the Arrogant Politician amongst others.
Personally I reckon the Catholic Church got it wrong when they dropped Latin and switched to English; made the whole thing a bit more mundane when you can a) understand what the spook follower is saying and b) see the fundamental flaws and contradictions.
As an aside, Socialism stuck.
Recovering Catholic here also.
Went to catholic schools until the age of 11. Happy to say I didn’t have to kiss any feet though, just the usual first communion, confession, confirmation, various suspiciously pagan-like festivals, and of course interminable hymns in class and assembly.
If I am EVER forced to sing ‘Bind us together’ again, I will hurt someone.