Doctor Who and the Novus Ordo

Thank God for Doctor Who: the episode (this year's series final) that I've just watched was as engrossing and enjoyable to this sci-fi nut as the Novus Ordo I unwillingly attended earlier was craptacular, to use the word of a friend of mine...

Doctor Who was worth it if only for one line: in an alternative universe in which there are no stars at all, the concerned mother of a daughter who thinks that stars might exist is heard to say that she is worried her little girl might join a star cult - "I don't trust that Richard Dawkins" (evidently in that world as barking as he is in this).  Professor Bonkers indeed!

As for bonkers, well, I was lazy, having felt off yester-day, and not at all oriented properly this morning; I did visit several people this after-noon, however, including a poor old priest I know who kindly hears my confessions from time to time.  That done, and after an early dinner (nothing fancy, just truffled chicken roast; we gave the leftovers to the cats), I perforce dragged myself to the banalities of Mass at a certain parish.  As Mother Teresa famously said, I met Jesus to-day in a most distressing disguise.

How about this for unpleasant: the Gospel was not read to us, but instead the kiddies acted it out - of course, the man fallen among thieves was turned into a girl, the priest and levite became businesswomen (at least they shewed both sides of femininity), and the Samaritan a homeless man.  The priest made the usual P.C. modifications to the favourite-because-shortest Eucharistic Prayer II.  As a final indignity, I somehow ended up in the communion line that took me to one of the female altar servers handing out Hosts... and after Communion, the 2nd reading (mysteriously omitted earlier) was read in a saccharine voice while musak was played on a keyboard.  Yetch.  You really couldn't dream this stuff up.

(In fairness, I doubt anyone else there realizes how incorrect and indeed vitiating all this sad mucking about is.)

In order to make Mass bearable, I brought alone my Diurnal, and, having found a quiet side pew right down the back, I filled in the time by reading Terce through to Compline.  If Mass is to be vile and alienating, I can't see why I can't be completely eccentric and odd.

To think how much I valued Mass over in Perth, as this blog in its first year records: how I felt such a part of things, how I sang at Mass, and served Mass, and knew the priest, and looked forward to catching up with my friends afterwards, and all that.  Now, if I didn't know it was my duty to go to Mass on Sundays, frankly I'd not darken the door again.  Thank you, Bugnini, son of the Evil One, and thank you, Paul VI, Pope of stuff-ups!

Thank God for Doctor Who.  He battles monsters and makes the universe safe for children everywhere.  I do wish he would go back in time and tinker a little so that these forty years and more of liturgical and doctrinal confusion never happened.  Ah, as the wit said, Reality is for those who can't stand science fiction.  What a punishment!