Why I Didn't Use My Papal Mass Ticket

 60,000 people showed up in Yankee Stadium to celebrate Mass with Pope Benedict XVI. Tickets were in short supply. Several sold on Ebay for more than $200. According to newspaper reports, even those with strings to pull ended up empty-handed. 

I was one of the lucky ticketholders selected by lottery by the Archdiocese of Boston. But I spent Sunday in the mountains close to God.

A phone call prompted my decision to stay home. I blogged more about it here. Cardinal Sean O’Malley’s Cabinet Secretary and Chairman of the Catholic Foundation Scot Landry refused to give me the ticket until I gave him assurances that I would be neither disruptive nor confrontational. He had read a blog post of mine in which I solicited ideas on how a gay Catholic ought to approach Papal Mass attendance “consistent with not ruining others’ worship experience.”

Absent the assurances of good behavior, Landry said, he could not release the ticket. Grudgingly, I supplied the assurances and Landry mailed the ticket to me. But the experience soured my view of the Mass. No longer was I a member of the flock with a right to celebrate Mass with the ostensible leader of my Church; instead, Mass was a privilege, withheld pending promises to behave properly. This view of worship-as-privilege is also reflected in the recent acts of certain American bishops, who have called for withholding the sacraments from politicians favoring abortion and, last year in Wyoming, from a lesbian couple who advocated politically for same-sex marriage, and who in March excommunicated three women who had been ordained as womenpriests.

Landry’s call also reminded me of the insularity of the Pope’s visit. Unlike John Paul II, who held open-air Masses to which all were welcome, Benedict scheduled only closed events, where voices of dissent were discouraged. These themes of privilege and insularity made Benedict’s “Apostolic Journey to the United States” feel more like an invasion. 

Don’t get me wrong. I was moved by the Pope’s meeting with five Boston-area abuse victims. The meeting was properly scaled: a pastor and five of the wounded among his flock. It did not end abuse or suffering, and it was no recompense, but for many it was a small consolation, even a bit of a miracle. Stadium-sized miracles seem less likely absent such human-scale interaction.

Now that the Papal invasion is over, we gay people return to our churches and the womenpriests among us return to the pews. No one grants us this privilege; none of our pastors put insulation between them and us. We take our seats because they belong to us by virtue of baptism; they are not leased to us contingent upon good behavior. 

In this light, any single Mass at my humble home church Saint Anthony Shrine seemed worth a thousand Papal Masses in Yankee Stadium. I’d rather hear a homily from a friar in his habit than a sermon from a prince in his finery. 

I still have that gilted ticket. Sometimes it gives me a twinge of guilt that someone who did not share my view of the Papal mass could have had the ticket in my stead. Perhaps as Penance I’ll auction it off on Ebay and donate the proceeds to the friars of Saint Anthony, who make the real day-to-day miracles happen.

 

 

Unholy Wine of the Week: Scott and I and the other founding members of our cooperative Winebuyers.Org traveled up to the Finger Lakes of New York and did some wine tasting. We rented a fab house next to a waterfall and visited wineries along lakes Keuka, Seneca, and Cayuga. Expect to see more N.Y. State wines in this space over the summer. A repeat favorite: Dr. Konstantin Frank Vinefera Wine Cellars Rkatsiteli, reportedly one of the oldest cultivated grapes in the world, grown at Mount Ararat, according to our homolicious wine pourer. Clean, crisp, dry, white with good minerals and acidity, decent fruit, perhaps between a pinot blanc and a dry Riesling.