Who shows up at a morning Mass on Easter Monday?
It is a tiny portion of regular Mass-going Catholics who go to any given daily Mass. This day, in particular, offers more reasons not to attend: Many Catholics have just spent about eight hours in church over the past few days — Tenebrae, Holy Thursday Mass, the veneration of the Cross, the Stations of the Cross, and Easter Vigil Mass.
I was not surprised, then, that Easter Monday Mass at my local parish was pretty empty.
Now I want to ask the reader: What type of people do you imagine go to the more sparsely attended daily Masses?
If you take your understanding of the Catholic Church from the liberal mass media, you might imagine that these die-hards are very severe right-wing traditionalists who are planning Christian nationalist takeovers of the United States or something.
You might even think, especially at a daily Mass where communion is distributed to congregants kneeling at the altar rail, that those in attendance are the severe types who might not mourn the death of Pope Francis.
But if you ever attend these Masses, you know the crowd is quite different. You’ll see mostly grandmas — the type of church ladies who run the Divine Mercy Cenacle, a group dedicated to studying the writings of Saint Faustina, and to better understand and appreciate God’s mercy for all mankind.
You’ll see the middle-aged brothers with intellectual disabilities and permanent smiles, wishing every single attendee a happy Easter before and after Mass. You’ll see the families of Filipino immigrants.
And at this Monday’s Mass, of course, the first words of the pastor’s homily were about the death of Pope Francis. The message of the homily: Pray for Pope Francis, and pray for the next pope. And that’s it.
It’s easy to think of Pope Francis as “the liberal Pope.” That’s way too reductive, and such arguments typically try to conform things that aren’t American politics into the context of American politics.
More importantly, church politics should not really be the concern of the average Catholic.
Which cardinals are conservative? Who is the reformer candidate? What are the various cliques or voting blocs among the College of Cardinals?
These can make an interesting story, and certainly some good journalism can be done about this. But for normal people, these things shouldn’t really matter.
For the average Catholic layman, the proper level on which to engage his or her church is the local parish.
Attend Mass. Volunteer at the fish fry. Fill the pews with your children. Deploy your middle schoolers to volunteer at Vacation Bible School.
And when it comes to the changing of the papacy?
Pray for the soul of Pope Francis, and pray for whoever becomes the next pope.
A conclave is intriguing. It happens about once a decade these days — less than half as frequent as a presidential election or the summer Olympics. It’s wrapped in secrecy and tradition — the white smoke is a beautiful touch.
For the mainstream liberal media, which is nearly totally secular, it’s a chance to show open-mindedness toward religion by articulating a vision of a Christianity they could theoretically support: Focus on the feed-the-poor stuff and ignore the stuff about chastity, marriage, and being fruitful and multiplying.
Knowledgeable Catholics could spend all day correcting media errors or mischaracterizations about church teaching and the powers of the pope. Conservative Catholics worry: Pope Francis has appointed most of the College of Cardinals — will it just give us some old European liberal? Others count which cardinals are conservative, moderate, or liberal and suggest the next Holy Father will be more Benedict than Francis.
POPE FRANCIS DEFIED EASY POLITICAL CATEGORIZATION
Being intrigued is normal. But intrigue ought not to take up too much of our energy. At some point, focus on intrigue descends into frivolity or even gossip.
Better is to leave the conclave up to the cardinals and the Holy Spirit and to simply do what we can do: Pray for the late pope and the next pope and then keep volunteering at Donut Sunday and showing up at Mass every Sunday — or even Monday.