Funny Guy Friday.....He said what?

    This past Sunday, we had a visiting Priest from Africa. He was there to collect money for missions in the Congo. Our Priest made the initial announcement, and this seemed to irritate our daughter Grace. Why, you ask? She thought it was silly to collect money for this Priest's condo.
    "Not condo, Honey... Congo." We laughed through the rest of Mass.
    This got me thinking that Church has provided plenty of fodder for FGF. For example...
    For four of the last five years, I have had the opportunity to take Matthew to Boston for a game or two at Fenway Park to see the Red Sox play. After one such trip, we came home in time to get to church. As luck would have it, we had a visiting Priest from the Boston area. He gave a homily about some topic that I do not recall. Typically, we will talk about the homily on our drive home and this Sunday was no exception.
    Matthew mentioned that he knew that the Priest was a Red Sox fan, and I agreed, but wondered why he brought that up. He told me that the Priest had mentioned Red Sox first baseman Kevin Youkilis three or four times during Mass. I could not recall exactly what the Priest had said, but I did know he never mentioned Kevin Youkilis. Matthew insisted that he had. After several minutes, we realized that the Priest had been talking about the Eucharist.
   This gave me an idea that I stole from Red Sox fans. They yell YOOOOK every time Kevin Youkalis does something on the baseball field. I thought that we could yell EUUUUCH every time the Priest mentions the Eucharist at Mass. Like many of my great ideas, it was vetoed by Cheryl.
     About five years ago, we went to Mass and were then invited over to my in-laws for breakfast. We were there with a few of their friends and Matthew asked for a drink with his breakfast. I told him he could have some orange juice. After this exchange, the conversation turned to the church and the Mass we had just left. For some reason, Matthew became increasingly irritated at something. I asked him what was going on and he just kept getting worse.
    At this point, I took him into the other room and sat him down to get to the bottom of the problem. His response took me by surprise. He told me he did not like the Pope. Really, the Pope, you don't like the leader of the Catholic Church.
   "No, not that guy," he said, "I don't like the stuff in the orange juice. "
   "That would be pulp, Knucklehead... Now go get yourself some milk."
    Then there is Noah and his sign of Peace. For weeks, I have been trying to explain that a good firm handshake is important and that he should look people in the eye when he is addressing them. Last week at mass, he got my attention and reached out. I was sure that weeks of explanation were going to pay off and I was going to get a good firm shake.  Unfortunately, I got a fist bump followed by a hand explosion.
    This should not have surprised me, as Noah has displayed other violent tendencies at Church. On Christmas Eve, we arrived very early, but we were prepared with paper and colored pencils. He spent a great deal of time on one drawing and we assumed it was a  picture of the manger scene, or Jesus on the cross.
    Yeah, not so much... His holy drawing was of a person getting shot on the altar. I will  admit, if you took away the murder scene, the altar looked pretty good.
    I suppose that things are going pretty well when I can make fun of my kids about things that happen at Church. We are blessed to have three great kids that are faithful to their religion. They never complain about going to Mass or their religous education classes... Even if they don't always get the message exactly right.