MARY

Another of my favorite attributes about Catholicism is the emphasis on tradition, and rituals, and ceremonies. This also means that faux pas are inevitable. Nowhere is ceremony and ritual more evident in the religion than during the receiving of Communion, or the Eucharist.

So one Sunday I goofed up. I had my hands correctly in position to receive the host (yes, there's a special way to hold your hands, and, even a special way to open your mouth to receive it instead of your hands), and somehow it slipped through my fingers and landed on the floor. I was mortified and I had no idea what I was supposed to do. Pick it up and give it back? Eat it off the floor (which is what some people told me I should have done), or do what I did which was wait for the Eucharistic minister to give me another one, do my sign of the cross facing the alter, and walk back to my pew. Had I been thinking, I would have picked it up. Then one day, several years later, I asked another friend about it, since he used to serve as an alter boy. He told me that the church had this special plumbing system for things like that. They put the dropped hosts in this tube or pipe or something, and it gets swept up by Holy Water or something, and down a blessed drain it goes. Or something like that.

Do you have any church or Catholic faux pas, Claire? Fess up.

CLAIRE

Faux pas, huh? I don't know anything off hand but maybe it's because there were so many and they run together. There was the time I was teaching CCD and the teacher asked me to lead the class in the Our Father and I accidentally omitted about half of it. But a lot of it was just giggly behavior. A certain friend of mine who will go unnamed (well, I have named her in previous emails to you as my roommate) used to love going to church together so we could ooh at cutesy babies and make fun of people's outfits and say the prayers in silly voices.

Speaking of making fun of people, that's one of the most entertaining parts of church sometimes. There are always THOSE people. Like for instance, at my church there's a couple that never fails to irk/entertain my family. We call them the "Loud Couple." The husband seems to fancy himself a very good singer, so he sings in a really loud voice, always extending his notes about a half beat longer than he should so he can do everybody the favor of hearing his melodious voice. But the best part is that his wife has this voice that sounds sort of like a robot. It's hard not to laugh when you hear them in church, between his loud singing and her automatonic intoning. Bigmouth and Ladytron.

And isn't that what church is all about?

MARY

I am always happy when I go to church with my sister. Now, I have certain friends or roommates who if I go to church with them, the entire mass is a streak of giggling. Or, if they're sitting with their families, a casual glance, or a wink or a smirk back to me will set us off. My sister and I are the same way.

And it seems like everything is a 100 times funnier if it happens in church.

In our church, there is always the lady who's always a step flat and a key off, and God bless her, she belts it. In college, a similar lady always kept singing on her way to Communion, walking right past us, and my roommate and I could barely contain ourselves. Then there was the time when the Communion hymn mentioned bread loaves, and I chose that moment to mutter "I'm hungry." Then my sister and I lost it. How mature. Of course there's always a parent there to pinch or hush us.

In the last few years, my hometown church has made a concerted effort to modernize our music. Personally, I just prefer the organ and a choir. I don't need guitars, or a bass, or drum sets or synthesizers. Call me old-fashioned. But I have a really hard time staying in a churchish frame of mind -- quiet contemplation and whatnot, when there's somebody rocking out on a drum set at the end of a hymn.

And then there's the clergy themselves. They can be eccentric to say the least, but if I took a lifelong vow of celibacy, you can bet I would be too. One local priest, who served as youth minister at our church, and was a parish priest in another town, was recently convicted of making GHB, the date rape drug, and selling it. While the rest of the country was dealing with pedophiles, we had a priest making roofies.

My favorite priest story though involves swimwear. Now, the church's rectory is across the street from the public swimming pool. I remember going to the pool when I was little, and our priest was wearing a leopard print Speedo. I still have this memory of seeing him on the high-dive diving board. Other times we would see him mowing the lawn at the church's schoolyard, and he was on the riding mower with a beige Speedo. I always got a kick out of saying to my friends: "Hey, that's my priest." He was also well-known for his beautiful and elaborate vestments that he sewed himself, that would put Joseph's Technicolor Dreamcoat to shame.

Who says church is boring?

On to a more serious topic. I think there are certain songs, movies, and art that has helped solidify my faith. I think I mentioned this in one of our first columns, but the musical Jesus Christ Superstar is something that's always affected me spiritually. I say this at the risk of sounding like an Andrew Lloyd Weber-head or something, but it's true. I used to try and listen to the soundtrack around Easter time. When I finally got to see a small production of it really kind of upset me. And I know that it doesn't follow the Bible perfectly, but I think it does a good job of making you see Jesus as human. Sadly, something about Superstar made me think immediately of the crucifixion scene in The Life of Brian, and all I can think of is Jesus whistling "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life."

And there are other songs that kind of get to me sometimes. A particularly well-sung version of "Ave Maria" always kind of brings tears to my eyes. I was never in choir in high school, but our choir's signature song, that they closed every concert or performance with, was a beautiful a capella arrangement of "The Lord Bless You and Keep You." Even the kids who were avowed agnostics or atheists loved this song too. There were other certain Madrigal Christmas songs that I loved hearing too.

My senior year in high school we did Fiddler on the Roof. In every play we did, I was always typecast as the token crazy old lady character, but for Fiddler I was cast as the Rabbi. Yep, a rabbi. They just covered me with long beards and long wigs so that my gender was indiscernible. But I think that even songs from that show inspired me too, even though they were Jewish.

What about you?

CLAIRE

Certain works of art I definitely find inspirational. Like Michelangelo's "David," or, cliche'ed enough, the Sistine Chapel, just because it's hard to believe sometimes that work so beautiful that it seems like something holy must have given the gift of such talent to man. But don't get me wrong though--I know that Michelangelo didn't really work for God, at least from what I know, and when I see something wonderful that's man made, I don't think that God did it--I just sometimes think that there must be a seed of something good given to certain people. At the very least, I think then that the human race (at those moments) is a pretty good thing.

Also, when I read "Alive," I thought that it was a testament to something divine. It was a long, long time ago but I just thought that a miracle helped save those poor soccer players.

I, uh, might have eaten chocolate tonight. But some people believe that you can do that on Sundays, right?

(I know, I think that's pussing out, too.)

MARY

I ate some chocolate on Sunday too. I couldn't help it. It was just there. And it was Sunday, so I have a little less guilt than if I'd done it on a Thursday.