Msg Base:  AREA 5  - ASK FATHER            CIN ECHO   AMDG
  Msg No: 150.  Wed 10-09-91 22:26  (NO KILL)  (MAILED)
    From: Father Mateo
      To: Mary Cimo
 Subject: Catholic practices

³ Dear Father,
³ I am new to the service and find your forum very enlightening.  I was
³ educated in Catholic schools, but the only guidance we ever received about
³ actual practices (i.e. fasting before communion) was from the "old school"
³ nuns, of which I only had been taught by two.  I had always wished that
³ someone could have told me more, but at my age (early twenties) most of my
³ contemporaries are concerned with bible interpretation and cannot answer
³ these basic questions.  Is there a "Catholic handbook" of sorts to turn to
³ in time of question and reference.  My parents are very knowledgable, but
³ tend toward practices of pre-Vatican II, so anything would be of great
³ help.  Thank you for your time and help.
³ SISIncerely,
³ Mary Cimo
 
Dear Mary,
 
   A newspaper column I find most interesting is "Miss Manners" by
Judith Martin.  Through this column and her books, Martin is helping
thousands, even tens of thousands of Americans to recover the basics
and even the finer points of a lost sense of etiquette.  People today
long to be comfortable in social situations and to give pleasure--or
at least not to give pain--to those with whom they associate.
 
   Catholics also have gone through a period of loss of religious
etiquette.  Most of us seem no longer to know how to behave when we
come alone to or gather as a family in God's house.  We do not know
how to be courteous to God, to His Mother, and to His friends and
children, the Saints and Angels.  We seem not to care about sparing
the feelings of others in church.
 
   Catholic practices are our rules of etiquette.  They are unlike
worldly manners in that their motivation is different: it is love for
God.  It is attention paid to our Father and to His children here and
in heaven, attention especially due in God's own house.  It is faith
exercised in the humblest way, but we cannot mount the heights of
faith if we are careless of these little things.  Courtesy is the
first ingredient of love.
 
   Church manners or practices enlist the body in the service of God
in an eminently practical and really easy way.  Prayer grows in the
mind as the body is reverently disposed.  Our minds and hearts easily
go out of control if we pay no attention to bodily behavior.
 
   If your contemporaries "are concerned with Bible interpretation",
they might read the book of Leviticus to understand how much importance
God gives to religious practices.  We are now under the new Law: the
Church has her own practices.  Jesus warns us about neglecting the
weightier things of the Law: justice and mercy and fidelity.  But He
says we should practice these virtues WITHOUT NEGLECTING the externals,
which are our bodies' reasonable service (Matt: 23:23; Romans 12:1).
In this way we shall "conduct ourselves with reverence" (1st Peter 1:17).
 
Two helpful books on Catholic practices are:
 
1) "Catholic Beliefs, Laws, Practices" by D. Lowery  (price $1.95)
2) "Handbook for Today's Catholic" (price $1.50).
 
Both are published by,  Liguori Publications, One Liguori Drive
                        Liguori, Missouri, 63057-9989
 
Add one dollar for postage for orders under $5.  You can order also
by telephone: 800-325-9521, ext. 812.
 
                                Sincerely in Christ,
                                Father Mateo