The Critic at Church

New Zealand Tablet, 24 March 1910, Page 453

The Critic at Church

We met him in the vestibule; he would not go farther 'than that, even though his presence there was hardly ornamental, and contributed much to the sense of overcrowding and discomfort (says the Boston Pilot). He was holding forth with his friend, Mr. Grouch, a ‘ liberal ’ Catholic, who had come to church to hear the music. He was evidently a born critic, who felt it incumbent upon him to set things at rights, and naturally the burden of his complaint was laid at the door of the priest. He was telling what Father Gabriel ought to do, and many things he ought not to do. He detailed the priest’s shortcomings with the dejected air of a man who was disappointed, and he bewailed his faults bitterly. While he contended that Father Gabriel took too long to say Mass, his friend Mr. Grouch contended that he was rather too hurried to be dignified. Then the sermon was too long; and he could not see why the priest could not confine himself to the Gospel without dinning his ears with that song of money.’ Mr. Grouch, on the contrary, bewailed the-priest’s want of ambition; he was actually allowing the parish to go to the dogs for want of a carpenter, a painter, or, a plasterer. Now what manner of men were Mr. Critic and Mr. Grouch In the first place, they were not conspicuous for extraordinary intelligence; they had studied a little at the grammar or high school, and read nothing more inspiring than the penny yellow journal. They came to Mass now and then ‘to hear the music,’ or when a strange priest was announced. They always loved the strange priest was ‘so different,’ although they did not know that the ‘strange priest had his own Critic and Grouch at home. And yet, with their limited education and their limited experience, they sit in judgment, and would instruct in his duties the man who probably possesses the finest education in the community, and whose experience in things ecclesiastical is infinitely in excess of their own. They are not pious, not even honestly regular in attendance at duties prescribed by the holiest laws of the Church;_ yet they would presume to catalogue the religious qualities of him whose day is largely spent in prayer and sacrifice. The secret of the Critic and of the Grouch is not difficult to fathom. They criticise and complain because such an attitude seems to provide an excuse for irregularity of life and for the neglect of essential duties. One rarely hears words of complaint from the man or woman who is seen every Sunday morning at his place at Mass. Somehow or another the observance of duty is the sign of content — we say peace? Even in the Church, as in the outer world, unrest and a complaining spirit are usually the signs of degeneracy, of laziness, or of ambition. For

this reason there will always he a Mr. Critic and a Mr. Grouch, as long as the' example of fidelity of duty can be brought face to face with cowardliness and sloth.