Bad Catholics Society
When Pope John Paul II allowed girls to become altar servers in the Roman Catholic Church; my sister and I decided to do it. Little did we know we would be getting into something larger than ourselves, and make friends that we would bond with over the next several years to come. Later I would come to call us "The Bad Catholics Society"
We met the people in charge prior to joining the group along with their daughter whom we seemed to hit it off with quite well. I felt that this had to be a good sign. During the week we met at the church for instruction. We learned all the makings of what goes on into being an altar server such as what the priest needs for mass and where to get it if the item is not there. Altar servers have to pay close attention to what is going on at church because everyone was going to see us up there.
In my opinion, serving mass can be compared to riding a bike. A first-timer will mess up a bit, but once they knew how to ride that bike it was smooth sailing. If one does it long enough they can serve mass in their sleep. The people in charge wanted to bring us closer together, so they had field trips with us. We went bowling, swimming, and to the movies. We became even closer as friends.
Truly we enjoyed each others' company and by that we also made rivals as well. There were some servers that did not want to be part of our group and had not a clue of why we had so much fun. So when one of them accidently hit the crucifix so hard on Palm Sunday that that Jesus fell off while coming through the door; I made a comment about our "sworn enemies" later. I said, "This person is so mean that not only the walls of the church cracked, but Jesus Christ fell off his cross as well!" All of us laughed and I knew I was going to hell for that one among other things.
When it came time and to teach the newcomers how to be good altar servers; we were the devils in disguise. We did our jobs, but made a game called "priest". The game was we took turns being the priest and doing the priests duties for church when it came to the new altar servers, but we mocked a priest we first had who treated us terrible. We exaggerated his mannerisms and put in some rude ones of our own. We chewed gum on the altar and mimicked pouring an empty cruet in chalice as if we were a bartender raising up the cruet high in the air as if pouring it into the chalice then lowering it with ease.
As it was time to take up the fake collection (this is an important cue for all altar servers to know as they must go to the back of the church, and on the priest's silent command; escort the people bring the gifts up to the altar) as a tradition; we all pretended to take money out of the basket ie. the the Bad Catholic Society who pretended to be parishioners for the sake of training others This would shock the new people and some found it funny. That was our true intention to make it humorous. Not only did we this, but some other crazy things as well, that might call for total damnation upon us.
While on the altar some of us mentioned that the Eucharistic Ministers were alcoholics. We held in our laughter, but when the priest got wind of what were saying; he was about to fall over laughing and stifling it made it worse! He was he was supposed to be in deep prayer after the communion was distributed. Not even the heat lamps over our heads could remind of where we were at the time.
Nonetheless the congregation would see us as the holy and pious people on the altar every Sunday or Saturday. What we talked about in the sacristy they would never know. If they did, they probably would faint. We were the "Bad Catholics Society" but we never called ourselves that until we all grew up and no longer served. We were kids having a good time dressed in white robes for mass that carried up the crucifix or the lectionary. We served for months on end without a break sometimes a weekend if no one showed up under those hot heat lamps. Nobody but us knew what we did who we were behind the scenes.