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Church Gossip

Posted on November 4th, 2010 by Staks

There is nothing worse than sitting in a firehouse for 13 hours being forced to listen to church gossip. Tuesday, I had to sit in my polling place all day as the Minority Election Inspector and all my coworkers were Catholics.

First, I want to say that one was a liberal Catholic and the others were moderate Catholics. While I made it known that I was a non-believer, I didn’t push the issue too much because I have to work with them all day and there are already political tensions in the air. Religious tensions would have just been too much to handle.

I did push a few issues in a lighthearted manner though. I told them that I don’t know much about all this Catholic stuff (which is partly true) and I asked them about some of the wackier stuff like the Eucharist actually transforming into the literal flesh of Jesus. I even brought up the case in which a young girl was gluten intolerant and the Pope wouldn’t let her eat a gluten-free wafer. The response was that the Pope should have allowed her to eat the gluten-free wafer. I even explained the issue in more detail to them as for why he couldn’t. It seems they don’t believe in the literal transubstantiation of the Eucharist either.

All day long, other church members came in to vote and I had the torturous experience of hearing more church gossip. Complains that one pastor spent too little money making the church look nice and complains that another pastor spent too much money making the church look nice. When I heard one person complain that she had a bad feeling about one pastor, I asked if she had thought that he was “transferred around a bit before coming that their church” implying some child sexual misconduct. She didn’t think so, but wasn’t offended or even surprised by my insinuation. That’s good; it shows that they recognize the problem.

I even mentioned to them the content of my last Examiner article dealing with the Pope trying to dictate how people vote. They all pretty much said that the Pope has no business in our elections and that he may be God’s representative on Earth, but he isn’t infallible.

At one point, I really thought about commenting that I can’t really see how anyone could still be a Catholic considering the way that the Pope has acted in relation to the child sex scandals, but I bit my tongue on that one. I would probably have been too confrontational considering that most of my co-workers are really involved with the church. Maybe next year I’ll push the issue a little more.