No Hooters Shirts in Mass, Please

Terry Mattingly reports on when Catholics gets a bit too casual :

Deacon Greg Kandra was well aware that modern Americans were getting more casual and that these laid-back attitudes were filtering into Catholic pews.

Still, was that woman who was approaching the altar to receive Holy Communion really wearing a Hooters shirt?

Yes, she was.

When did Catholics, he thought to himself, start coming to Mass dressed for a Britney Spears concert? Had he missed a memo or something?

“Somewhere along the way, we went from neckties to tank tops, and from fasting to fast food. And it’s getting worse,” noted Kandra, a former CBS News writer with 26 years, two Emmys and two Peabody Awards to his credit. He is now a deacon assigned to Our Lady Queen of Martyrs, a 3,000-member parish in Forest Hills, just north of New York City.

“I recently had to tell a couple that no, they could not have their Chihuahua in a tuxedo as part of their wedding party,” he added, in a Patheos.com commentary. “An auxiliary bishop in Indianapolis recently complained about people who tweet during funerals. Casual Catholics, it seems, have taken ‘casual’ to a new level.”

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