Symptoms of being Roman Catholic

Granted, I saw a thread on a theology forum, entitled "You might be Roman Catholic if," which gave me the inspiration for this post. So, a few thoughts are in order:

You just might be Roman Catholic if...

• You have many prayers which you have recited, perhaps daily and certainly at every Mass, since you were old enough to say your first word - but, with the exception of the Ave and Paternoster, you would feel uncomfortable trying to say them without the printed words in front of you.
  
  
• You wonder why poor Saint Jude, who has enough troubles just from bearing the same name as the traitor, refuses to answer prayers unless the supplicant guarantees him press coverage.
  
  
• You know someone from your religious 'unit' (parish, school, community, whatever) who seems to know everything about everyone in the country, if not the world. (Not gossips - just those whose words are purely informational, unfailingly accurate, and frequently helpful. Think about it - how do you know her?
  
  
• There is someone in the parish who has been in every photograph taken there during her lifetime, usually in a prominent position - and who belongs to every committee in existence and a few no one else knows exist. Whether she is 30 or 90, she looks very robust - yet everyone knows she was supposed to have died years ago.
  
  
• There also is a quiet creature who really does most of the work, holds no positions, hates committees, and never gets any credit. (For details of who does, see the previous entry.)
  
  
• You wonder why no one ever refers to anything good as "God's will."
  
  
• You puzzle over why co-ordinators of this-or-that complain that the people are opposed, whilst concurrently insisting that this-or-that was implemented because the people wanted it.
  
  
• If female, you rolled your school uniform skirt to the mid-thigh... long before and after miniskirts were fashionable.
  
• You feel you are a classics scholar on the first day when you realise that 'translations' of Latin hymns and prayers seldom bear the slightest resemblance to the original.
  
  
• You wonder if any pagan babies really were baptised with the name you spent hours choosing. (Classroom choices don't count. If they are the norm, half the population in emerging nations are named Mary or Joseph.)
  
  
• If a priest or Religious, one finds that the one person of the diocese/Order with whom one is totally incompatible is inevitably one's next superior and/ or the only other occupant of the house at which one is stationed.
  
  
• You wonder why the woman (usually an ex-nun) who is in charge of religious education is upset that she was not consulted about problems with the boiler. You further wonder why she cannot see that the reason Methodists attend Methodist churches has nothing to do with the RC parish's 'sense of community.'
  
  
• You know we are endowed with free will.. but wonder why the left blames everything on psychiatric problems and the right on the devil.
  
  
• You cannot understand why Sisters who are dressed in fashionable lay clothing are insulted when they are not automatically recognised as Sisters.
  
  
• You wonder why the 'active laity' are insulted to hear that anyone entered a convent or monastery, and why this is taken to involve a denial of the 'universal call to holiness.'
  
  
• You probably leave your coat on in church, even when it's horribly overheated.
  
  
• You wonder why surveys (issued by dioceses, programmes, whatever) directed to hundreds of people not only indicate universal agreement but duplicate the pet phrases of those who composed the questionnaire.
  
  
• You were taught that attending the dawn Mass on Sunday meant great sacrifice and holiness - though, with the exception of a few cops, hospital employees, and elderly insomniacs, the people who are there were out all night.
  
  
• You hate things in your parish, but would not dare say so lest you hamper unity, nor would you go elsewhere because 'it's your obligation.'
  
• You love things in your parish, but would not dare say so lest it seem you were not making sufficient sacrifices.
  
  
• You once spent three weeks working up the humility to make a sincere confession of the messes you'd got into during the past 15 years. When you finally made your confession, you were told "nothing you are telling me is a sin."
  
  
• You wonder how it happens that the 'devil gets a sleigh ride' if someone plays with rosary beads, or why the Blessed Mother cries if a girl whistles.
  
  
• You have stopped to question why, in the popular picture of the guardian angel leading the children across the bridge, the two share one angel.
  
  
• You wish Rome would hurry up and say ‘yes’ to contraception… just so you’d not have to meet any other dream couple who want to tell you about safe and effective natural family planning. (You don’t believe in abortion, but still would like a ten year moratorium on sermons on the subject.)
  
  
• You’re sick to death of the attitude that musicians do not need to get paid – and that the truly holy (who are angelic, I suppose, and therefore in no need of housing or food) do things merely for the glory of God.
  
  
• You have a secret love for rather weird devotions (Infant of Prague, perhaps) - yet do wish that Margaret Mary Alacoque had not immortalised Jesus (Sacred Heart) as an effeminate whinge bag.
  
  
• When you are holding a new baby (not necessarily your own), you take his little hand and make the Sign of the Cross with it. Since the cat never manages to learn how to cross herself, you make the cross yourself on her head, preferably with a relic of Saint Francis.
  
  
• You read an Andrew Greeley novel once... and knew so little about such matters that you thought it qualified as pornography.