Let’s hear your funny stories

My youngest son was about two years old when his great mission in life was to escape from the cry-room and get in among the pews in the body of the church.

We always managed to catch him somewhere near the door, but there came a time when our vigilance lapsed and the next thing we knew he was toddling confidently down the aisle heading towards the altar.

Our parish priest was in the middle of his homily when he looked down and saw a two-year-old standing about half a metre away staring up at him. He decided to ignore the distraction and kept on preaching, in spite of the fact that the entire congregation was waiting with bated breath to see what would happen next.

My wife and I decided to stay put and give the impression that he was someone else’s child, because neither of us was prepared to go hotfooting up the aisle after him in the middle of a sermon.

We silently hoped that he would grow tired of looking at the priest and wander off to some quiet part of the church where we could shanghai him without causing too much of a disturbance.

No such luck. He suddenly got that panicky look on his face that all two-years-olds get when they are separated from their parents. He took a step up onto the altar, stood next to the priest and yelled “Mom!” in a voice more befitting a ten year old with a bee up his trousers.

To this day, I thank the Good Lord that he yelled “mom” and not “dad”, because it was my wife who had to sheepishly make her way up the main aisle and apologetically rescue the young whippersnapper—who then had the temerity to point at the priest and say in a loud voice: “Look, funny man, funny man…”

This in turn reminds me of another absolutely true story that also took place at Mass, during the consecration when the priest said: “This is my body.” To which my cousin’s three-year-old stood up on top of the pew, turned his back to the altar, pointed to his posterior and boomed out: “And this is my botty.”

I have written in the past about other amusing incidents in church: the altar server who managed to swing the thurifer through 360° during benediction, and last week about the social engagement of CBC boys and Loreto Convent girls through the use of water pistols after Wednesday

evening novena.

I have no doubt whatsoever that when innocent amusing incidents take place in church, God laughs louder than us all. After all, he gave us a sense of humour and the ability to laugh.

So the editor has kindly agreed with considerable enthusiasm for this week’s and last week’s column to be used to try and find more amusing stories that have taken place in church.

I am sure that almost every one of the 45 000-plus readers of The Southern Cross has at least one or two stories to tell.

You can e-mail your stories to me at . For those of you who do not have e-mail, I am sure that a friendly fellow parishioner who is connected to the Internet will offer to help—especially as they might also qualify for a prize.

The Southern Cross’ panel of judges will go through all the submissions and choose a winner or maybe a number of winners. We haven’t decided on a prize yet, but there will be something really worthwhile. Remember that R1000 prize we offered for the great Southern Cross Anagram competition? Well, it might well be something like that.

My job will be to select from the entries those that I think should be published in this column from time to time. So, lets have those stories. Mi columna, su columna (my column is your column).

All of this reminds me of a partially deaf Catholic with a wonderful singing voice who happened to be at a funeral in a Protestant church. When the choir started singing the Lord’s Prayer he gave vent with all his might, singing his heart out.

What he didn’t realise was that at this particular church they simply finished the Lord’s Prayer with “Amen” and didn’t carry on with the doxology (“for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory”).

When everyone else stopped he just kept going and being partially deaf didn’t realise he was entirely on his own.

The congregation politely allowed him to finish. To this day he swears blind the corpse clapped.