This whole situation is truly unfortunate. I wonder how different my impressions might have been of this communion if I had grown up with something besides a "campfire Mass" (acoustic guitars playing hippie music, whitewashed walls, et cetera). I'm not even wondering about the Traditional Latin Mass, although growing up with that would have been incredible, but even just a very dignified and reverent celebration of the Novus Ordo would have done. I never experienced anything like that growing up. It's funny, because another friend of mine who grew up in a southern diocese in Alabama was thoroughly catechized and knew all of the traditional practices that I never learned, like kneeling before entering the row of pews, and other general rules of decorum. He even used to ask Francis of Assisi to pray for him. I was never encouraged to have an active relationship with the saints, aside from learning the "Hail Mary."
