Visiting Our Lady of the Seas again in the Outer Banks, the place of the first Mass Tourism post. In terms of architecture, the building has a nice simplicity to it with a wooden interior and a beautiful view of the sound above the altar.  It’s stained glass and theme on things related to the beach is a bit much, almost as if it were a vacation rental—which in some ways it is.

The last time I came was on the Saturday vigil, probably during the off season. It was way less formal than that which I am accustomed but I was expecting it to be. This time was on a Sunday morning and I found the church to be packed with people, likely from out of town looking at the license plates in the parking lot. With black jeans and red collared oxford shirt, I was possibly over dressed given that the standard was shorts, t-shirts, and tennis shoes.

Two things made me cringe: the women in front of me taking flash photos of the front during the Mass—no shame, no reverence; I exhaled audibly in exasperation to get my subtle message across. The second was when the priest was preaching the homily using a telephone as a prop for his message on prayer. Not that I object to the visual except that he placed it on the altar as if it were his office desk.  For those who don’t know, the altar is suppose to be a sacred object consecrated and sometimes holding the relics of the patron saint of the church–(although this one had a crashing wave theme to it which made it hard to take too seriously–still.)

I was thinking of retaliating as an orthodox “troll”, and say all the responsorials in Latin really loud so that everyone around me could hear and be totally annoyed.

Ite Missa Est.

Deo Gratias