To Whom It May Concern, Or Offend

I begin to type my message.

I greet her.

I acknowledge receipt of the information.

I inform her of my decision to forgo the extra special Mass (for which we have all been encouraged to thank Monsignor) in favor of attending my regular 9:30 am Mass, complete with the choir and my regular ability to arrive at 9:28 and still get seats in the front pew where I can implore my children to behave humanely toward each other with a warning that Father can see and hear everything they do, inclusive of pinching.

I inform her that I fully expect to be able to retrieve my child's coveted classroom assignment from the rectory after Mass.

And then I call her on the insulting tone and content of her correspondence. I offer, reluctantly, and not very sincerely, that I am certain that it was not her intention to offend us. (Of course it was her intention. The whole thing is is intended to clobber us over the head with the the notion that she knows what we've been up to and the party is about to be busted by the cops.)

I tell her that it suggests that we do not go to Mass.

That we are oblivious to the dates and customs of the Holy Days.

That we don't know how to properly groom and dress for Mass (Has she looked in a full length mirror since the Carter administration? I wouldn't cast the first stone if I were her...)

I nearly argue that because we've chosen to school our children at home or at public schools we have not necessarily chucked our commitments to our faith.

I decide to turn the knife a different way and instead write that just because we have found an Our Lady of Condemnation education to be far inferior to our other choices and therefore must attend RES to make our sacraments, she should be careful not to make assumptions about our commitments to a faith-filled life. I offer that I am a public school educated person with a very strong commitment to my faith, and with very good reasons to attend the Mass I usually attend. And that there is no discernable value to the special Mass. Mass is Mass. There is not a lot of flexibility.

She, it turns out, is very practiced at the oh-no-you-won't answer that comes out sounding like complete agreement.

She very cheerfully responds thanking me for my note and offering that the RES children (spawn of Hell itself) may have a total of three absences before they are flunked for attendance and the two special inconvenient Masses will only add up to two, and so yippee! My daughter will have one left over (to see her through the full school year of exposures to other people's communicable diseases).

I immediately respond that I object to my choosing one Mass over another being counted as an absence and would like to know to whom (and to whose better senses) I can appeal the (hare-brained) decision.

Silence. She has probably gone off the grid to pray for my wretched soul.

I sit back and plot my argument for her enforcer.