When Jesus said "Let the little children come to me", I'm pretty sure the little brats weren't bawling in the middle of His sermon on the mount.
In a separate post, I talked about how babies' penchant for spoiling just about any setting has fueled my dislike for them. Movies, restaurants, Masses, airplane rides... just when you think it was all good, they suddenly start screaming, or crying, or running around.
And worse still than the havoc wrought by the little monsters is that grown-ups condone it. Hate, hate, hate.
Ah, but not so some weeks back at Christ the King Church in Greenmeadows. My mind was starting to wander in the middle of the bishop's homily -- when suddenly he faced a child who was scampering from pew to pew along the aisles, and declared with delicious matter-of-factness: "Would someone please attend to that child."
A surge of triumph rushed through me, as the child, still incredulous about what was happening, was apprended by his mother. I was too far from her to see how red she was in the face, but duh, the whole church was looking at her. I loved it.
It was reminiscent of the late Fr Pat Lim, at Sta Maria Della Strada Parish some years back. He was delivering his homily in his usual good-natured manner. A little beast, set loose from his cage by some idiot mother, was literally screaming nonsense in the aisle. Fr Pat stopped short in the middle of his homily, shot out a finger at the boy, and said, "If someone doesn't restrain that child, he will grow up to be a sociopath."
Long live adults with enough sense to want children know what propriety means.
