Tradition(al) Pet Peeves (meant to be fun/blow off steam/no flaming, please)

dzheremi

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So today, June 7/Pashons 13, is the commemoration of one St. Fournous, one of the seventy disciples of Christ, according to the synaxarium of the Coptic Orthodox Church. His entry there is very brief and vague.

On this day also, the disciple Phorus (Fournous), one of the seventy disciples, departed. He served Christ for 3 years. After the ascension of the Lord, he served the apostles, and was filled with the Holy Spirit, the comforter on the day of Pentecost. Then he served St. Paul, and carried his epistles to many countries, and taught the Jews and pagans and baptized them. He suffered many afflictions, and departed in peace.
May his prayers be with us, and glory be to God forever. Amen.


After reading this, I tried my best to look him up on any one of the several lists shown on Wikipedia, but had no luck. It took a good ten minutes of staring at it and looking up individual stories to realize that the figure I am actually looking for who is commemorated today is none other than Saint Onesiphorus, bishop of Cyrene! You might say "Duh, Jeremy...it's right there in the name -- Phorus, Onesiphorus", but it's not so obvious when you have a Church whose saint's names have mutated over the last 2,000 years through three languages (sometimes more, if the saint is ethnically Syrian or Latin/Western), along the way either gaining or losing letters, having weird substitutions or deletions that aren't really necessary according to any of the rules of the languages involved (e.g., why do we call HH St. Anba Mikhail, the fifty-sixth Pope of Alexandria, "St. Anba Khail"? There's nothing in Arabic or Coptic that prevents a word from starting with "Mi", and Mikhail is already a name in Arabic! All they do is add a glottal stop in there -- Mikha'il, the same as they do with names like Israel/Isra'il, Ismael/Isma'il, etc.), etc. Also, the example of Onesiphorus is a pretty big loss that may make sense according to both Arabic and Coptic (in Arabic, words cannot begin with vowels, while in Coptic, words are 'left-branching', meaning that they are formed by the addition of prefixes onto a root noun on the right, so it would make sense to keep "Phorus" rather than another part of the word, though that is not consistent, thanks to the subsequent intervention of Arabic, e.g., St. Onuphrius is not St. Phrius, but St. Abu Nofer...arghhhhhhhhhh), but is extreme enough to probably qualify as the biggest single phonetic change of any saint's name that I can think of off the top of my head, in the sense of it losing the most individual sound segments in 'translation', if that's what you call this. :D

So yeah, sometimes looking up saints using the Synaxarium or another Coptic resource is keyboard-bashingly frustrating. It certainly doesn't help that they add a random "n" into the name Phorus in Arabic (isn't "Fournous" the Greek word for "ovens"? St. Ovens...yeah, that makes sense...let's go with that; good job, Team Random Letters!)

tenor.gif

(Pictured: me trying to look anything up without having to call a priest for help)

I've even heard of Coptic people asking who "St. Abu Ghalimses" is, thanks to the Copto-Arabic rendering of "Apocalypsis" (as in Apocalypse Night/Bright Saturday of Holy Week, when we read aloud the Book of the Revelation of St. John; something of a Coptic peculiarity, I gather) as "Abu Ghalimses". That's gibberish in Arabic, as far as I can tell, but this stuff is so garbled at some points I don't blame them for asking. We have St. Abu Nofer (St. Onuphrius, as already mentioned), St. Abu Seifein (St. Philopateer Mercurius, though this one makes sense if you know the story behind it; he is "father/possessor/holder of two swords"), St. Abu Colta (St. Colluthus of Antinoe), so why not St. Abu Ghalimses? The fact that it doesn't mean anything didn't stop the Arabs at any other point, so once the Copts were sufficiently Arabized, why not? To this day, you can still find Muslims with Coptic last names that mean absolutely nothing in Arabic (e.g., famous poet/lyricist Abdel Rahman El Abnoudi; Abnoudi is from the Coptic Efnouti, which means "God"), so it's not all that shocking that the same is true the other way around. Just irritating when you're looking for information and then have to start thinking "Okay, the Coptic would've probably been this, but then Arabic came in and the correspondence between Coptic and Arabic would've made it more like this, and then...oh, wait a minute...they just decided to lop off half the name. Oh, okay. Cool." :|

So...yeah...what are your "tradition(al) pet peeves", if you have any?
 
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Athanasias

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I am a traditionalist but not a radical traditionalist. I attend both latin and english mass. What many Catholic traditionalist suffer from is intellectual pride. They often think if its not the Latin mass or if it comes from or after Vatican II then its worthless. This is simply pride.
 
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So today, June 7/Pashons 13, is the commemoration of one St. Fournous, one of the seventy disciples of Christ, according to the synaxarium of the Coptic Orthodox Church. His entry there is very brief and vague.

On this day also, the disciple Phorus (Fournous), one of the seventy disciples, departed. He served Christ for 3 years. After the ascension of the Lord, he served the apostles, and was filled with the Holy Spirit, the comforter on the day of Pentecost. Then he served St. Paul, and carried his epistles to many countries, and taught the Jews and pagans and baptized them. He suffered many afflictions, and departed in peace.
May his prayers be with us, and glory be to God forever. Amen.


After reading this, I tried my best to look him up on any one of the several lists shown on Wikipedia, but had no luck. It took a good ten minutes of staring at it and looking up individual stories to realize that the figure I am actually looking for who is commemorated today is none other than Saint Onesiphorus, bishop of Cyrene! You might say "Duh, Jeremy...it's right there in the name -- Phorus, Onesiphorus", but it's not so obvious when you have a Church whose saint's names have mutated over the last 2,000 years through three languages (sometimes more, if the saint is ethnically Syrian or Latin/Western), along the way either gaining or losing letters, having weird substitutions or deletions that aren't really necessary according to any of the rules of the languages involved (e.g., why do we call HH St. Anba Mikhail, the fifty-sixth Pope of Alexandria, "St. Anba Khail"? There's nothing in Arabic or Coptic that prevents a word from starting with "Mi", and Mikhail is already a name in Arabic! All they do is add a glottal stop in there -- Mikha'il, the same as they do with names like Israel/Isra'il, Ismael/Isma'il, etc.), etc. Also, the example of Onesiphorus is a pretty big loss that may make sense according to both Arabic and Coptic (in Arabic, words cannot begin with vowels, while in Coptic, words are 'right-branching', meaning that they are formed by the addition of prefixes onto a root noun on the right, so it would make sense to keep "Phorus" rather than another part of the word, though that is not consistent, thanks to the subsequent intervention of Arabic, e.g., St. Onuphrius is not St. Phrius, but St. Abu Nofer...arghhhhhhhhhh), but is extreme enough to probably qualify as the biggest single phonetic change of any saint's name that I can think of off the top of my head, in the sense of it losing the most individual sound segments in 'translation', if that's what you call this. :D

So yeah, sometimes looking up saints using the Synaxarium or another Coptic resource is keyboard-bashingly frustrating. It certainly doesn't help that they add a random "n" into the name Phorus in Arabic (isn't "Fournous" the Greek word for "ovens"? St. Ovens...yeah, that makes sense...let's go with that; good job, Team Random Letters!)

tenor.gif

(Pictured: me trying to look anything up without having to call a priest for help)

I've even heard of Coptic people asking who "St. Abu Ghalimses" is, thanks to the Copto-Arabic rendering of "Apocalypsis" (as in Apocalypse Night/Bright Saturday of Holy Week, when we read aloud the Book of the Revelation of St. John; something of a Coptic peculiarity, I gather) as "Abu Ghalimses". That's gibberish in Arabic, as far as I can tell, but this stuff is so garbled at some points I don't blame them for asking. We have St. Abu Nofer (St. Onuphrius, as already mentioned), St. Abu Seifein (St. Philopateer Mercurius, though this one makes sense if you know the story behind it; he is "father/possessor/holder of two swords"), St. Abu Colta (St. Colluthus of Antinoe), so why not St. Abu Ghalimses? The fact that it doesn't mean anything didn't stop the Arabs at any other point, so once the Copts were sufficiently Arabized, why not? To this day, you can still find Muslims with Coptic last names that mean absolutely nothing in Arabic (e.g., famous poet/lyricist Abdel Rahman El Abnoudi; Abnoudi is from the Coptic Efnouti, which means "God"), so it's not all that shocking that the same is true the other way around. Just irritating when you're looking for information and then have to start thinking "Okay, the Coptic would've probably been this, but then Arabic came in and the correspondence between Coptic and Arabic would've made it more like this, and then...oh, wait a minute...they just decided to lop off half the name. Oh, okay. Cool." :|

So...yeah...what are your "tradition(al) pet peeves", if you have any?
Sometimes the ethnicity of a parish "trumps" what would be good for the community, especially welcoming newcomers.

I'm sure a better objection could be made, butvthats the first to come to mind and I wanted to respect your topic. I do think, btw, that it is actually within our tradition to also read the book of Revelation during Holy Week which I only just learned a few weeks ago, because I think it is only retained in a few places particularly dedicated to St. John the evangelist.
 
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dzheremi

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I do think, btw, that it is actually within our tradition to also read the book of Revelation during Holy Week which I only just learned a few weeks ago, because I think it is only retained in a few places particularly dedicated to St. John the evangelist.

That's interesting. I had always heard from EO that it isn't read from publicly. Maybe it just isn't well known because, like you say, it only happens in a few places.

In Coptic Orthodox parishes, it is a standard part of Holy Week no matter where you are.
 
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That's interesting. I had always heard from EO that it isn't read from publicly. Maybe it just isn't well known because, like you say, it only happens in a few places.

In Coptic Orthodox parishes, it is a standard part of Holy Week no matter where you are.
I think that's why it caught my attention - because I'd always been told it wasn't ever read. It's not a part of the regular lectionary (daily readings).

I'm obviously still learning of course - probably always will be.

But it's a rare thing I suppose since it's very limited on location.
 
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dzheremi

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But it's a rare thing I suppose since it's very limited on location.

This observation triggered a more general question I've had about the EO for some time, though I'm not sure how to phrase it (so pardon me in advance if this comes off as somewhat rude or overly blunt; that is not my intention): From what I have read, the liturgy of St. Basil is similarly celebrated very rarely in the EO Church, pointing to the earlier liturgical diversity that the EO manifested before being 'Byzantinized' (Constantinopolized? That's not a word, I don't think) sometime in the Middle Ages. I can't remember exactly when (c. 9th-10th century, if I recall correctly), but at any rate the Byzantinzation of the Eastern Chalcedonians is a well-attested historical fact (see, for instance, studies of the phenomenon like this one).

My question as a non-Chalcedonian is: why don't you guys attempt to recover your mostly lost 'pre-Byzantine' diversity, instead of only having these liturgies once a year, or only in a few places? It is a common enough observation from OO on the internet that while we (and here I guess I should clarify that I'm talking about most Copts I've talked to; I can't speak for the Ethiopian/Eritrean Tewahedo, Syriac Orthodox, etc.) find the EO to be basically theologically Orthodox these days (and depending on who you ask, that could be said about "back then", too, since plenty of Armenian, Syriac, and Coptic leaders did attempt reunion, only to find the terms of the Chalcedonians unacceptable), your lack of organic inner diversity is baffling. The Tewahedo have something like 14 anaphoras (maybe more; haven't checked my translation of Fr. Marcos Daoud's book on that topic in a while) and their own musical system that is unique to them (the zema of St. Yared), the Syriacs some similar number of anaphoras and a few main chant traditions (though I have read that they have dwindled over the years, which is sad), etc. The Copts used to have many more anaphoras in use than we do now (after all, Axum inherited her liturgies mostly from the Egyptians), and only narrowed it down to the three we use now rather recently: The three we use now (those of St. Basil, St. Cyril, and St. Gregory) were set as the primary liturgies by sometime in the Middle Ages or so (again, I'd have to look; I'm assuming it's in the Coptic Encyclopedia somewhere, but it's 104 F out today and frankly my brain is mush), but as recently as the 1970s we celebrated a liturgy known as "Qiddas el-Habashi" (Ethiopian liturgy), which was an Arabic translation of one of the (by then, or maybe originally) uniquely Ethiopian anaphoras. I don't know which one, but at any rate it's recent enough that you can find an audio recording of it celebrated before it was suppressed (HH Pope Shenouda III supposedly said that we must focus on preserving our own liturgies, rather than taking those of others) by Fr. Estefanos Rizk:


Not a great recording (and the Transformers intro to the video doesn't help...sorry), but it's pretty rare, as you might expect of a liturgy we haven't celebrated in several decades. I'm glad it got documented, at least.

Anyway, I'm just curious what you as an EO person would say to that question. Not to get too pointed, but it seems like whenever EO and OO talk informally, things come back to the Chalcedon and subsequent developments so quickly (and never leave it) that it can be hard to find a place for questions like this, which obviously betray a kind of "OO bias" and can come off as rude, as though we are saying the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom is not good enough by itself or something. That's not the point, of course; we just wonder why it's mostly by itself in the first place, when it wasn't always so, and why EO themselves don't seem to be wondering that, and if the fact that they're mostly not wondering that says something about our ability to unite with them. (Since to us it feels like a natural question. HAH Bartholomew could come to me tomorrow and explain why we need to adopt the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, and how Orthodox it is and all this, and I'd accept that it is indeed Orthodox, and thank him for sharing his wisdom...and then I'd go back to doing things as we already do them. It's just not in the OO DNA to have such uniformity, since we never faced the historical pressures that you guys did that led to your 'Byzantinization' in the first place...and actually it's been this way since before the Chalcedonian schism; see Pope Leo I's 445 letter to the then universally-recognized Pope Dioscorus urging the Church of Alexandria to adopt some foreign practices of the Latins so that "Rome and Alexandria may be one in everything"; judging by the fact that we never followed his advice, those suggestions went straight into the ancient circular file, which I imagine did not help the relationship between the two patriarchs.)

Wow...that turned out to be very long. I'm sorry. I just wanted to try to set it up properly.

(It occurred to me after writing this that I once knew an Egyptian Chalcedonian who did argue that the liturgies which are native to the Egyptians should be reintroduced into the Chalcedonian Church, at least in Egypt, but he's the only one I've known to ever argue that. This was on the OC.net board a long time ago, and I think I remember him saying that he sometimes brought his young kids to the Coptic Orthodox liturgy for precisely that reason -- so that they could know how their ancestors worshiped -- and that his kids would get excited that they were going to witness the liturgy "chanted in Mummy"...hahahaha. Kids are the best.)
 
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thecolorsblend

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So...yeah...what are your "tradition(al) pet peeves", if you have any?
One thing that bugs me is how we can't have Mass with incense unless somebody puts out, like, a six page disclaimer just in case somebody with "allergies" attends.

Srsly, it's like everybody is "allergic" to something these days. Just a few days ago, some fool demanded that I stop vaping because she thinks she's allergic to water vapor. It's asinine.

So on the rare occasion Mass includes incense, rest assured there will be a sign up or a pamphlet getting handed out warning everybody about the incense. And inevitably, some doofus will somehow miss the sign and not read the handout, the incense starts, soon the fake coughing starts (because the aforementioned doofus made certain to sit near the front where the incense is heaviest, natch) and it's all so tiresome.

My office is filled to overflowing with stupidity and I have no choice but to marinate in it for eight hours every day even though my allergy to incompetence is a lot more severe than some hypochondriac's imaginary allergy. So if I can deal with my co-workers and the insanely idiotic stunts they pull each and every day, surely others can put up with a few minutes of incense on the one or two occasions when we get to have it during Mass.

...

Okay, wow, so this turned into a much bigger rant than I was expecting.
 
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dzheremi

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I'm beginning to understand why there aren't so many Coptic Catholics in the world...

The censing of the Church -- a part of every Coptic Orthodox liturgy when the priest censes literally the entire church, from the altar and back again -- is done as the choir sings the hymn "Tai shori" (The Censer: "This is the censer of pure gold bearing the aroma, in the hands of Aaron the priest, offering up incense on the altar."). I was able to find a video of it that captures it pretty well, though the hymn itself ends at around the 2:20 mark.


See, it'd be impossible to avoid inhaling the incense at some point, and usually a pretty heavy dose of it (and more during many other parts; heck, the Matins/Vespers are called "Raising of the Morning/Evening Incense", so I guess those are out, too :D)

Of course, I'm sensitive to the fact that a smaller fraction than probably make a big deal out it really do have such allergies, but y'know...that's why you've got doors and windows and such, right? That was actually one of the reasons why it took us so long to get the approval of the Albuquerque Fire Department to buy the property that was turned into St. Bishoy COC, if I recall correctly: since it is an industrial park/office area that it shares with other places in other parts of the complex (we could only buy one little part of it), they were apparently afraid that our use of incense would set off the automatic sprinkler system for the building and ruin all the other places, so we had to submit all this stuff about how much incense we use, when it's used, how we'll control for it (by opening the door and windows...), etc. Pretty funny, I thought, but also kind of a pain. I bet the Baptists never have to deal with this. Hahaha.

During the year or so we had the property while I was still there, we didn't set off the sprinkler system even once. Take that, unbelievers! :p
 
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dzheremi

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in particular St Minas.

Which one? We have maybe four or five that I know of:
  1. St. Mina the Wonderworker (this is the one I think we have in common)
  2. St. Mina, bishop of Tamai/Thmoui
  3. Abba Mina the Elder, commemorated together with the martyrdoms of Abba Hor and St. Simeon of Menouf (This synaxarium entry is brief and vague enough that it could be one of the other Minas)
  4. St. Mina of Cyprus (maybe you guys know this one, too? I always think of Cyprus as an "EO place", though I'm pretty sure this one is from before the schism anyway)
  5. St. Mina the Monk (this one was from Akhmim, and spent 16 years in a monastery in El Ashmunein/Hermopolis; he disputed for the faith with the newly-arrived Arabs, so obviously he was well post-Chalcedon)
 
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The Coptic icons I've seen of him are young, beardless and dark haired.

Probably the most famous Coptic icon of Abba Mina the Wonderworker, from the monastery of Abba Apollo in Bawit, from the 6th century, looks like this:

800px-L%27abb%C3%A9_M%C3%A9na_et_le_Christ_01.JPG


Some modern icons of him look like this, obviously younger but not beardless (it's just not full like the above):

saintmina.gif

Other modern icons look like this, with him completely beardless:

martyrs-mina-ii.jpg

Depending on which biographical tradition you believe (or rather, which details are meant to go with which St. Mina, and which have been conflated together into an amalgamation of today's Mina), he could've joined the army at as young as 15 years old, which could explain the beardlessness in many of the popular images.
 
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There's a type of jerk who sometimes attends Mass. I even have a nickname for this type of person. But I dare not post it here because doing so might upset some fundie's virgin ears or something.

Anyway. So instead of the actual nickname I use for this type, we'll just call them "Mass jerks" for the sake of discussion.

I usually show up for Mass early. And when I do, I sit on the end of the pew. I have reasons for that but I feel absolutely obligation to explain them. I was there first, period. That means I get to find a good spot for myself and stick to it.

But that doesn't go over well with the Mass jerk. He shows up five minutes after the start of the Mass and expects to find a good spot. There are seats available, usually, but they're most likely somewhere in the middle of the pew. Some people show up late and sit in the middle of the pew, no problem, simply happy to have anywhere to sit at all.

But not the Mass jerk. He expects you (meaning me) to move over and let him have the seat at the end. I will grant that me moving over is probably the more efficient thing to do. But I won't move over. I want a spot at the very end of the pew. That's my spot. I was there first.

I don't care that the more efficient thing is for me to move over, I don't care what the Mass jerk wants, I don't care what the Mass jerk's sob story is about why he or she is late, I'm not moving over. Don't like it? Show up early next time! That's what everybody who got a good seat did and that's what the Mass jerk should do too.

So once the Mass jerk figures out that you're not moving over, he/she glowers at you as he/she scampers over your feet, making his/her way to the middle of the pew, stewing in his indignation and self-righteousness and how deeply unfair it is that he/she can't show up five or ten minutes late and expect a good seat.

And somehow it's all my fault!

Mass jerks, I swear...
 
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There's a type of jerk who sometimes attends Mass. I even have a nickname for this type of person. But I dare not post it here because doing so might upset some fundie's virgin ears or something.

Anyway. So instead of the actual nickname I use for this type, we'll just call them "Mass jerks" for the sake of discussion.

I usually show up for Mass early. And when I do, I sit on the end of the pew. I have reasons for that but I feel absolutely obligation to explain them. I was there first, period. That means I get to find a good spot for myself and stick to it.

But that doesn't go over well with the Mass jerk. He shows up five minutes after the start of the Mass and expects to find a good spot. There are seats available, usually, but they're most likely somewhere in the middle of the pew. Some people show up late and sit in the middle of the pew, no problem, simply happy to have anywhere to sit at all.

But not the Mass jerk. He expects you (meaning me) to move over and let him have the seat at the end. I will grant that me moving over is probably the more efficient thing to do. But I won't move over. I want a spot at the very end of the pew. That's my spot. I was there first.

I don't care that the more efficient thing is for me to move over, I don't care what the Mass jerk wants, I don't care what the Mass jerk's sob story is about why he or she is late, I'm not moving over. Don't like it? Show up early next time! That's what everybody who got a good seat did and that's what the Mass jerk should do too.

So once the Mass jerk figures out that you're not moving over, he/she glowers at you as he/she scampers over your feet, making his/her way to the middle of the pew, stewing in his indignation and self-righteousness and how deeply unfair it is that he/she can't show up five or ten minutes late and expect a good seat.

And somehow it's all my fault!

Mass jerks, I swear...
At least that probably isn't unique to a particular tradition. If anything (as far as a particular tradition) some Orthodox would be immune, as there are often no pews. ;)

But I've been in somewhat the reverse situation in different kinds of denominations - showing up early as a visitor and inadvertently taking "someone's seat". Sometimes it causes a bit of a stir.

I actually did once in my parish now - sat just inside next to the aisle in the last row next to the back door (VERY against my usual inclination of going up front). He didn't say anything to me, but there was an elderly gentleman who had sat in that spot for the past 60+ years, in order to help with the doors. He didn't know what to do with himself, and I didn't know until someone else who noticed mentioned it to me later.
 
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dzheremi

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At least that probably isn't unique to a particular tradition. If anything (as far as a particular tradition) some Orthodox would be immune, as there are often no pews. ;)

But I've been in somewhat the reverse situation in different kinds of denominations - showing up early as a visitor and inadvertently taking "someone's seat". Sometimes it causes a bit of a stir.

They did a whole episode about this on the cartoon show King of the Hill years ago. I like what the (Methodist) pastor lady said to Hank, the main character, when he came to her to complain about it (though her response eventually made him so mad that he left for a while to go 'church hopping', before returning by the end of the episode after realizing how foolish he had been): "This is God's house. Not mine, not yours. Let it go." From the mouths of cartoons!

Also it's always pretty fun to see religion handled in a funny but not mean way in any American media...

 
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They did a whole episode about this on the cartoon show King of the Hill years ago. I like what the (Methodist) pastor lady said to Hank, the main character, when he came to her to complain about it (though her response eventually made him so mad that he left for a while to go 'church hopping', before returning by the end of the episode after realizing how foolish he had been): "This is God's house. Not mine, not yours. Let it go." From the mouths of cartoons!

Also it's always pretty fun to see religion handled in a funny but not mean way in any American media...

Haha I like that little clip.
 
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