How? The old way, letting the priest do what he had to do while I meditated and communed, privately.

That’s how I put it on a December Friday.

It was the nearest thing to heresy you could come up with in those days. But it was that or lose out as far as churchgoing was concerned. Like so now.

There was too much going on at mass. Priest in my face all the time, mumbling or orating, performing, always as if I had no resources and he alone could provide them for me. Ditto.

The various songsters with hand raised at prescribed moments, as if hailing a taxi. Plus announcers, of all things worshipful or presumably so. Same.

I tuned it out, reading St. Paul or Gospels or other New Testament passages or Psalms.

Old Religion was the only religion that kept me focused on things spiritual and my duty to love my neighbor, including those whose hand I did not clasp at mass, do good to them that hurt me, etc., as I learned long ago before the Pope of Rome took pot shots at capitalism.

Such was the age we lived in! And do.