Making the Baby Jesus Cry

About a month ago, I was invited to sing in a church choir for a special occasion. The choir director at this church knew of me through someone else and he was putting together a special choir for this special Sunday service. It made me feel very special so I agreed to do it.

The music was gorgeous -- a sixteenth century double-choir piece by Victoria and there were just 14 of us making up the double-choir.

Mind you, this church was a bit unusual. It was a Catholic parish that specialized in bringing back the old Latin Mass. (Tridentine Rite) All the priests and brothers there wore the old cassocks at all times, the women in the congregation had the lace shawls covering their heads and I got the feeling that for their parishioners, Vatican II was just a vicious rumor.

No problem. I’d seen all that before. I was there to make pretty music anyway.

I really really enjoyed the rehearsal and singing in this choir. Like I said, it was only for that special occasion but it made me want to be a part of the church again. I considered joining their choir on a regular basis.

Then, there was this notice in the church bulletin:

No Pepsi? What was that all about?

I assumed that maybe PepsiCo provided employee benefits that could be applied toward contraception or something like that. Conservative Catholics hate contraception.

Well, I googled it and it turns out that a number of right-wing Catholic organizations have indeed called for a boycott of all Pepsi products - - - are you ready for this?

. . . because PepsiCo includes the GLBT category in their new employee diversity sensitivity training (along with disability sensitivity training and a host of others).

These Catholic websites claimed that by doing so, Pepsi “promotes homosexuality in the workplace” and we should boycott all their products.

Now, how in the world does Pepsi promote homosexuality?

Does it happen like this? Two guys are watching football.

“Dude. There’s no way I could ever be gay. No way.”

“Me neither, man. No way.”

silence . . .

(slurrrp. Takes a sip of Pepsi.)

“Dude. You got any Judy Garland we could listen to?”

Yeah, I remember when we boycotted Florida orange juice because of the whole Anita Bryant thing, but this was a church that was calling for a boycott – simply because Pepsi was being inclusive.

Didn’t Jesus say, “Come unto me all who are burdened?”

Here, I was feeling all good about the possibility of singing in a church again and I came across this nonsense. (For a moment, I thought about joining anyway and bringing a big ol’ Pepsi to every rehearsal.)

But no, I’ll leave them alone. If they think that boycotting Pepsi brings them closer to the Risen Christ, fine. Frankly, it sounds pretty disaffected to me though.

I still want to sing in a church choir though. . . .

Yada-yada-yada, I’ll be singing in the choir at a nice Episcopalian church beginning next Sunday.
After all, Episcopalians don’t make the baby Jesus cry.