Obedient to God or Man?

Lest you fear that priests are no longer preaching about mortal sin. Let me reassure you.

Fr. Tran:

Kneeling "is clearly rebellion, grave disobedience and mortal sin," Father Martin Tran, pastor at St. Mary's by the Sea, told his flock in a recent church bulletin. The Diocese of Orange backs Tran's anti-kneeling edict.

But the parishoners say:

Kneeling is an act of adoration. You almost automatically kneel because you're so used to it. Now the priest says we should stand, but we all just ignore him.

Judith M. Clark, 68

The Experts who you can always count on to get it wrong:

Because the earliest Christians viewed Jesus as God and man, Madden said, they generally stood during worship services to show reverence and equality. About the 7th century, however, Catholic theologians put more emphasis on Christ's divinity and introduced kneeling as the only appropriate posture at points in the Mass when God was believed to be present.

Things started to change in the 1960s, Madden said, when Vatican II began moving the church back to its earliest roots. What has ensued, he said, is the predictable struggle of an institution revising centuries of religious practices.

The heresy of antiquarianism trotted out so predictably to justify destroying people's faith.

I'm waiting for this one to go all the way to Rome.