PowerPoint-Karaoke, the Clerical Way

In my line of work, I've experienced my fair share of PowerPoint-Karaoke, where the presenter either did not have the time to rehearse or just couldn't be bothered to take a look at the slides before.

This morning, I encountered this awkward phenomenon in a different context. 

I had decided to accompany my mother to mass.  As usual, we arrived fashionably late and sat down in the last pew. Since I'm not exactly a regular, I did not even notice that it wasn't the parish's regular priest, but a substitute. We arrived halfway through the sermon, which was basically a rant against reformist tendencies in the Catholic Church. Mum nudged me and whispered, "Just as well we didn't arrive earlier...". After a while, people started rummaging in their bags and taking out money for the collection. Except, none came. "Are they not collecting today, or what?" the lady in front of us asked her neighbour. "Well, the sacristan has been doing her job for two years now, you'd think she'd know her cue", the lady in front of her who had just belted out a hymn at the top of her lungs remarked sotto voce.

People began whispering. Soon, it was time to file up for communion and everyone realised that the moment had passed. Some dropped the coins into the candle box on the way back from the altar. The elderly ladies in our section continued to bitch about the unorthodox turn this mass was taking. One took pity on the priest, "Well it's not that easy to find your way when you're new, is it?". The priest must have begun to sense the unease and mutterings and began to stumble over his "script" like a confused tv presenter. When it was time for the announcements at the end of the mass, the deacon - a regular of the show - likewise got stuck at every other sentence that was interspersed with increasingly long silences and I got the impression that he was trying to decipher someone else's illegible handwriting. By the time he finished with an awkward "...well, that's what it says here", Mum and I couldn't stifle our giggles any longer. As tomorrow is the first anniversary of my granny's death, we likewise dropped the change "saved" from the collection that never was into the candle box and lit two candles in her memory. 

When we stepped out of the church, the greater part of the congregation was standing around in little groups, all muttering about the badly rehearsed play they had just experienced. Well, at least it had been free of charge (if you don't count church tax, that is).