(1) I need to just accept the fact that part of my Ash Wednesday penance is going to be having the sappy Catholic pop hymn that I dislike more than any other sappy Catholic pop hymn stuck in my head for much of the day. I refer, of course, to “Ashes.” I’m not going to say anything else about it, partly because I don’t need to encourage that side of myself and partly so that anyone not familiar with it can stay that way.
(2) The college campus where I work is located in the very most wealthy part of the city, and people who live in the area are often to be seen walking on the campus, which is very beautiful. Frequently they’re walking in the street—mostly affluent women who can afford to take an hour or two out of every day for keeping fit—and getting on the nerves of drivers, because they seem to think we should drive around them.
I confess to a prejudice against rich people. I further confess that it’s rooted in a sort of envy—not of their wealth itself, but of the freedom and assurance it gives them. It’s that assurance that makes their refusal to get out of the street annoying; they sometimes act as if they own the place, and we, the people who work there, are the intruders.
Mobile is unusual for the South in that a significant minority of its upper class is Catholic. Yesterday, at the noon Mass in the chapel, one of these well-to-do Catholic ladies sat down beside me: in early middle-age, with that indefinable look of being well-kept that rich women often have, thin as thread, dressed in an expensive-looking exercise suit and shoes and a cute little cap. I found myself thinking distinctly uncharitable thoughts about her, of which the general idea was “I thank thee, Lord, that I am not as this publican…”
Then she knelt and took out her copy of Magnificat.
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