[ Thomasin, despite her words, does come to the playground and observe church. She does not accept communion; the Lord's supper is meant only to be taken once or twice a year. She does not pray out loud, and she also does not do a reading, for obvious reasons! But she sits quietly, her eyes sometimes on Jeanne but most often fixed on the great grey blank of a sky, and either prays or thinks very, very hard.
This is the great evil every adult she knows has loathed with all their souls. It was the closeness of the King's church to this rank popery that sent them travelling across the ocean; it was the closeness of the New World's church to the King's that had them banished from the plantation. But in the end, her knowledge of what the church of Rome entails has little to do with what factually happens, and everything to do with the denunciations she's heard since she could comprehend at all. To see it, even in an approximation without a priest of any kind...
It is strange. It differs greatly from the true religion, of course, and there is more ritual, more repetition, but it does not repel her as it should. Perhaps in a great church, full of false idols and painted saints, the idea would turn her stomach more. It is still a sign of her spiritual incontinence, that she would come in the first place, but it is no matter.
After the gathering breaks up, she sticks around for a little while. When she thinks she is alone, she ventures a quiet prayer of her own, standing by the fence with her hands knotted tightly together. ]
Our Father which art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done even in earth, as it is in Heaven...
[ And so on and so forth! It sounds like she's said this iteration of the Lord's prayer a thousand times, because she has, but there's a certain waver in her voice. It is almost as though, after going to mass, she expects herself to fail the recitation. ]
do i have to slap a content warning up here for like, anticatholicism circa 1630 lmao ANYWAY
This is the great evil every adult she knows has loathed with all their souls. It was the closeness of the King's church to this rank popery that sent them travelling across the ocean; it was the closeness of the New World's church to the King's that had them banished from the plantation. But in the end, her knowledge of what the church of Rome entails has little to do with what factually happens, and everything to do with the denunciations she's heard since she could comprehend at all. To see it, even in an approximation without a priest of any kind...
It is strange. It differs greatly from the true religion, of course, and there is more ritual, more repetition, but it does not repel her as it should. Perhaps in a great church, full of false idols and painted saints, the idea would turn her stomach more. It is still a sign of her spiritual incontinence, that she would come in the first place, but it is no matter.
After the gathering breaks up, she sticks around for a little while. When she thinks she is alone, she ventures a quiet prayer of her own, standing by the fence with her hands knotted tightly together. ]
Our Father which art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done even in earth, as it is in Heaven...
[ And so on and so forth! It sounds like she's said this iteration of the Lord's prayer a thousand times, because she has, but there's a certain waver in her voice. It is almost as though, after going to mass, she expects herself to fail the recitation. ]