Pulled Over for Driving While Catholic

[DemBones DemBones]

Cops stopped my doctor's car on Ash Wednesday a few years ago because they wanted to know what he and his son had on their foreheads (ashes, of course!) and why the boy was wearing a white robe (because he'd just served as an altar boy at Mass and was going to pull off his robe and leave it in the car when his dad dropped him back at school.)

With the media doing stories about Ash Wednesday every year, you would think that people would know. . . but you would be wrong, of course.

But to be stopped by the police for having ashes on your foreheads??? (I doubt they could really see what the kid was wearing until they were leaning in the window. Good reason for tinted windows, avoiding being stopped by cops for wearing ashes on Ash Wednesday.

This was before 9/11, too.

[CBHagman]

1. Those cops don't get out much, do they?

Pretty much any city with a visible Catholic population has the annual march of office workers, retirees, and schoolchildren with smudged foreheads.

Years ago, I remember seeing Mark Shields do commentary (I think it was on The Newshour with Jim Lehrer) on the air while sporting that ash mark on his forehead.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. Ye cats and little fishes!

Where was this, Outer Mongolia? I remember the Catholic kids in my high school coming in late on Ash Wednesday with the ashes on their foreheads. I remember asking what was burned to make the ashes and being told it was the palms from last year's Palm Sunday, and thinking that was neat-a perpetuation of a ritual, as it were.