all hoods make not monks

T: So who is Joseph, anyway?
A: What?
T: Joseph. You know, the guy with Mary.
A: What?
T: Is he her friend or something?
A: What?

I find Trent's complete lack of religious education mindboggling. But I love the perspective it gives me on the crazy ideas I've lived with all my life.

A: Joseph was Mary's husband.
T: Wait, she was married?!?! Then how did they know Jesus wasn't his kid?
A: Because she was a virgin.
T: The marriage was never consummated? And then she had a baby? Didn't Joseph have a problem with this?!?!

I wasn't at church on Christmas Eve with my parents this year, perhaps fortunately, but my sister tells me that when the priest made some comment during the homily along the lines of how generous it was that Joseph married Mary anyway, my mother let out an outraged "What?" loud enough for the people in the nearby pews to hear. And later she said something like "People actually believe this crap?" So I guess even people who lived with this stuff all their life can step back and be gobsmacked by it.

Apparently my family hadn't been to church in so long that one of my sisters said "Thank you" instead of "Amen" when she received Communion, and the other couldn't remember what she was supposed to say so she just mumbled something unintelligible. Fortunately the church was prepared for them, and had left pamphlets about lost Catholics coming back to the fold in all the pews.