PALM SUNDAY: One of the great things about Palm Sunday is seeing large numbers of people you didn’t know were Catholic because you haven’t seen them anywhere near the church since last Palm Sunday. It makes you think that if you can get people into church by offering free palm fronds then maybe attendance would really improve a hundred fold if the church offered something people really wanted like free oil changes or cigarettes at half price. The church could even rent space under the Stations of the Cross for a farmers’ market or let the local 4-H Club hold their meetings there; a Starbucks would work, too; that would bring in all those college students who need a quiet place to do their homework and a place to drink their decaffeinated triple mocha lattes, although they might object to Catholic ritual, what with all those people saying the same thing at the same time, and choirs singing loudly to an off key organ while they’re studying for midterms.

You can’t please everyone, I guess, but I think an ice cream parlor in a confessional would be a neat touch. You could go to the church on a Saturday afternoon for Confession and wait at the end of a long line of little kids getting ready for their First Holy Communion, and listen to them go in and ask the priest for absolution and a chocolate fudge swirl in a sugar cone with a lot of those great red and green sprinkles and chocolate syrup and whipped cream and a huge cherry on top. That’ll bring those Palm Sunday Catholics back to the church in droves, if I don’t miss my guess here. Their kids will torture them to go to church. Of course, by the time it’s your turn to go in and speak with the priest the chocolate will be all gone, and most of the sprinkles as well, but that’s not why you went to Confession, is it? You wanted walnuts and M & M's on your cone, didn't you?