I’m a romantic at heart and Scott Williams of Crofton, Md., recently made my day.
According to a Capital News Story distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services, Williams is frantically searching for someone who will give him two tickets to Thursday’s papal Mass at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C.
Williams said his girlfriend, who is completing her theology degree at Mt. St. Mary’s University, wants to attend the Mass and see Pope Benedict XVI.
Williams wants to propose to her, either at the Mass, or present them to her during his proposal beforehand — the wire story wasn’t clear about that.
One thing is clear – those papal Mass tickets are hot items.
Here’s the thing: It’s wrong to sell such tickets, according to the Archdiocese of Washington.
A spokesman for the archdiocese is quoted as saying a Roman Catholic Church Mass is considered a sacrament, and scalping the tickets (which were free, but in limited supply) is equivalent to selling a sacrament, which is forbidden according to church law.
This has not stopped some folks from trying to sell the tickets, though.
As of April 11, there were 28 “tickets wanted” posts in the Washington section of classified ad Web site Craigslist, with one post offering to sell, according to the Capital News Service story. The story went on to say that the Archdiocese of Washington had the site remove about 20 posts selling the tickets or passes.
Anyway, I’ll be curious about Williams and his proposal plans. Interestingly enough, Williams doesn’t want to buy the tickets since that’s wrong. He is proposing an in-kind exchange. He has information technology skills and is offering to fix a computer for someone who might want to give him two tickets to the Mass. Or he’ll even clean someone’s house.
People who want to help him are probably going to proceed with caution, according to the wire story. You see the tickets are the nontransferable property of the archdiocese and there is a designated process for assigning “unneeded” tickets.
The archdiocese spokeswoman said each ticket is seat-specific and bar coded so officials should be able to track who is supposed to be sitting in any given section. If archdiocese official see a seat or section number on sale, they can cancel that ticket or flag a row for monitering, the wire story said.
Imagine being pinpointed as an illegal ticket holder at the papal Mass –– beyond embarrassing!
The spokeswoman said 200,000 people applied for 46,000 passes and there are 10,000 people on the waiting list.
Romantic though he may be, Williams may wait in vain for these golden tickets.
Carla Hinton
Religion Editor
April 16th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Thanks for the kind words Carla.
A quick update: After spending the weekend contemplating my options, as it was pretty obvious that tickets were scarce, I decided to pop the question by showing her the Tivo’d ABC7 news article prior to the NBC Boston interview. She graciously accepted. Now that the cat was out the bag, I wasn’t planning on doing the interview with NBC, but they showed up anyway and surprised me with tickets to see the Pope on Thursday at Catholic U!!! I was in utter shock. A true blessing!!
The stars aligned and God sure does work in mysterious ways!!!
You can see the video here:
http://wn.whdh.com/global/video/popup/pop_playerLaunch.asp?clipId1=2384965&at1=Station+2&vt1=v&h1=On+eve+of+visit%2C+religious+leaders+and+others+say+Benedict+understands+US+culture+%2804%2F14%2F08%29&d1=150167&redirUrl=http://www.whdh.com&activePane=info&LaunchPageAdTag=homepage&clipFormat=