Just back from the Palm Sunday liturgy. Every year I forget that half the church is full of people who don't otherwise go to Mass, and every year I forget that they will be there.Our pastorwelcomed them all, as he should have,at the end of Mass encouraging them to come more often...and of course they will on Holy Thursday and Easter... maybe Good Friday and next Christmas.So what's the problem? Or what's my problem? They don't know what to do or how to behave.Why are they there?So in a spirit of self-discipline and educating myself, two inquiries.1. Observations from or about people who only go tochurch on "high" holydays. Why?2. Observations from those who go all the time and have figured out what to do about the seldom-comers. Pray for them? Scowl at them when talking, carrying on, sitting so you can't kneel? ETC.? Admonish them? Welcome them? Go to an unpopulated church? Stay home?

Margaret O’Brien Steinfels is a former editor of Commonweal. 

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