I can’t dream up a patristic connection for this, but that’s probably because I can’t stop laughing. I picked it up from a longer post on pirates at the ever-fascinating blog Aliens in This World. Maureen tells us of
a French missionary, Fr. Labat, who was captured by pirates and later wrote a memoir about it. It seems that the pirate Captain Daniels had an interesting way of enforcing reverence during Mass:
“When one of his men became offensive during the Elevation and swore, Daniels shot this crew member through the head and made an oath that to any other “who showed disrespect to the ‘Sainte Sacrifice,’ he would do the same too.’”
The only thing I can come up with is that in the Didascalia Apostolorum it says that during the Liturgy the deacons were responsible for making sure no one fell asleep or talked or laughed. Maybe we should arm our deacons with flintlock pistols and cutlasses! ;)
Around here it’s called the “ministry of hospitality.”