It is First Communion time in Italy, that time of year when children dressed in traditional white robes or as little nuns and monks can be seen scampering around the piazza or outside the village church on Sundays.
Close at hand stand proud parents, concerned that the new outfit will not make it unsullied to the pasta course.
For, like every major event in Italian life, the celebration of First Communion is also marked by a lavish seven or eight-course spread, at home or in a restaurant. For years now, the Italian Bishops Conference regularly reminds parents that a Catholic child's First Communion does not have to be marked by lavish spending on either clothes or food.
The Bishops' Conference should know better. If there is one thing an Italian man understands only too well, it is that all major occasions, all rites of passage, be marked by a gathering around the dinner table. There is nothing that Italians do better, with more style, with more expertise or, indeed, with more heart.
And if you are going to invite people for dinner, then you have to put on a show, don't you? No, Brutta Figura, please.
For years now one has been a mere bystander at the First Communion ritual, marked only by the occasional invitation to attend the celebrations for friends' children. This year, however, Roisin is nine and she is making her First Communion.
We are, accordingly, called into the great Communion drama, admittedly in a bit-part role but one that is all the more interesting to these Northern Irish Presbyterian eyes.
When one writes "called in", one means just that. The English College in Rome, where Roisin will make her First Communion, believes that not only should the children be instructed in the ways of the faith but so also should the parents have a form of parallel catechism or Bible class.
The resultant parents' class provided not only much intellectual stimulus but also an unwitting insight into the strains and tensions within the outlying regions of the so-called Universal Church. The class was largely non-European, attended by parents from places as diverse as Haiti, Bangladesh, Malawi, Colombia and Australia.
When asked to recall memories of their own First Communion days, many of our fellow pupils were less than uncritical of their local churches. Jacques from Haiti told seemingly innocent stories of priests who would carefully check for late arrivals at Mass or for those whose enthusiasm for pre-church soccer had left them rather sleepy during the sermon.
Given that the Church grapevine passed on such reports, "culprits" were punished next day at school.
At first it sounded innocent, but the more Jacques talked about the church of his childhood in Haiti (30 or more years ago), the more he drew a portrait of a Catholic Church that was elitist, vindictive and always on the side of the rich.
Given that the Papal Nuncio to Haiti, Monsignor Giuseppe Leanza, and an assistant, Father Leon Kalenga, were hauled out of the Nunciature, stripped to their underpants and severely beaten during riots triggered by the 1990 presidential electoral success of then 37-year-old Salesian Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide, it would seem that Jacques was not alone in his negative view of the Haiti hierarchy.
Maggie from Malawi told us how there was trouble back home since all her family had been banned from attending church on Sundays because the girlfriend of one of her cousins had become pregnant, out of wedlock.
We suggested that she should take up the matter with her local bishop. No good, she protested, it was the local bishop whose idiosyncratic interpretation of Catholicism had resulted in the family-wide ban.
Given the involvement of bishops and priests in the Rwandan genocide of 1994, this particular bishop's eccentricities seem comparatively harmless.
Violet from Bangladesh (and others) spoke of the difficulties of life for Catholics in countries where Catholicism is a minority religion. That theme, too, was vividly and violently underlined just two weeks ago by the suicide of Bishop John Joseph of Faisalabad, a suicide intended to draw attention to the plight of Catholics oppressed by Islamic fundamentalism in Pakistan.
Discussion of parables such as the Prodigal Son and the Labourers in the Vineyard tended to produce uproar. Most parents reckoned the Prodigal Son deserved a clip on the ear while his brother had been unfairly dealt with. As for the idea that you get the same pay for one hour's work as for one day's, well, it only led to angry comments about the Church's view of social justice.
Curiously, however, and despite reservations about the sometimes seemingly lukewarm attitude of Rome and the Vatican to Third World martyrs (such as Archbishop Oscar Romero in El Salvador) and Third World liberation theologians (such as Leonardo Boff), no one wanted to pull out of either the Communion class or the Church itself.
In the developing world context, perhaps, the Catholic Church's preferential option for the poor (reiterated at last week's Synod on Asia) means rather more than we First-Worlders tend to believe.