The sound escaped Leo's lips twice. "Aah," he said. And again. "Aah."

And that, apparently, was enough for the church usher, who tapped my wife on the shoulder and politely asked her to take the baby out of the main sanctuary. There were other places she could take Leo, our 7-month-old son, and still hear the sermon. If she wanted to see the sermon, she could take Leo to a room where the presentation was on closed-circuit TV.

My wife did not want to be separated from me or her two daughters, and none of us relished the idea of catching a church service on television after driving across the county to be in attendance. We came together to be part of the church community, together. But if the mere possibility that our baby might maybe cry at some point in the future was so intimidating that the threat had to be removed before the first howl, maybe this wasn’t the right church for our family.

I think many of us live in fragile little worlds whose walls can be shattered by an infant’s shriek. We are terrified at the thought that a baby will cry, and we will do whatever we can to avoid it if possible.

And sometimes we can’t. Like on an airplane or a bus. Or, to a lesser extent, at a supermarket or department store.

But what about church?

Now, let me set the scene here: the actual spoken part of the service had just started, preceded by a 30-minute musical performance by the worship team. During that half-hour, Leo could have screamed like a banshee under the care of an amateur acupuncturist, and no one would have noticed. Then the soft-spoken pastor came out and started talking.

We were seated in the back row, which is where parents with small children are asked to sit. I presumed this was so that if the child got loud, we would be close to the back door. That makes sense. Respectful parents can't just sit there as their babies scream their lungs out and expect other people to deal with it. If Leo had gotten loud, we were prepared to get up and walk out.

Maybe we have different definitions of "loud."

Leo did make those "aah" sounds. Was he about to go into a crying fit? We’ll never know.

Funny thing is, if Leo were a few years older and said "men" after saying "aah," no one would have batted an eyelash.

In any event, I don’t envy churches. I’ve been in some echo-chambers where a crying baby on one side resounds like Gilbert Gottfried with a megaphone on the other. So I can understand why some congregations go to the trouble of building rooms where parents can take their little screamers and not miss the whole church experience.

Some churches (wisely, in my opinion) have these rooms off the main sanctuary, separated by a pane of glass, with the sound of the sermon piped in via speakers. I kind of like that. We're not as enthusiastic about a separate room where we can watch the sermon on television. We can watch televangelists at home.

In any event, Leo did not cry as our family got up and left.

And neither did we.