The Latin Mass is back en-Vogue

John Safran and I are on TripleJ this Sunday 9-11pm.

TripleJ is a national youth oriented radio station. Youth is from mid-teens to late 20's. I know these things because I had to ask, being 73 years and all that goes with that.

I'm telling you about TripleJ so you'll know what I, parish priest, Sts. Peter and Paul, South Melbourne, am up to and why.

I've got nothing for or against the music played on TripleJ. I'm musically neutral, I suppose.

Thank God for that because, as a Catholic priest, since 1953, when I started in the priest nursery, I've been bombarded by the results of the Vatican2 revolution in "Catholic" style.

That's all it was, by the way. A nip here a tuck there. Whatever makeover was necessary to present catholic "core business" as fit for public, secular consumption.

Church music became popularist in the 1960's because it had been exclusivist for centuries.

The "Masses" so often "oo'ed and ah'ed" over by concert goers and listeners to the ABC FM stations, were performance pieces for the ruling classes (including the senior clergy). The language was exclusivist, Latin, to remind lesser beings and nationalities that all roads lead to Rome.

Guess what? There's a revisionist plot on, right now, to restore Latin on demand. A Brisbane priest was quoted last week as praising the move back because he felt much more comfortable and spiritually refreshed if he had his back to the congregation and was the only one knowing what was being said! (Read article here on Latin Mass)

The musical style of a Cathedral or posh church, supportable by heaps of money, comforts upwardly socially mobile church goers.

Suburban and rural area churches make do with less. Which worship style creates/supports genuine parish centers, souls of their neighbourhoods, beacons of hope?

TripleJ music is only part of the Sunday Safran show.

This week we interview Stephen Mayne, Australian journalist and self-described/appointed shareholder activist who ran, unsuccessfully, as a People Power Party candidate in the Victorian election, 2006.

Then we have Dr Peter Lavelle, former GP and now Health Journalist with ABC Health Online..."Is religion good for your health?"

Older listeners will be interested, for personal reasons, in Sofia Stefanovic's review of the documentary film, "The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On", a brilliant exploration of memory and war guilt, a subject often ignored in modern Japan.

Next is Brother Ali, sight impaired and devout Muslim, raised by afro-americans Brother Ali is from a fairly legendary hip-hop crew called the Rhymesayers. Religion is a theme often mentioned by Ali in raps such as "Self taught" and "Victory".

Comments

[Dave Bath]

OK, it's not a Catholic mass, but a Protestant one - however, if I thought Bach's B minor mass (the music not the lyrics) was an accurate depiction of reality, I'd become a Christian in a flash (even if I didn't understand the text).

[Bronwyn]

In the Australian Jewish News there's discussion about what this return to Latin Mass means for Jews, in particular the prayer uttered on Good Friday praying for the conversion of Jews. http://www.ajn.com.au/news/news.asp?pgID=3670

[Anne Digges]

Well why stop at the Jews....we should be praying for the conversion of the Buddhists (moi? well kind of), the Anglicans, the Quakers basically anyone except Catholics.

Didn't B16 say something recently about Anglicans not being real believers or something?

Ecumenism anyone?

To me Ecumenism means (as Aretha Franklin said)R.E.S.P.E.C.T. It means an absence of arrogance. It means an acknowledgment that there are many ways to salvation and that the Catholic Church is but one.

Salvation/Peace is a big mountain able to be climbed from many directions and the destination is the same.

That is what I think anyway.

[Andrew]

A quite cheeky letter in the Age today, 17 July:

"Let's support the reintroduction of the Latin mass. Religion is much stronger when nobody knows what they are talking about."

[Dan]

Re: the conversion of the Jews, I don't beleive it is called for in the Latin Mass that will be allowed, it does however hope that they lead good lives... the text is not at my hands.

I'm a jesuit-educated young adult, by no means connected or sympathetic to those reactionary groups that have pushed most overtly for the reintroduction of the latin mass, but I do support its use. They are a loud minority of those who would make use of it.

For all those people whose grasp of a romantic language is better than their english, of which there are some in my family, and for those who are older and grew with the latin mass, it's often preferred. My limited experience of the latin mass is that i'd like to go once a month, especially if it's at a cathedral, because it is of a profound aesthetic force.

If there are many rooms in the lord's house, surely we can allow people to choose the language in which they hear the mass. We allow it in Australia in Chinese, Vietnamese, Italian, English... Latin should be added to the list. Otherwise, we deny the richness of our Catholic heritage.