‘What’s the point of X-Y-Z?’ by Donal Kennedy

I was a few weeks in London and had decided that Cockney speech was the most ‘orrible sahnd wot hever hemanated from hanimal  horiface and once a week was consoled by

a blessed half hour or so at a Latin Mass. I felt at home there, as I still do in the embrace of the Catholic Church,  the greatest collection of sinners you could meet. And then the

liturgy was translated into English. The Church of England adopted an English Liturgy when that language was at its most powerful and beautiful, but I was not enamoured with

the new rite particularly when zitty yoof with guitars and all the musical art of a Cliff Richard or a Rolf Harris strutted their guff before the altar. And then many of the churches

had their sltars stripped. What had the Council been smoking – Pol Pot?

And then they laid the Holy Ghost and de-Anglicised and Latinised it as The Holy Spirit. What blessed inconsistency and incoherence.  Those of us brought up with the Latin

liturgy could get Missals with Latin side by side with a language of their choice. My father, who liked to keep in touch with the French he’d learned from his teacher parents

had a Latin/French Missal, and my elder Brother a Latin/Irish one.

When holidaying on the continent which I do frequently, I delight in worshipping in old or even ancient churches, for very few Catholic churches in these islands are even 200

years old. During the Penal Days when Mass was celebrated in nooks and crannies or on a rock on a hill or in a glen, students for the priesthood smuggled out to Salamanca,

Paris, Louvain, Prague and Rome must have been awed by the beauty of their churches, but familiar with the liturgical language common to them. Today I’m at a loss in

such places because I can’t speak or read their languages.

For my sins, and they must have been many and grievous, I spent two years in a boarding school run by the Holy Ghost Fathers – Congregatio Sancti Spiritus, shortened

to C.S.Sp. which we translated as “Cigarette Smoking Strictly Prohibited.” Nowadays they call themselves “Spiritans” like some patent carpet cleaner or quack medicine.

They were a fine body of men and damned good rugby players. I don’t know what got into them.

A few years ago, with my long-suffering English wife, I holidayed in Connemara and went to Sunday Mass in Spiddal, the capital of that Gaeltacht, expecting to worship in

the vernacular. For some perverse reason the Mass was in Sacs-Beurla (literally the twittering of Saxons) the Second Official Language of the State. After reading the Good News

of the Gospel, instead of a sermon the priest gave evidence of his crisis of faith and apparent despair. If he’d done so in Irish, like Mary Kate Danaher’s confession to Father

Lonergan in THE QUIET MAN, his shame would be kept in the immediate neighbourhood, but to tell the World and my Lancashire Catholic wife (Anthem: “Faith Of Our Fathers”)

was letting the side down.

These are, you’ll recognise, the meanderings of a man past his prime, who needs to get up at least once a night and sometimes wears hearing aids, and sometimes, for

greater convenience, does not.

 David Lodge, an English Catholic whose earliest novels, such as “THE BRITISH MUSEUM IS FALLING DOWN” and “HOW FAR CAN YOU GO”  briliantly and wittily

explored moral dilemmas and scruples unintelligible  to Catholics now under 50, wrote about losing one’s hearing in “DEAF SENTENCE” . (He also wrote “GINGER YOU’RE
BARMY” about National Service, in which the only sympathetic character was a conscript from an Irish family, who helped the IRA.) But that’s another story. When one’s

hearing starts failing, one hears vowels clearly but cannot distinguish consonants so well.

It seems our Irish-speaking ancestors understood this very well. My late father learned enough Irish for his Matric in 1919 but remembered little of it. But he told a joke in

Irish he’d heard from a friend which I recognised as very funny at the time, and only appreciated its scientific accuracy when I read David Lodge.

A farmer in his 70s took a bride of 20. He sought advice from an Oracle in Lisdoonvarna on the prudent fulfilment of his duties.All  as Gaeilge. The Oracle advised –

“Dha uair sa MHI agus mi gan TADA.”   “Wha?” went the Greybeard, not once, but several times, and the Oracle repeated his prescription just as often. Finallly

his Bride shouted in his ear – “DHA UAIR SAN OICHE – AGUS ARIS AR MAIDIN!”

I’ll bet she wasn’t long in inheriting the farm.