The Mass of the People

Extract

As s Priest, with the small authority of a priest that can be humbly accepted by higher authority, or quietly ignored, I should like to submit proposals for the form our celebrating mass might now take. To suggest changes at all, without offence, is difficult. All likely readers of this page will know the mass as an important, cherished and familiar ceremony in its present form, with roots deep in feelings and imagination, the sense of history and art, one's Catholic upbringing and loyalty. A whole tissue of potent, unrealised emotion attaches to the tiniest details and circumstances, making us shudder to think of change for the sake of change, or of any 'Playing about'. Brother Choleric's tense, aristocratic, is intellectual nun, hands up in revulsion at the mention of dialogue mass, is so funny because so true—of us all.