But I have to pull these two conjoined comments from the Corpus Christi thread, for your attention and discussion:

It was the monthly celebration of the Feast of Our Lady of Great Chaos, or the bilingual Mass.

I’m sorry but I really was disengaged there. Can’t recall much about the homily. Wife was not feeling well so I went alone (we hadn’t been at the home parish in the previous 2 wks because of travel).

Things I did notice:

How to make "I Am the Bread of Life" even worse? Add a Spanish text for some of the verses! All contemporary music, mostly awful. How awful? "One Bread, One Body" in 2 languages was the artistic high point.

A truly bilingual Mass wouldn’t have, as we do, one reading in English, one in Spanish, and then the gospel in English. It’d be done in an interlinear manner, the way you hear rabbis translate the Hebrew as they go along, like this:

"Baruch at’ah Adonai el-ahany melech ha-alaum; Blessed are you, Lord, ruler of the universe!"

Posted by: RP Burke at Jun 19, 2006 2:16:49 PM

St. Thomas of Canterbury
Chicago, IL

On a normal Sunday, this parish in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood has Mass in three languages (English, Spanish, and Vietnamese) and occasionally will also have Sunday Masses in Eritrean and Lao.

On the feast of Corpus Christi, however, there is only one Mass, and parishioners are encouraged to dress in traditional ethnic garb, if they so choose.

At yesteday’s Mass, most of the proper parts of the Mass were sung/chanted in Greek or Latin.

During the Kyrie, I was nearly moved to tears. Many in the congregation normally attend Mass in another language, and many don’t speak much English at all.

But everybody, regardless of native language, knew the words to the Kyrie, the Sanctus, and the Pater Noster.

Whoever said Catholics can’t sing?

During the neighborhood procession that followed, some of the faithful carried the Vatican flag, the American flag, as well as numerous countries’ flags representing parishioners’ various countries of origin.

The neighborhood itself is undergoing gentrification. Its population is a mixed bag of yuppies, halfway house residents, and working-class southeast Asians (mostly from Cambodia).

A lot of people stopped and stared at us quizzically, and one lady even asked one of the ushers, "What’s the parade for?" (He did his best to explain what we were doing.)

All in all, a beautiful experience.

Posted by: John at Jun 19, 2006 2:17:45 PM