WashPost Article on Latino Catholics

This article is a decent jumping off point for one of my most serious gripes about our time in Costa Rica. My friends were begging and pleading with me not to blog this, but this blog is all about cultural differences (well, once in a while) and they don't read my blog anyway.


I was really looking forward to going to Mass during Holy Week in CR, because of my other experiences with Mass in Spanish. Yes, the music is always awful, and by that I usually mean that they sing the same 5 songs ever time and the music is led by some woman with a strangly high, slightly off-key, drony voice, but I am often really touched by the piety I have seen among members of the Latino community. (I, according to the linked article, have apparantly also only been to the "old-fashioned" Spanish Mass.)

And Holy Thursday was that way. The homily was very, very long, but it was good. I knew the songs - as I said, it's the same 5 ones. Altough it's the one night of the year we are supposed to get to sing in Latin - no dice. Why is it that I know so many more English speakers comfortable with Latin than Spanish speakers. (They have higher literacy rates in Latin America and a much smaller step from Spanish to Latin than from English. Why is this so difficult?)



But then there was the Easter Vigil. I have no problem (ok - less problem) with exhuberance in music. I went to prayer group with BAC friends in college. Praise music is fine I have no problem even with clapping or quite honestly with the charasmatic movement - it's just not my box of cookies, but I want to notice the difference between the music in church and what they are playing in the bar, and when they are both backed by a cheesy synth salsa beat, I can't. And "This is our culture." isn't going to cut it with me if 1/3 of the pieces are rewritten (does one say - African American (?)) Spirituals or ($%&§!) the Our Father set to "The Sound of Silence". As all of those were composed by people from my country, it's far more my heritage than theirs.

end Rant part I

Coming in Part II "Animators" and why they have no place at a Mass which runs 2 hours even without them.

Part III - more Animator reflections - "Does injuring people who push the length of the Mass to 3.5 hours unneccisarily constitute a corporal work of mercy?"