At a dinner party this August, someone raised a question that surprised me. “What do you think about the restoration of the Latin Mass?”

As I recall, the questioner was not Catholic. However, I discovered long ago that what the pope says and does often attracts attention from huge numbers of people who do not belong to his church. In fact, sometimes the latter seem to attach more importance to him than do we Catholics.

In July, Benedict XVI, announced a change in the conditions under which priests are allowed to say the so-called Latin Mass. As of mid-September, they will no longer require the permission of their bishop to celebrate this liturgy in the Latin language.

This change, initiated by the pope, will presumably be welcome to people who long for the language and ritual of an earlier day. To have this older Mass close at hand will please those Catholics who are dissatisfied with the liturgy in use since 1965.

You might possibly expect me to be among those who welcome this revival. I do not. For me, it strikes a blow against the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

What that council accomplished in the years 1962 to 1965 transformed my inner and outer world. I felt overjoyed at the actions of the more than two thousand bishops who came to Rome from all over the world. With the positions they took on both church teaching and practical life, they brought the Catholic Church into the modern world.

Hearing Mass in English especially pleased me because it made the sacred words and actions more accessible to a far greater number of people. Like others around the world who now heard Mass in their own languages, we Americans could more easily grasp the meaning of what was said and done.

Mind you, I am not badmouthing what went before. The old liturgy also brought Catholics like me into vital contact with the beauty and mystery of our faith. And I had the advantage of having studied Latin for four years of high school so, from adolescence on, I could understand at least many of the words spoken ritually by the priest.

But I welcomed having the priest face the people instead of turning his back to us. I was glad to hear passages from the Hebrew Bible read aloud, along with a greater variety of selections from the New Testament. And it pleased me to see some basic parts of the Mass restored in keeping with what scholars had discovered about the liturgy of the early church.

Some critics of the Vatican II liturgy, then and now, make it seem a violation of tradition. However, they fail to recognize how it embodies parts of an earlier tradition, far older than the Latin Masses of my youth.

Many features of the Mass with which I grew up came from the Council of Trent. This 16th century gathering of bishops legislated a Mass that contained some features not as faithful to the older tradition as is the current post-1965 liturgy.

As a Catholic who has traveled widely since the middle sixties, I have taken part in the Mass in many different places. My impression is how well it usually works. Attenders answer the prayers much more actively than they did in the past.

I like to think my reaction to the Vatican’s recent action is representative of my age peers. No one knows for sure, of course, but I suspect that surveys would show Catholics of my age to be highly in favor of the Vatican II liturgy.

You will not find many of us elders wanting to return to the Mass as it was when we were growing up. Unlike some younger enthusiasts for the liturgy in use from the 16th century to the 1960s, we remember only too well how badly priests often carried out those rites.

The priests in my parish, in Belmont MA, admirable as they were in many other ways, used to mumble the Latin words. This made them unintelligible even if you knew that ancient language. I remember their liturgical style as an obstacle to full appreciation of the sacred actions.

In not clamoring for the Latin Mass, my Catholic age peers show how well they have adapted to social change. For the last 40 years we have felt comfortable in worshipping using liturgical forms different from what we knew before 1965. Only a statistically minute number of us have lobbied for the old approach.

Acceptance of this change, among many others, gives the lie to the widespread stereotype of people advanced in years being resistant to change of all sorts. Whether research supports this view I have been unable to discover, but I consider older Americans’ flexibility and adaptability to change quite remarkable.

Richard Griffin

Lunch with two favorite cousins has stirred in me recollections of family history that we all share.

Patricia, the older of the two was born in 1920. Though she does not think of herself as the family matriarch, her longevity clearly qualifies her as such.

For me, she holds special authority: she is the only person left in this world who can tell me about my mother in the days before her marriage to my father.

For her first five years, Patricia lived next door to my mother, her aunt, in Peabody, Massachusetts. Even when her family moved to the western part of the state, she stayed in touch with her.

The other cousin, Jean, had just celebrated her 79th birthday, a month before I will take note of mine. The two of us thus rank as other prime authorities on the history of our extended family. We are especially qualified to talk about Aunt Mary, a woman of loveable eccentricities, who doted on us both when we were children.

Like other relatives who come together too rarely, we began by exchanging photos. This proved an effective and enjoyable way of catching up with weddings, births, careers, deaths, and other sadder but significant events.

Among the photos, one merits special mention. Dating from the early 1990s, it shows Patricia’s mother who, at a great age, posed with her daughter, granddaughter, great-granddaughter, and great-great grandaughter. This image of five generations of women, old and young, will bear witness to gifts of longevity and fecundity bestowed on this family branch.

Another image that will linger with me was a photo of Patricia’s late husband Dick. Taken from an old-fashioned college yearbook page, it shows him in his Rutgers’ football uniform and listed his abundant accomplishments. He seemed to be All-Everything in his undergraduate days, before he became an officer in the U.S. Army during World War II. I came to know him well and always admired his robust good looks and engaging personality.

Some members of the next generation to ours have proven fabulously successful in highly lucrative careers. No one has ever accused me of success similar to that enjoyed by these nieces and nephews and second cousins. I rejoice in their good fortune while  hoping that it will not spoil them nor harm their personal relationships.

(If this last sentiment seems a bit moralistic and even patronizing, please attribute it to a genetic inheritance often attributed to my success-fearing Irish ancestors.)

The generation that comes next after mine and that of my two cousins has, of course, inherited many of our own traits. These younger relatives are sometimes easily recognizable as descendents of our parents.

However, we agreed on at least two major differences. First, marital break-ups are much more common in the younger generation than in our own. Patricia, Jean, and I attribute the difference to the power that the Catholic tradition of our family had over us. In this instance, that power produced mixed results.

When I was growing up, it was hard to find fellow Catholics who were divorced. Of course, there were not a few whose marriages had broken up, but they were regarded as exceptional. Both my cousins consider that to have been a dubious blessing because, in many instances, it kept together partners who should have split.

The other phenomenon that virtually every extended family now knows is gay and lesbian sexuality. My two cousins and I had similar experience growing up: we did not even know what homosexuality was. Until I reached my early 20s, I was unaware of its existence.

Now, I’m glad to report, members of my generation have accepted this fact of life readily. Those younger than we are find full acceptance much more gracefully than could have been imagined in the past.

Hearing of relatives who died young always brings special sadness. Why, one must ask, were they singled out for short lives when the family has produced so many who lived to be old? I continue to mourn those who departed prematurely and the parents who lost them.

When Patricia greeted me on this occasion, she immediately remarked on my white hair. She claimed it becomes me but one has to wonder if that is what she really thought. Instead, she might have felt the shock that nearly everyone experiences when they encounter someone they have not seen for a while.

“My word, you do look old,” she may have said to herself. This sentiment readily comes to mind when the person you see is someone that you have always thought much younger than yourself, ─ even he or she, if they last long enough, seems at a far remove from the youthfulness you remember.

When lunch was over, we lingered longer, reluctant to give up talk about family matters. However, the time came to leave and we departed, not without the customary assurances of doing this more often.

Richard Griffin

The cardinal has perched on our fence post, cocking his head as if to take the measure of this new site. The click of his claws on the wooden platform can be heard as he twists his body around too.

Then this splendid bird hops down the walk leading to our front porch before stopping to admire our minimal garden. Apparently, no worms or other delicacies are at beak, so he soon flies back to a branch on the other side of our small street.

There he can resume the call that so characterizes his stay in the neighborhood. Almost every spring and summer morning has begun with his distinctive song, a signal that he is very much there.

This call begins with two piercing whistles and then, in rapid succession, come ten other short bursts, almost too fast to count. The bird then repeats this formula over and over so long as he remains on one perch.

How he gets such volume and resonance from his narrow throat amazes me. Apparently this bird has taken seriously the standard advice of voice teachers, who will tell you to use your diaphragm to unlock the power of your speaking and singing potential. As one who has failed to internalize this advice, I stand in envy of what the cardinal achieves over and over.

What made his foray on to our walkway notable was its uniqueness. Never before, in my experience, had this bird, or any other members of the cardinal family, ventured to come so close to humanity. I was sitting on our small front porch all the while, enjoying this unprecedented opportunity to observe him up close.

Of course, the brilliance of his plumage was his most striking feature. That red, so resplendent and magnetic to the onlooker, fascinates me at every sighting. From my own perch on the porch, I gazed on this cardinal while wondering what life for him feels like to him.

What must it be to outshine in brilliance almost all others of his ilk? The cardinal makes the other neighborhood birds seem awfully dull. How can they tolerate being so dominated in color?

Perhaps those of us who are ecclesiastically involved can judge by encounters with cardinals of the church. You may  think it foolish to walk around swathed in red robes or, alternatively, you can perhaps envy those who look so much more splendid rather than the rest of us.

But back to our bird. Long ago I learned that what most animals do most of the time is think about how to get food. A daily existence that looks glamorous to us, flying around the place at will and singing their hearts out, is most likely not romantic but highly pragmatic. They have mouths to feed, their own and others’, and they have to stay in contact with family members.

And those songs they sing, though pleasing to us, are probably not a matter of pleasure to them. Instead, like an ambitious human soprano or tenor who is trying to make the big time, birds are undoubtedly singing out of need rather than fun.

But I prefer to focus on their beauty and grace. To me, their inner lives are material for fantasy and contemplation.

The cardinal who approached me seemed to be striking up a friendship. Tentatively, he was trying out what it might be like to spend time near a human being. Without the security of the high wire and the tree branches on which he had been resting, he was now exploring new territory.

Though I regard myself as rather reliable, the cardinal had no assurance of that fact. He was taking a chance on this one human that I would welcome his foray into my territory. His silence during this adventure counts as a clear sign of his inner anxiety. That was not a situation that merited music.

My hope is that he will make a habit out of visiting our yard. If we can convince him of a safe and welcoming reception every time he comes, the visit could become a neighborhood amenity.

Yes, I want to see and hear him perched high on our telephone wires and amid the branches of our tall trees. But I crave more frequent intimacy with this dazzling creature of the skies. Is a close personal relationship in our future?

Today, I don’t hear my favorite bird. Perhaps he has gone in search of a more lively neighborhood than ours. But I don’t believe he will forsake us for long. He must know by now how much he assures us of the lasting beauty of the world despite the damages constantly inflicted on it.

Ah, the simple pleasures of an aging guy who loves sitting on his porch while persisting in contemplating the world and its wonders, especially when those wonders come to his doorstep.

Richard Griffin

“Fly me to the moon” went the words in the days when the command was still a metaphor and the space program only a possibility. The year 1954 brought this song into epidemic popularity in its most famous version by Frank Sinatra.     

If, by the way, you want to hear the whole song sung by the master, tap into YouTube.com. I count myself among the latecomers to this often fabulous web site: for this column, it helped me to hear and see some singers who were celebrated in the past and still loved now.

The Fly Me song has an honored place in what has come to be called “The Great American Songbook.” This catch-all term includes different types of popular music written in the four decades beginning with 1920 and ending with the Beatles in the middle 1960s.

This music has such variety and quality that it will never die. Those of my age peers who are addicted to show tunes, jazz, and other stuff can be assured of its continuing vitality. It rates as a distinctive cultural achievement for which America can justifiably feel proud.

Last week my pleasure in the Songbook grew richer with a performance by the Boston Musical Theater. This group of two fine singers and a highly accomplished trio of instrumentalists is managed and directed by Newton resident Charlotte Kaufman, herself a musician, who founded the ensemble in 1976.

The performance took place in the Regattabar of the Charles Hotel in Cambridge. It was a reprise of their recent gig at Lexington’s National Heritage Museum. They perform at other Boston area sites and elsewhere. Information about the Theater can be readily obtained at (617) 327-2433 or at
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
.

The roster of performers offered homage to the many greats whose first names evoke wonderful memories ─  Frank, Ella, Bing ─ and the underated but superb Bobby Darin.

The composers, cited by last names, included Gershwin, Weill, and Arlen. My favorite, Cole Porter, was not among them; he rates another occasion all to himself.

Cole reminds me of the very English Noël Coward, a similarly witty and somewhat effete composer whose music the American Repertory Theater recently featured in a rich and hilarious show. I saw it in the same week as the BMT performance, experiencing a healthy brew of twentieth-century music.

To hear this music is to recognize the importance of style. The BMT’s David Ripley, a base-baritone with a remarkable voice, is a master of mood, tempo, and the effortless empathy that evokes the great performers of our youth

Though Kurt Weill’s “Mack the Knife” does not immediately come to mind as an example of American music, it proved an ideal piece for Ripley. He sang it first in clear and credible German and then in English, all with an acute sense of its sinister rhythms.

Ripley’s fellow vocalist, the soprano Mara Bonde, for me ranks among the most charming of singers and full of talent as well. Early in the program, she captivated her audience with her rendition of “Beyond the Sea,” as Bobby Darin used to sing it in the 1950s.

She gave special relish to this piece by first singing it in French, in the yearning evocative style of its composer, Charles Trenet. Then, in a change of language, rhythm and outlook, she segued into the Darin style that many Americans remember.

Material from the Broadway theater did not loom large in the revue. Bonde, however, did sing “Hey There” from The Pajama Game. I would have preferred to hear Ripley sing that one because it was originally performed by the male lead, John Raitt, who made it the hit of the show.

However, I was delighted to hear Bonde “swing on a star,” as she performed the song made famous by Bing Crosby in the 1944 hit movie Going My Way. Bing played a young priest, and the great Barry Fitzgerald an old one; their take on the priesthood was light-hearted and droll, and they charmed many movie goers including me.

I’m not as sharply attuned to the great songbook as many readers will be. That’s because, during the heyday of the genre, I was pursuing reality in monastic seclusion. Gregorian chant and other classical forms comprised my musical diet, rather than the popular stuff that was entertaining so many friends outside the walls.

But I love listening to Songbook music well performed. And I must confess that I enjoy my own clandestine piano playing, usually accomplished when no one else is at home and at low volume for fear of putting the neighbors at esthetic risk. My childhood piano lessons ─ which were certainly not my idea ─ continue to produce a paradoxical pleasure.

My addiction to opera and other classical music continues to reign supreme in my enjoyment of musical art. Fortunately, however, you can relish both the pop and classical genres; in fact, I would feel deprived not to have access to both. They count as one of the graces of later life.

Richard Griffin

“We should have had Negro players in 1839, at the beginning of baseball.” This was the answer given by the great Cleveland Indians pitcher Bob Feller when someone  asked him last week in Cooperstown  about his first black teammate.

Feller’s response made me feel admiration for this 83-year-old member of baseball’s Hall of Fame. So, of course, does his great career that began in 1936 when he was only 17. He still finds prideful satisfaction in remaining the youngest pitcher ever to win a big league game.

Another point of pride is his service in the navy during World War II: he boasts of having been a crew member of the battleship Alabama for 34 months and crossing the equator some 38 times.

For me, a first-time visitor to the baseball shrine that is Cooperstown, New York, contact with the greats of major league history stirred nostalgia.  Getting the chance to talk with Bob Feller had special impact on me as a longtime fan. After all, my father took me to games at Fenway Park more than 60 years ago, before I reached my teens.

I recall seeing Bob Feller pitch against the Red Sox more than once in the late 1930s.  His fast ball was already legend, though he now says it took him three years “to learn to pitch.” He did indeed seem to have learned something by 1940, when his record was 27 and 11, with 31 complete games!

Approaching this boyhood idol, I asked him about pitching at Fenway.  He told me about finding the pitcher’s mound different from that in other stadiums and a difficult height. He also felt it to be a challenge to face formidable hitters like Jimmy Foxx, to whom he would sometimes throw pitches sidearm. He denies having feared the close left field wall, and says he worried more about the power alley in left center.

As I studied the face of this octogenarian, I could still see that of the boy who faced the Red Sox so long ago.  His face now is broader and marked by the years, but its basic structure allowed me to connect him with that Iowa farm boy in an Indians uniform. Yes, this is the same person who achieved so many victories in his baseball career and who has lived so many decades since putting away the uniform.

Another great player whom I talked with at Cooperstown belongs to a different generation and remains under a cloud of disrepute. Pete Rose holds the record of the most hits in one career, but still has not been admitted to the Hall of Fame because of the charge that he bet on games. Many of the fans who came to Cooperstown last week did not seem to care: they lined up at a Main Street store to have him autograph balls at 40 dollars a pop.

Pete Rose impressed me as a feisty, defiant sort of guy. I did not want to test his combativeness, however, since he was eating lunch with friends. Avoiding touchy subjects, I asked him about his Cincinnati Reds champion team, whether they were the best ever. The furthest he would go was to call them “the most entertaining.”

I also asked what it was like to play in the famous sixth game at Fenway against the Red Sox in the 1975 World Series. He admitted it was a great game and recalls watching Carleton Fisk’s celebrated home run sailing over his head at third base. “As Fisk was waving the ball to make it stay fair, I was waving it in the opposite direction to make it go foul,” he recalled smilingly.

The third baseball great I had the chance to question is the only player to be inducted into the Hall of Fame this year, Ozzie Smith. This famous shortstop turns out to be an awfully nice guy, handsome, well-spoken, and respectful of other people, even members of the press. Ozzie retired only six years ago and thus represents the newest generation to be enshrined in Cooperstown.

I asked him about the advantages of remaining with the same team. He feels happy about having spent most of his career with the St. Louis Cardinals, playing for an organization and for fans that valued him both as a player and as a person.

I also wondered what his plans are for the rest of his life. In baseball, people judge time differently from those in the real world. “I just feel blessed to have the longevity to have played so long,” he says of his 20 years as a pro.

Only 48 now, he presumably will live for decades longer. His answer suggests that he does not have a clear game plan for the coming years. “I’m just kind of floating right now,” he said, while indicating his interest in a possible movie career.

Three famous players, three different generations, three different marks on baseball – – it all made for a scene of fascination for this veteran fan.

Richard Griffin

When I was a boy, the place where I most wanted to go was New York City. Rare, however, were my actual visits to this fabulous site. My parents were busy, I was the oldest of six children (eventually), and getting there over the roads then available required patience.

My parents took me there for the first time in 1939 when I was 11 years old. Accepting an invitation from my mother’s dear friend Margaret, we stayed at her apartment at 28 East 10th Street, an address I still hold in veneration for her having lived there.

The highlight of that visit was not seeing the awesome Empire State Building for the first time, but rather being taken to a radio show. The famous program that I saw live, Information Please, then ranked as one of the most popular in America.

Its genius lay in combining highbrow culture with a style that attracted many listeners of ordinary sophistication. A prime source of its success was its soliciting questions from people who responded to a challenge to “stump the experts.”

Starting in 1938, the program stayed on the air until 1952.

In a thank-you letter to our hostess a few weeks after my visit, I expressed my appreciation for getting to the program. “Some people wait many weeks for tickets,” I wrote, “so I felt very priveliged (sic) to be there and in the first row too.”

I also told her how “the theacher (sic) selected the best oral composition last week for the school radio.” She chose mine as one of the eight best.

Margaret, or Peg as we called her, must have returned the letter at some point because it has been handed down in family archives. It does not demonstrate much prowess in spelling but otherwise shows some promise in its epistolary style.

The Information Please panelists included three men, all of them well established as cultural figures. Franklin P. Adams, a man of wit often referred to familiarly as FPA, wrote a popular column for the New York Post.

John Kieran, by trade a sports writer for the New York Times, ranged far beyond sports in his knowledge of literature and other fields.

The third panelist was Oscar Levant, primarily a classical pianist but also a person of broad cultural knowledge. In addition, he excelled as a quipster.

Serving as moderator, Clifton Fadiman, the book editor of the New Yorker, brought to the radio show the sophistication of a highly educated person along with much charm.

Fadiman is the reason why I am writing today’s column. Recently I had occasion to hear his daughter, Anne Fadiman, read from her most recent book of essays and talk about herself as a writer.

During the question period, I seized the opportunity to tell her about seeing her father on that long-ago visit to New York. I also asked her what influence he had on her writing career.

In response, she told me and the audience that her father had a strong impact on her essays. This happened indirectly through witty family conversations that featured puns, clerihews, and other word play. Her mother was a distinguished foreign correspondent whose influence Anne still feels in the reportage element of her essays.

Clerihews, by the way, are four-line poems that feature the name of a well-known person and then finish with a witty assertion.  

An example of this form follows:  

Sir Christopher Wren
Said “I am going to dine with some men.
If anybody calls
Say I am designing St. Paul’s.”

The above four lines were written by Edmund Clerihew Bentley, a British man of letters who lived from 1875 to 1956. He invented this form, and named it after himself..

Given the skills of Anne as one of America’s best essayists, one can easily envision the Fadiman dinner table alive with word playfulness of this sort. Having watched her father lead Information Please, some 70 years ago, I felt a connection with his daughter.

Information Please continues to hold a hallowed place in my memory along with some of the other radio programs my maternal grandmother used to be addicted to. When I would stay with her in Peabody, she let me listen with her to Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons; Major Bowes’s Amateur Hour; and A. L. Alexander’s Mediation Board.

These programs did not have the cachet of Information Please but they contributed to my boyhood fantasies about a life wider than my own. It fascinated me to discover that my grandmother, a woman of serious piety among other things, would take such an interest in these somewhat hokey programs.

Information Please wore out its radio welcome in 1952. It was tried as a television show but, in that format, failed to attract a wide audience. To me, however, it remains a loveable cultural monument.

Richard Griffin