Are you wise or foolish?

I got up early this morning to go to Mass in the chapel here. It was quite an interesting experience.
There were 12 clergy. The presiding bishop didn't speak any French and the congregation no English, so they decided to try Latin from the missel for the liturgy and changed half way through to English.
I was a little shocked by the Latin - shocked too at how much I understood it - but apparently it was chosen because they thought it might be easier for most to understand it. However as it became obvious that no replies were coming back in Latin the presiding priest went into English.

So I come to a meeting on conversion and am confronted with language issues all the time!

How much is English the language of empire I wonder?

There were four Catholics in the congregation - 12 priests concelebrating and three non-Catholics from the meeting.

I am always surprised at how at home I feel in the liturgy of the Catholic mass - it seems quite familiar - and it is all the more dififcult to not be invited to communion - tha pain of disunity. It was however very clear this morning that the Church is male led!

I'm glad I went because of the chance to be still and pray and also the gospel reading was the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, that made me smile as I need to do some work on that passage for a session of my feminist theology group. It was good to hear the passage in a more liturgical setting.

More later.

We need to recover from a rather good French lunch by going back to the final session of introductions.