At 08:55 PM 10/24/2000 -0400, bklyn wrote: > Today I was at my FHC looking through the film of Church records for the >parish of Clonbroney, among others. I was amazed to find that the records >were written partly in Latin! Makes sense though, as another researcher >was looking up her Hungarian ancestor's church records, and they, too, were >in Latin--the language of the R.C. Church in days gone by. _________________________________ This may be your lucky day. I am a part of that R.C. Church in days gone by. I have both written and read records in latin. (Indeed, in our studies for the priesthood, we used to speak latin to eachother at all times: exempli gratia, "Please pass the salt." "He can really throw a fast ball!") If you need any help, let me know. The only trouble is with the poor copies of records, that are indiscernable -- but even then, some of the words can be intuited from the context. My cousin found a bunch of our ancestors in the Granard records, also. (Rev.) David Myers, S.J. Guadalupe, AZ >

David Myers wrote: (Indeed, in our studies for the priesthood, we used to speak latin to eachother at all times: exempli gratia, "Please pass the salt." "He can really throw a fast ball!") Indeed! For every Catholic priest you meet there are another three who went through part of the system. I was a Jesuit novice in Ireland in the early sixties (1962-64)and, like David, we had compulsory Latin conversation. "Ecce fratres, luna est alba, valde bona"*. I've never regretted my 20 months in the novitiate and reading early records and gravestones and records is a bonus to those strange times when we were isolated from all outside news. (In my second year of novitiate a new arrival tried to tell me - "There's this great group called The Beatles". Later in the same year Brother Yates broke the rule of silence to tell me as he stirred the porridge for breakfast: "They've shot Kennedy"!) Our regime in Ireland meant we not only had three conversation sessions a week in Latin but twice a week we had to speak Gaelic. "Agus, mo dhritheár, oiche mhaith atá ann"**. All of this a valuable part of education. If only I could convince my children.... (grin) Richard Callanan London, England. * * Behold, brothers, the moon is white - very good. * ** And brothers, it's a fine night.