Applause....I know, I know..........

[Hitch]

Perhaps one could sit with thumbs aloft?

Hiya Hitch,

Well done! That's the answer! Why didn't anyone else think of it.

Allow me to applaud your post:

[P. G. Tipps]

Well, I admire the confidence of the assertion, but perhaps you might care to give some concrete examples, because, aside from being a rather silly generalisation, it has not been the experience of this (albeit flaky) catholic.

Correct ... Jean's assertion is a huge and misleading generalisation.

The Catholic Church is the largest and most widespread organisation in the world and the world contains many different practices and cultures and the Church is not immune to these differences and indeed positively embraces them, it would be somewhat self-defeating if it didn't?

Clapping in church was certainly not the 'done thing' in the Scotland of my youth. In Latin countries natural exuberance in church always fascinated we holidaying Catholics in Spain, Italy and elsewhere and some of us rather liked it. For these Catholics going to Church was as natural as going to the shops or visiting relatives, and not a weekly 'chore' as often seemed the case in stuffy old UK.

Of course Liverpudlians are also noted for their natural exuberance ...

[jean]

My post wasn't any kind of generalisation at all, but a statement of fact, and in particular a reply to S-A. The fact is that whatever they did in Scotland half a century ago, Catholics do now applaud in church. I repeat here my reply to SHB:

Well, I admire the confidence of the assertion, but perhaps you might care to give some concrete examples, because, aside from being a rather silly generalisation, it has not been the experience of this (albeit flaky) catholic.

Catholics applaud particular events and and people - not at every Mass by any means, but when there's something noteworthy to celebrate. And Anglicans used not to (though I think they do it more now). I remember that the first time the Archbishop of Canterbury attended Westminster Cathedral there was applause, which brought the two traditions into collision

S-A has noticed Catholic practice too, and I'm sure you wouldn't call him 'silly':

...applause I have noted in Roman Catholic services in churches, cathedrals or from the balcony of the Vatican when crowds are addressed in word and music by the Pope...

But they don't applaud the music sung in the course of the Mass, which was my main point.

.

[jean]

...In Latin countries natural exuberance in church always fascinated we holidaying Catholics in Spain, Italy and elsewhere...

That English teacher of yours has a lot to answer for...

[MrGongGong]

But they don't applaud the music sung in the course of the Mass, which was my main point.

I think you win the prize for non sequitur of the day.

Guess what?

The RAH isn't a church

[Pulcinella]

Of course Liverpudlians are also noted for their natural exuberance ...

I seem to remember that the congregation burst into spontaneous applause when the then pope (JP II) visited the Anglican cathedral in the early 1980s!

[jean]

I think you win the prize for non sequitur of the day.

Guess what?

The RAH isn't a church

No it isn't.

But context is all. I had said that I did not like applause between Mass movements - a practice which is becoming common in concert performances in this repertoire. But I didn't make it clear that I was talking about concert performances, and S-A asked:

Are you referring to performances of sacred music in churches and cathedrals, jean?

The reason I ask refers to my raising of the matter of applause I have noted in Roman Catholic services in churches, cathedrals or from the balcony of the Vatican when crowds are addressed in word and music by the Pope, as opposed to those of the CofE in particular, where the frowning on applause appears to denote a tradition with closer associations or past connections with Eastern mystical traditions holding what have become very different preconceptions about the role of silence in spiritual practice from their origins. For "traditional" Protestant (as opposed, obviously, to modern-day Pentecostal) thinking, applause would seem to denote equating circumstances of worship with entertainment, and it occurs to me that it may not only be modern-day refugees from todays religious practices with their encouragements of spontaneity, but skeptics in search of some substitute which nevertheless retains, transliterates, or infers aspects of "the sacred" as manifest into silent uninterrupted attention in the concert situation who are therefore upset when they feel this delicately achieved sense of the sublime to have been destroyed.

My reply is as you see, and in context it follows the thread of the discussion.

If you bothered to read posts properly and were not so bloody rude, we'd all save a lot of time.

[Flosshilde]

No, that doesn't assert that people's motives are wholly mischievous, but that it is possibly the case with some people. As I read this thread I'm rather inclined to agree.

Sorry? Could you run that past me again? Saying that some people's motives are mischievious doesn't mean that some people's motives are mischievious? And look at some of Eine Alpensinfonie's posts where he does make that assertion.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

That English teacher of yours has a lot to answer for...

Oh, don't blame that poor chap!! Can you imagine trying to get the essentials of grammar across to that pupil only to be greeted by "I'm not at all persuaded by this stuff being banded about in these lessons!"

[P. G. Tipps]

Oh, don't blame that poor chap!! Can you imagine trying to get the essentials of grammar across to that pupil only to be greeted by "I'm not at all persuaded by this stuff being banded about in these lessons!" The POW camp must've seemed like halcyon days.

That's wonderfully "ahintonesque" in its simmering sentiment, ferney ... and just as "masterly", if I may say so!

Clearly that old belter MacDonald certainly persuaded the young, spotty-faced, snotty-nosed, ink-bomb-hurling Tipps of the unerring nature of his instruction, though that quite remarkable achievement was probably attained rather more through the use of fear than any gentle goading, I guess.

Sir's grammarian dogmatism certainly left it's mark ... in more ways than one ... no, it's those wayward grammar revisionists who have singularly failed to convince this ever-loyal former pupil. Indeed, I can now almost see Sir nodding approvingly, albeit with some astonishment, somewhere up there in the Great Unknown.

However, thanks initially to Jean, our eagle-eyed English Language monitor, there appears to be something of a thread overlap here ...

Some forum discipline, please, boys and girls!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Sir's grammarian dogmatism certainly left it's mark ...

Sadly - and ironically - the Punctuation lessons didn't work, either.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Sadly - and ironically - the Punctuation lessons didn't work, either.

Are you talking about Petroc in Breakfast?

[P. G. Tipps]

Sadly - and ironically - the Punctuation lessons didn't work, either.

Well, my wonderfully ready-made excuse is poorly-advised 'predictive text' which went unnoticed, Sir ...

Furthermore, why the capital 'P'? ... wholly unnecessary and quite inappropriate ... go to the bottom of the class, Sir!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Are you talking about Petroc in Breakfast?

I onder if they have to attend Circular Breathing classes?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Furthermore, why the capital 'P'? ... wholly unnecessary and quite inappropriate ...

Au cointreau - titles & headings make the upper case quite appropriate (as in, "Spelling", "Grammar", "Syntax", "Punctuation", "Circular Breathing", "The Novel" ... )

... go to the bottom of the class, Sir!

You're obsessed!