Abbot Tomas gives a speech in which he maintains the old order: "And the Mass was said in Latin because Latin was the language of the church and the church was one and universal and a Catholic could go into any church in the world, here or in Timbuktu, or in China and hear the same Mass, the only Mass there was, the Latin Mass. And if the Mass was in Latin and people did not speak Latin, that was part of the mystery of it, for the Mass was not talking to your neighbor, it was talking to God" (57). This form of linguistic universalism describes a global culture explicitely set against the globalism of the pervasive "human interest" eye of the BBC and American television, who have brought scads of tourists to the small, "authentic" community by broadcasting Muck Abbey's local enclave to the world:
"Ah, for goodness sake don't you know that's a helicopter, it could not fly all the way from Rome. Ah, so you came in a bigger airplane, did you? I see. From Amsterdam to Shannon and then from Shannon by car. And the helicopter was only because of Padraig. So that was the way of it. Do you know, Father Kinsella, I hear tell there is not a village in Ireland that does not have some class of airfield nearby. Isn't that amazing. Yes, yes." (70-71)
"'The idea of Catholics confessing their sins in private to a priest has been distasteful to other groups within the Ecumen brotherhood. Now that the easier form has been sanctioned by Vatican IV -- you have read the debates, surely?'
'I have, indeed,' the abbot said, 'I know that I am not in step, in the matter of confessions. But, remember, I tried to limit the confessions to people from our parish. It was all part of the same thing. We did not want to disturb the faith of the local people. Still...' The abbot paused and looked searchingly at his visitor. 'You said yourself that Rome did not know about the private confessions, You were not sent here because of that?'
'No.'
'Why were you sent, Father Kinsella? What, in particular, caused this -- ?' The abbot picked pu father general's letter.
'American television is planning to do a special one-hour program on what has happened here. Did you know that?'
'So that's it!' The abbot made a fist of his right hand and hit the top of his desk. 'The damned television! I did not want television here. I will ban them. I was dead against it from the start.'
'Even the president of the United States can't ban American television. If the networks want to televise what's going on here, it will be done. And it will be seen all over the world.'
'I warned our monks and I told the merchants at Cahirciveen the selfsame thing, I said don't have anything to do with those telly people, just tell them it's none of their concern. I refused them permission for any filming on church property.'
'It didn't do much good, did it? Don't you see that even your action in refusing to let these ceremonies be filmed can lend a significance to them that you never intended?'" (80-81)
--> One thing to do will be to look for TV reports on such local communities: BBC in particular.
