had proper chalk to dust them before gripping the cold steel of the bar.
In my study of Latin, a whole year passed memorising verbs, nouns and
vocabulary and praying for some spark of enlightenment. I never got past the
likes of "amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatus, amant," the first declension of
the verb "to love." Learning languages was like being given the box containing
the world’s biggest jigsaw puzzle and being told that once you put the pieces
together you would have mastery. At no stage was I able to fit one piece in
place but I did spend many hours examining the pieces. I didn’t know the
fundamentals of the English language and the basic functions of grammar to
apply such knowledge to Latin. At the end of the academic year, 1957, I had
very proudly got off the bottom of the class score card with a final examination
result of 17%. It would be a disaster to most students, but for me I had
registered a mark. That was progress.
We worshipped in Latin as well as using "Christian Brother" prayers from a
black covered book called "The Exercises of Piety." For nearly all my life I had
served Latin Masses as an altar boy, which required many lines to be
committed to memory. I was at home with Latin prayers if I knew them by
heart. Latin put me into a prayerful state for communicating with my God and
His Mother. I loved rattling off the Latin prayers.
Strathfield required us to sight read Latin prayers. Of course this skill was
beyond me. To do so put a log-jam across the stream of my traditional method
of prayer. Learning and prayer do not go together, so I was not comfortable
with that particular form of prayer.
I still smile at the Latin renderings of some of my fellow students of Clontarf,
Castledare and the Training Colleges of the Christian Brothers.
Here are a few.
"A day go in my sock."
"Me, him are tipsy gravis."
"Me a cowboy, me a cowboy, me a Mexican Cowboy."
A new Latin motet we learned in Strathfield sent me into raptures:
"Ave verum
Corpus, natum
Ex Maria virginae.
Vere passum, immolatum
In Cruce pro homine. etc…"
God was occasionally still tangible and my heart still soared when touched off
by beautiful music.
In many areas of my life at Strathfield and Bundoora I was coming alive but in
other areas I lived with humiliation. Pride was never a temptation. Public
reading was my crucifixion.
Picture a narrow thirty metre long dining room. There are two rows of tables
down the sides, six teenage diners at each table. At the front of the room in
the centre of the room is a raised platform on which is a special table for our
five Brother teachers. To their right was a raised pulpit with a special reading
shelf for the book, a reading lamp and a microphone. On the rim of the pulpit
was a little red torch globe, which was wired to a button at the teachers’ table,
right near the principal’s fingers.
