NZ Folksong * Ite Missa Est

Kiwi songs - Maori songs - Home

A young Catholic boy from a closely knit and caring rural community was recruited into a celibate Catholic teaching Order where the warmth and love of his childhood was replaced in by uncaring institutional rules and social isolation in the big city high schools.

        The scones and cups of tea,
        and all the warm smiles he remembered,
        down at the War Memorial Hall
        when the monthly Mass was ended.

        He served on the altar set up in the hall,
        in his school shorts, neatly pressed.
        Brought the water and the wine,
        and rang the bell "Ite, missa est."

And Mary Ann, you smiled af me
when Sunday Mass was ended.

       He was sent to town to the Brothers’ school,
       where his faith was well protected
       by rugby games and Marist rules.
       Go, the Mass is ended.

    He took the Habit at seventeen:
    the liturgy was splendid.
    His Novice-master and the Bishop beamed
    when the High Mass ended.

      And Mary Ann, you smiled at me
           when that Sunday Mass was ended.

    "If y’join the monks, you’re safe from Hell."
     So to chalk-dust he surrendered.
     For twenty years, an untouched cell,
     at daily Mass pretended.

    No more a boy, not yet a man;
    by three white rats befriended.
    The doctor tried diazepam.
    Go, the Mass is ended.

      Sister Mary Ann, dear Mary Ann
       Your hair was softly scented.
            Our love did battle with Chastity
             when that Sunday Mass was ended.

He lives alone - but in his home
he makes scones for his guests.

"Hoc est enim corpus meum."
"Ite, missa est."

Social Isolation

The need to live in social isolation during the months of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic led to some psychological disorders regarding schooling. But 140 years beforehand, due to working-class Catholic Irish being exploited by land-owning Protestant English, New Zealand's Catholics ran their own schools, without any funding from the government.

After the WW2 baby-boom, the Catholic Church recruited dozens of malleable boys and girls (many from rural or small town background) at a young age, then trained them as celibate and unpaid religious priests, Brothers or Sisters, where they lived in major cities as teachers in its segregated boys' and girls' schools, in social isolation for decades.

As well as carrying the same stressful teaching load of ordinary non-celibate secondary school teachers, they also had to spend 3 or more hours every day saying prayers. There was never enough time for proper lesson preparation and 8 hours sleep.

By the mid 1970s, the consequent psychological problems of these overworked religious teachers - neurosis, violence towards pupils, institutionalization, loneliness, lack of self-confidence, anxiety, depression, burn-out, mental breakdown - led to many of them abandoning this increasingly stressful pseudo-monastic lifestyle.

A significant percentage of the New Zealand men who remained in this lifestyle as priests or Brothers became compulsive pedophiles, destroying the lives of many Catholic children, and also destroying the Catholic Church's reputation as a path to holiness.

In 1975 the NZ government started funding Catholic schools, and well-trained, well-paid lay-teachers took over teaching the students in them.

Kiwi songs - Maori songs - Home

Thanks to prompting from my old confrere JJ, this webpage
was published on the folksong.org.nz website in July 2020.

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