Tony Rutkin was a former member of our choir. However about a year ago he and his beautiful wife Janet felt the spiritual call of the north and moved to Clontarf in Queensland.

Since then he has kept in touch via our web site, and was swept with nostalgia when he saw the news about our silly-sock Mass last Sunday.

So moved was he that he searched every store in Clontarf looking for a pair of silly socks. His search was fruitless until the very last shop. There he was told they had just one, left over from last Christmas. Not one pair, but just one sock. They had kept it in the hope that a unidextor would be looking for one just like it next Christmas.

In despair he bought it, ran home, shaved his legs, put on his best pair of shorts and sent us this photo.

Had he been with us on the day I think he would have been a close second to Mark.

(Click on the image for a full-size version if you dare!)

Our choir rehearsals and sing-outs are always great fun, but last Sunday as a bit of extra fun Lise and Mark suggested we should all wear silly socks.

And we did. Some indeed did have some silly socks, others wore odd socks and at least one member wore no socks.

But the winner hand-down (or should it be feet-down?) was our great guitarist Mark. His socks had feet and thongs printed on them and looked outrageously ridiculous.

Here are two photos taken on the occasion. Click on the thumbnails to see full-size images.

St. Augustine is sometimes quoted as saying,

He who sings prays  twice.

However I’ve always thought there seems to be a reluctance amongst church-goers to participate in singing hymns and parts of the Mass.

A couple of days ago an ABC program called Earshot explored this, and posed the slightly provocative question:

In the midst of a bitter half-century struggle over what ‘progress’ means for Catholics, can they ever enjoy good communal singing in church?

It’s a great program examining the history of singing in our church, from the time it was all in Latin, but parishioners were not to sing, to later periods when  singing was sort of OK, but not for women, to where we are today with many churches having sung Masses with strong participation from the congregation.

It’s just 28 minutes, and I recommend it for all choir members. Here’s the link the the ABC web site:

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/earshot/why-catholics-can’t-sing/6978078

You can listen online, or download a copy to your desktop, tablet or smartphone for listening later.