Islam Re-Revisited

Another Friday the 13^th.  I hate the films.  And it’s rarely bad luck.  Here’s something completely different.

Obviously Islam is a relevant topic these days.   I can’t turn on the Book of Faces without seeing someone bark and bray about “banning Sharia” or “Muslims taking over America”.  I have a few things to say on this topic, which might be rather provocative.  Bear with me.

Misguided Satanists.   As we know, Islam is the religion founded by Arabian warlord Mohammad in the early 600s.  He claimed Allah told him a bunch of stuff, most (if not all) of which was fairly self-serving.  The most accurate description of this religion is that it was made up by him to justify his military campaigns to take over as much of the known world as he could.  His followers carried on the tradition after his death in 632 and continue worshipping Allah and attempting to spread his Word even to this day.   There are several predominantly Muslim countries, and one (Shi’ite) theocracy, Iran.  The Sunnis of Iraq and Syria have attempted to set up a competing Sunni theocracy in those countries.

C.S. Lewis.  In his The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe series of books, Lewis created a fictional race of Calormenes, who worship a deity named Tash.  These were obviously meant to be Muslims worshipping Allah.  Aslan, the wise and benevolent talking Lion, tells the children that Tash is essentially the Devil.  “Good deeds done in Tash’s name are in fact done in my name, and evil deeds done in my name are actually done in Tash’s name”.  Even Lewis, having identified Allah as Satan, still recognized that there were good Muslims and evil Christians. 

If you don’t believe God or Satan exist, then “Allah” is an imaginary being created by Mohammed to justify his exploits.   Neither option – Satan or make-believe deity – reflects well on Islam.

Reformed Church of Satan.   It’s too difficult for me to conceive that Muslims around the world consciously worship the Devil.  Naturally they view Allah as God.  And Islam has a Devil, Iblis, in their theology.  I’ve yet to hear of any sect of Islam that worships Iblis, as the Devil.

            In the US, we have self-professed Satanists.   In particular, I’m familiar with Anton LaVey, his Church of Satan, and his Satanic Bible, which I own and have read.  Oddly, despite ostensibly worshipping the Devil himself, these “Satanists” are really atheists.  Their brand of Satanism is more accurately described as a deliberately provocative form of atheism which personifies Man and his right to carnal and physical pleasure while he lives his short and brutal life on this planet, followed by eternal oblivion.   LaVey’s positions were extremely close to Ayn Rand’s, and we know she was an atheist too, although I’m not aware of any actual connection between the two.  Rand would have considered LaVey as an arrogant huckster who elevated atheism into a circus sideshow to gain popularity and notoriety for himself.

…so what?   Having said that, I don’t believe Muslims in the United States are any threat to us.  Here is why.

Rome.   This is the capital of world Catholicism.  Rather, I should say, the Vatican City, which has a population of ….557.   Rome itself has a population of 4 million.  There are 1.2 billion Catholics around the world.  The largest Catholic country is Brazil, with 124 million Catholics.   Clearly, 1.2 billion cannot fit in the Vatican, nor in Rome, or even Italy.  I visited Roma and the Vatican myself in 1981 on a school trip, but have no desire to live there.  Nor, it seems, do the Catholics living outside Rome. 

Israel.  There are 14 million Jews worldwide, of which 83% live in Israel and the US.  Zionism aside, not all Jews want to live in Israel.   Half the world’s Jews live in Israel, most of the other half in the US.

Mecca.  Islam’s holy city has a permanent population of 1.6 million.  While all Muslims have a duty to make a lifetime pilgrimage to Mecca, living there permanently appears to be neither required nor expected.   Worldwide there are 1.7 billion Muslims.

Muslims in the US.  Less than 1% of the US population is Muslim.  There are far more Buddhists and atheists – plus Jews, of course – than there are Muslims.  The US is almost 80% Christian.  Of a population of 321 million, that means 256 million Christians and 3 million Muslims.  By numbers alone, it would be almost impossible for Muslims to establish a majority in this country.  And I don’t even think they want to do this.  Why?

Someone posted an infographic on how the world’s Muslim countries are the poorest, shittiest, countries.  Maybe true for Bangladesh, less so for Turkey or Saudi Arabia.  Iraq and Syria are unlikely to get better any time soon.  Egypt isn’t too bad.  Libya is having problems.  Anyhow.

Islam has different varieties:  at the very least there is Sh’ite vs. Sunni, and even the Sunnis have different sects.  If you live in Iran, you have to be Shi’ite.  Presumably living in ISIS controlled territory you have to be Sunni.  When Muslims get uptight about their religion, they are particularly harsh on fellow Muslims who don’t worship Allah quite the same way. 

We take our religious freedom in the US for granted.  We don’t have to worry that our church will blow up, that strangers will accost us on the street and threaten us if we don’t convert to Mormonism, or receive thinly veiled anonymous threats of violence.  Christians in Egypt come to the US to escape persecution, and Muslims come to the US for similar reasons.  (Also, to leave places where suicide bombers and rocket attacks, or all-out war, are a daily risk.)

Again, here in the US, which is less than 1% Muslim?  No one gives a damn.  If Abdul wants to get a bacon cheeseburger at McDonald’s or Burger King, or drink alcohol, or do any of the things which Islam declares “haram” (forbidden), who will stop him?  Who will even care?  Abdul and his family are free to do as they please, without being harassed by the locals about how they practice Islam.  They get to enjoy the benefits of living in a huge, rich country with no Civil War (since 1865), no suicide bombings, no Sharia, no Imams, none of the hassles Muslims have to deal with in Muslim countries.  And most likely they came here for THAT REASON.  So turning the US into a Muslim country is not only impossible, it’s highly undesirable – it defeats the purpose of why they came here, which is not to turn the US into another screwed up Muslim country, but to live somewhere that isn’t a screwed up Muslim country. 

Suicide bombers.   Ok, take away the risk of an outright takeover.  Muslim suicide bombers could still cause problems, right?  Not really. 

            Aside from 9/11, we haven’t seen any suicide bombings in the US.  That Muslim guy in Texas – the Army guy who went BSI – didn’t even blow himself up, nor did the idiots who tried to blow up the World Trade Center back in 1993.  It looks like the shooting spree yahoos who do shoot themselves at the end were all non-Muslims.  The guy at Initech with the unpronounceable name isn’t blowing himself up.  And I don’t see Arab oil sheiks who already have harems of 72 women on this worldly planet blowing themselves up.  Mostly it’s loser virgin boys from Loserstan who do that.  Muslims in the US know they’re well off.  They have too much to lose.  Not gonna happen. 

9/11 & ISIS.   The attack on 9/11 was definitely a bad one.  19 Saudis learned to fly jumbo jets and took down the World Trade Center, knocked a hole in the Pentagon (now fixed), and messed up the Pennsylvania countryside – plus all the crew and passengers on all 4 flights and many firemen and first responders on the ground.  To date, ISIS remains dominant in much of northwest Iraq and northeast Syria.  The Taliban looks like it’s taking back much lost ground in Afghanistan.  The crazies are definitely NOT done yet.  However, those theaters are on the other side of the world from us and no threat to the continental US.

            Closer to home, and more relevant to our concerns here, among all those “peaceful” Muslims coming to the US, who knows how many are truly peaceful and how many are Al Qaeda sleeper cells?  It might be arrogant to assume that 100% of them succumb to the charms of American society.  The FBI needs to remain vigilant at home (while respecting our Constitutional rights, a balance we can acknowledge is not always easy or obvious to make), and the cowboys from Langley better be on top of their game overseas.  Aside from the yahoo in Fort Hood, Texas, and the Boston bombings, all of our mass shootings since 9/11 have been home grown nutjobs with non-Islamic agendas.  But that doesn’t mean there’s not another cell of the same caliber as the 19 from 9/11 cooking up a scheme to do something bad.  However, we’ve seen those to be few and far between.  We have far more to worry about in our daily lives from the mundane dangers of cancer, highway accidents, or random, good old American street crime, to make it sensible to worry about the extremely remote odds of another terrorist attack from Muslims.  They are, in fact, the least of our worries. 

So if you’re obsessed about Muslims invading from Mexico or another 9/11…get a massive clue and CHILL OUT.  They may be Satanists but they’re really no threat to us.  

Islam Revisited

Quite some time ago I posted a blog, “Boom-Boom for Boom-Boom”, in which I argued that the Muslim suicide bombers were actually simply selfish:  killing innocents so they could go to Heaven and get their 72 virgins.   Recently I read a book called The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades, by Robert Spencer.  Like most of these “PIG” books, it takes a fairly strong viewpoint which is 180 degrees opposite what the Blue State people would have us believe, although it explains quite conveniently why some Muslims behave the way they do in much of the Middle East.

 First question, though.  If there is a God, surely there must be a Devil.  We’ll call him Satan.  From Abraham all the way up to John the Baptist, and then Jesus, God had sent a series of prophets down to Earth to tell us what He wanted us to do.  The biggie was Moses and his 10^th Commandments. 

 Where are Satan’s prophets?  Why didn’t he send anyone?  And does he, or did he, have a son (or daughter) to send down to us?  How would we know?  Would Satan’s prophet admit being from Satan?  Or would he claim to be from God?

 The reason this question comes up is because of the nature of the Koran, of Islam, and of Muhammed.  I was stunned to read Dante’s Inferno and see that Dante put Muhammed in Hell, as a fraud.  Presumably what he meant was that Muhammed claimed to be from God and led millions of people astray, away from God’s path.

C. S. Lewis, in The Last Battle (as the title indicates, it’s the last book in the Lion, Witch & Wardrobe series) suggests that the “God” of the Muslims, Tash, i.e. Allah, is really Satan.

For his part, Spencer brings up a number of important points, although he falls well short of Lewis’ conclusion.

1.   For all this talk of the Crusades, what apologists for angry Muslims leave out is that the Muslims invaded Christian Europe centuries before the Crusades, expressly to conquer and convert – or kill – the Christians.  I recall back in Paris we learned about Charles Martel, the French warrior who defeated the Muslims at the Battle of Tours in 732 and sent them reeling back into Spain.  Moreover, the Crusades were a reaction to Muslims restricting access of Christians to Jerusalem and ambushing pilgrim caravans.  If US current foreign policy is a resurgence of the medieval Crusades, why do we form alliances with Muslim countries - including Saudi Arabia, which has implemented much of the Sharia in its own law?  Why didn’t we ban Islam from Iraq after defeating Saddam Hussein or from Afghanistan after defeating the Taliban?  Why is Turkey in NATO?   The simple answer is that the Crusades are a useful rallying cry to elicit anger among Muslims against the Western, Christian countries, but it has absolutely nothing to do with current US or NATO foreign policy towards the Middle East. 

 2.  The earlier portions of Koran which are more tolerant and lenient date from when Muhammed was in Mecca, which at that time was pagan and very unsympathetic to his views.  The later, more violent sections – which Muslim clerics consistently agree supersede the earlier sections – date from when Muhammed was in Medina, where he found a more cooperative crowd.  Whereas the Bible is the opposite: the Old Testament is the heavy-duty, violent part – e.g. Sodom & Gomorrah blasted out of existence, flood eradicates all but Noah and his family on the Ark, David leads armies against Philistines – and the New Testament gives us mellow, laid-back, tolerant Jesus.  Jesus was cool (“Peace be with you.”), Muhammed was extremely violent and intolerant (“join us or DIE!”).   Not only was Jesus a pacifist, if you read Ben-Hur (the 1959 movie doesn’t talk about this) you’ll understand that many of his followers hoped that Jesus would raise an army and throw the Romans out.  They were disappointed when he preached peace and allowed himself to be crucified.  He died for our sins.  Contrast that with Muhammed, who was essentially a warlord and general – a very successful one.  Granted, there are, and have been, bloodthirsty Christians invoking Jesus’ name to justify their atrocities, and there are peaceful, tolerant Muslims.  Even Dante recognized “virtuous pagans.”  But Jesus preached peace and love, Muhammed preached war and death.

 3.   According to the Koran, Muslims are not to make friends with “infidels” (nonbelievers), they can lie and kill them with impunity, and only three “fates” are open to unbelievers:  convert, pay tribute, or die.  We go from Jesus, who was extremely tolerant and pacifist, to “kill the nonbelievers.”  Practically everything in the Koran carries the death penalty, and anything goes so long as it advances the cause of Islam. 

            Spencer’s point is that the craziest, nastiest, most murderous behavior we see from Muslims in the world today is not an aberration but actually condoned and encouraged by the Koran and the Hadith (adjunct interpretations).  Suicide bombers are not defying, corrupting or perverting Islam, rather they are following its instructions, whereas the peaceful Muslims here at home are ignoring their marching orders from Muhammed and are not “true Muslims.”  But the world is full of Catholics (myself included) who don’t exactly obey all the Pope’s commands.  Most Americans claim to believe in God, but only a fraction of them actually go to church or actively follow any specific denomination.  The irony of Muslims pushing for Sharia in non-Muslim countries (e.g. Western Europe) is that you can probably find a very substantial number of Iranians – devout Shi’ite Muslims, no less - who would rather see an end to the theocracy in their country.  Again, Turkey gives us the example of a Muslim democracy which, while far from perfect, is also far from Iran (at least in nature, if not geographically). 

 4.  This recent video which caused the fuss in the Middle East and Libya – which I haven’t seen, by the way – supposedly accuses Muhammed of being a pedophile.  Yet it’s common knowledge that he married his favorite wife, Aisha, when she was 6, and consummated the marriage (i.e. took her virginity) at age 9.   To call the Koran misogynist would be a massive understatement.  Even Aisha herself complained that Muslim women have a rough time.

 5.  Then there’s this business of “Heaven”.  Muhammed describes it as a pleasure palace of unbelievable wealth and beauty, and of course the 72 virgins.  This sounds awesome, fantastic!  In fact, it sounds a little TOO awesome and fantastic.  “Kill all these people.  And when you die, you have unbelievable sex, we’re talking GROUP SEX.  Orgies for eternity.”  All these instructions, mind you, supposedly coming from the same God who sent His only son down to Earth to die for our sins.   

 6.  Again, Muhammed was essentially a warlord who conquered the Arabian peninsula in his lifetime (570-632 AD).  His “revelations” from Allah were mostly self-serving and arguably calculated to attract followers to his military cause.  At the time, Christian doctrine was that “Islam” was merely a sham designed to justify Muhammed’s military campaign.  Looking at it objectively, that appears to be pretty much right on the money.  Certainly if you’re an atheist you would be more inclined to believe this as well.

 Now, I do not believe that Muslims around the world honestly believe that they are praying to Satan, the Lord of Darkness, five times a day.  Nor do I believe that they consider Muhammed a prophet of evil, much less a simple fraudulent warlord.  Moreover, the more radical and bloodthirsty elements of Islam seem to register only with the poorest, most hopeless Muslims, in the poorest, most hopeless Muslim countries.  I don’t see rich Arab sheikhs blowing themselves up.  Likewise, with the 800 lb gorilla exception of the 19 9/11 hijackers, we don’t see Muslims in the US blowing themselves up.  The Onion ran a piece about an Al Qaeda cell in the US which was postponing its jihad until after its free Netflix subscription ran out, or the season of “Heroes” ended, as they’d just bought a new plasma screen TV (FARS seems to have missed that one).  Ahmed in the US with a wife and kids and a decent job doesn’t seem particularly inclined to strap explosives to himself and blow up a bunch of infidels; he’s more inclined to enjoy the good life in the US and otherwise remain a devout Muslim, praying to Mecca, eating Halal food, and going to the mosque on Friday.   But Ahmed in Gaza, a 16 year old boy too shy to talk to girls and with no job prospects, is probably more inclined to listen to the local madrasa cleric and trade a life of poverty and involuntary celibacy for an afterlife of untold riches and nonstop orgies. 

 To finish off with C.S. Lewis again, in The Last Battle, Aslan told the children that while Tash may be Satan, the situation is a bit more complex than that.  “Good works done in the name of Tash are in fact done in my name, and evil works done in my name are in fact done for Tash.”  He recognized that many of the Calormenes (his fantasy equivalent of the Muslims) were in fact virtuous, whereas some Narnians (Europeans) were evil and sinful.   Viewed that way, we could consider Muslims who mind their own business and live peaceful, decent lives just as favorably as we do fellow Christians who behave the same way, regardless of what some angry imam in Iran – chastising such Muslims as backsliders, non-devout, complacent, corrupt, etc. for interacting favorably with non-Muslims and abandoning the cause of advancing Islam and jihad – may bark and bray about from Tehran or wherever else he might be.  

Religion

Time for more abstract and philosophical analysis, possibly blasphemous but certainly something to consider.

 Same summit, different approaches.  The image which came to me was of a top summit, like Mount Everest.  Viewed from the top, a mountain peak has 360 degrees of approach around it, which could either be described in terms of degrees, or more easy-to-grasp, clock positions from 12, 1, 2, 3, etc. all the way back to 12 – and compass points as well, 12 being North, 3 being East, 6 being South, and 9 being West.

     Figure all of us monotheists – as opposed to atheists or polytheists – are attempting, in some way, shape or form, at our own paces, to climb that summit and reach the top.  Catholics take the North approach, non-Catholic Christians take the East approach, Jews take the South approach, Muslims take the West approach, and so forth.  Then figure there are Sunnis vs. Shi’ites, Orthodox vs. Conservative vs. Reform Jews, all sorts of Protestant religions and the Eastern Orthodox churches.  Each is trying to reach the summit from a different direction and each claims that the others’ way is wrong.  But we all know and accept that the summit – the God – is the same, but we argue that the means by which we try to reach Him, is itself so important as to trump everything else.  As if, upon reaching God at the top, God turns to us and asks, “well, thank you very much for coming up here.  By the way, how did you get here?” “Uh, I came up from the South.” And God goes nuts and says, “INFIDEL!!!  You blasphemer!  Didn’t I send Mohammed down there to tell you to come up the West way?  What is wrong with you??  Begone!” 

     This is why I find religious intolerance among fellow monotheists to be so idiotic – especially when it reaches the point of KILLING others simply because their particular form of monotheism is different.  Again, back to my example: you get to the top and say HI to God, and tell him, “Oh, by the way, there were some Jews coming up by the South approach, we killed them.  Pretty good, huh?”  And God will say, “Way to go, Abdullah!  Here are your virgins!”  Granted, back in the Middle Ages (a long, long time ago) the Christian Crusaders decided that the Muslim way was so wrong that it merited termination.  And we have no shortage of anti-Semitism to observe, perpetrated both by Christians and Muslims, although this form of discrimination appears to be racially motivated rather than due to any religious differences.  To me it’s all stupid.  Who cares how we get up the mountain?  And are we so sure that God cares, that we’re going to kill anyone going up the mountain the wrong way?

 Jesus rises.  Awhile back I analyzed the New Testament between Easter Sunday and Asension, and realized that after Jesus rose from the dead, He made no public appearances.  All His appearances were in private, solely to the Apostles, who were predisposed to believe in Him.  Why didn’t He meet Pontius Pilate, or Caiaphas?  Raising from the dead would have been front page news: to everyone.  Surely a public appearance by this guy who everyone - Jews, Apostles, Romans, etc. - saw crucified would be a killer recruitment for Christianity, and since Jesus sent out the Apostles to spread the word, we knew He wanted this to be a mass movement, not some secret society only a few select people were invited to, like Amway.  What comes to mind is that He returned from the dead not in the literal sense of being flesh and blood, but in the spiritual sense of retaining consciousness and some identity after death – that we have a soul which survives death, as His did.  So He came back to show his Apostles that, for believers at least, there would be life after death, just not on this Earth, in this form as we knew it.  This also explains why He returned at Ascension, instead of staying here indefinitely.  But that leads me to wonder: where did Jesus live when He was alive?

 You can’t make me.  I also noted that through the Bible, God can never make anyone do anything.  The most He can do is send an angel or a dream to persuade someone of the “right” course of action ("by the way, you might want to do this").  Here are some examples:

1.  Jonah and the whale.  God asked Jonah to go to Nineveh and tell the people there to shape up.  Jonah thought to himself…. “nah….”.  And so he ended up in the whale.  And then he thought, “this sucks, maybe I should go to Nineveh after all.”  And he did.  The whale was just God’s way of being persuasive – and it worked.

2.  Joseph & Mary.  Joseph was due to be Mary’s husband, but found she was already pregnant.  Not good – he was inclined to call it off.  But the angel came and backed up Mary’s “conceived by God” story (of which I’m sure Joseph had probably been somewhat skeptical), so he decided to go along with it.  This was not an angel with a shotgun.

3.  Three Wise Men.  Herod wanted them to come back after seeing Jesus and fill him on the Manger location – so he could have Jesus killed.  The angels sent the Wise Men a dream and advised them to take an alternate route home.  Once again, very persuasive angels – the Three Wise Men took another route, Herod was not able to have baby Jesus terminated before Mary and Joseph escaped to Egypt.

 Why is this important?  People see all the hatred, the violence, the cruelty, the torture, the evil in the world and ask, “how can God allow this to happen?”  The answer is: God can’t stop it.  God couldn’t make the gas chambers fail, the machine guns jam, the swords and machetes too dull to cut anyone, or make rapists impotent.  And He can’t control our behavior.  We control our behavior, for better or worse – all too often, for worse.  You may as well scream at your best friend for not having stopped the rain. 

 Homily.  I go to mass, at the local cathedral (Catholic) almost every Sunday.  One thing about Catholic mass is that no matter where you go, around the world, you know the mass will have the same format: intro stuff, two readings (someone from the audience), a gospel (by the priest), a homily (the priest’s sermon), the collection,  and then stock material until the Our Father, the peace be with you “shake the hands stuff” (half the people only lamely shaking hands with anyone outside his or her own immediate family), communion, then the end where we get announcements and the blessing, and then we charge out.

     I tend to zone out during the homily.  There are really only so many different ways the priest can basically say, “Jesus died for you, be good, m’kay?”  Too many are off in the stratosphere of abstract discussion.  Occasionally the priest gets cute; one time the first two rows were Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts, so the priest said that Jesus’ 40 days in the desert was like a “camping trip”.  It’s a rare priest who can reconcile the abstract with the concrete and keep my attention.  Then of course, one of the priests is Father Shakedown, who monotonously recites all the huge bills the church has (“that air conditioning in this huge place isn’t free, people!  Cough it up!”).  

 After Mass.  In Paris, we went to St. Joseph’s, an English-speaking Catholic church down Ave. Hoche from the Etoile.  After mass we’d go someplace special.  Originally we went to a McDonald’s, in a part of town I don’t recall.  This was a 70’s vintage McDonald’s, with horribly greasy food: even the French fries were green.  Blah.  But then we went to an arcade next door.  This was before even Space Invaders or Pac-Man, so God only knows what horrendously primitive games we could have played.  Later on, Burger King arrived on the Champs Elysees, far cleaner and nicer than the skanky Evil Clown in that other part of town.  And again we went to an arcade – this one had Rolling Thunder, which I really liked. 

 Churches.  Part of the charm of Catholic churches is their antiquity and elegance (I have no reason to visit Protestant churches and have no experience therein).  There seem to be two types of church.  The first is the fancy old style, in the shape of a cross, with stained glass windows, statues, old style pews, all the medieval stuff we’re familiar with.  St Peter's in Rome is obviously the biggest and most impressive, but there are many others: Notre Dame in Paris, various cathedrals around the world, even the Madeleine in Paris, which is set up like the Parthenon in Greece.  What they all share is a faithful adherence to some form of classical, or even Gothic, style.

     Then there are the IKEA churches:  someone studied the schematics of Merriweather Post Pavilion or the Nissan Pavilion, because the seating is ampitheater style, in a large fan radiating out from the altar.  The imagery, to the extent there is any, has a sparse, abstract feel to it, like Pablo Picasso designed it.  I suppose this was some movement in the 60s or 70s to modernize the Church and distance it from the archaic medieval feel it once had.  These are churches for the automobile, Internet, cell phone age, as if to say that religion isn't some irrelevant anachronism from medieval times, but still relevant and meaningful to us even today.  Both styles have their supporters and virtues. 

     I've even seen churches which were converted from movie theaters, either as temporary expedients or permanent arrangements, but in that case we're really stretching the envelope of what we can consider a "church".  Maybe it was officially blessed or consecrated by the appropriate bishop, but it certainly doesn't feel like a church.

     Having been to Egypt, I’ve been to mosques.  After being used to churches filled with pews, mosques are kind of bizarre: no seats, just tons of carpets to kneel down and pray on.  Needless to say, I was a visitor and not praying to Allah myself.

     When I visited the USSR in 1983, part of the tour – Kiev, Moscow and Leningrad – was countless Russian Orthodox churches and monestaries.  ZZZZ.  They’re all the same: chock full of Cyrillic lettering and icons.  There’s a Romanian Orthodox Church across the street from me, which has a similar deal, though the lettering is Roman, and the language is Romanian.  But style-wise it’s almost identical.  And the service is in Romanian, which I don’t speak, except “va rog” and “multumesc”, and some naughty words like “pizda” and “pula” (unlikely to be heard in a mass, anyway).  But of all the Romance languages, Romanian is by far the closest to the source language, Latin.

 Latin Mass.  It’s difficult to find a High Mass (in Latin) these days.  The vernacular (local language) has been more popular since the 60s; I recall my dad bitching about how the Church went liberal in the 60s to sell out and attract people back into the pews, and ditching the Latin Mass was the biggest factor.  But even a Latin mass was not all in Latin: only the standard, boilerplate stock language which is the same every Sunday, is in Latin.  The readings, the homily, and most everything else is in the vernacular anyway.