Peter Stanford (“Into outstretched arms”, 16 May)  touches, in an incidental remark, on what some may feel to be a taboo subject when he refers to the “smart abbeys and once-hidden chapels where Mass – pronounced with a long ‘a’ – has been continually celebrated since the thirteenth century”. “Marse” is a deviant pronunciation which derives from a class accent in the same way as do “crawse” for cross and “awften” for often. It has been kept alive chiefly through Catholic boarding schools for boys and girls but is used by only a minute proportion of the total Catholic population.It is a pronunciation which is obviously divisive and that, given the centrality of the Mass in the life of the Church and it