While driving south of Eagle River, WI toward Rhinelander, I saw a church advertising “Polka Mass”. So that’s how things are going in the north woods, a complete and blatant destruction of societal values.
By FORUM NEWS SERVICE |
PUBLISHED: July 19, 2018 at 9:11 a.m. | UPDATED: July 19, 2018
CHISHOLM, Minn. — The Rev. Frank Perkovich, a priest who embraced the Eastern European musical traditions of Minnesota’s Iron Range to popularize the “polka Mass,” has died. He was 89.
“Father Perk,” as he was affectionately known, died Monday at his home in Chisholm, where he was born on Christmas Eve 1928.
“To paraphrase the title of his biography, he has polkaed all the way to heaven,” the Rev. Charles Flynn, a fellow retired priest and friend, told the Mesabi Daily News on Tuesday.
Flynn added: “He visited people in their homes and nursing homes. He was usually quite humorous and was the last of a colorful generation of priests in our diocese. He was never dull and enjoyed controversy. We are much poorer today at his passing.”
“His polka Mass was based on the music of the ordinary people, not on some elite, boring, upper-class adagio,” Flynn said of Perkovich’s signature liturgical achievement.
The Second Vatican Council in the 1960s paved the way for many changes in the Roman Catholic Church, including broadening the types of music permitted in Mass. The council said the music should reflect the age and cultural background of parishioners.
In the early 1970s, Perkovich thought polka music might work well at Mass — especially since many in his Resurrection Catholic Church parish in Eveleth traced their roots to Slavic countries.
In early 1973, Perkovich enlisted the help of Joe Cvek, who led a popular Iron Range band, to adapt polka music to use in church. Cvek’s mother, Mary Cvek, wrote lyrics appropriate for church to accompany familiar polka and waltz tunes.
A polka Mass has all the elements of a regular Mass. The difference is the words of the liturgy and hymns are sung to familiar polka tunes or waltzes. The polka instrumentals are played in a slower, more reverential fashion.
For example, “Barking Dog Polka” became a hymn called “We Offer Bread and Wine.” “Blue Eyes Cryin’ in the Rain” became an offertory song called “At This Sacrifice.” The recessional is an instrumental version of “Iron Mike Polka.”
Perkovich celebrated his first polka Mass on May 5, 1973, at Resurrection Church. He wasn’t the first priest to celebrate Mass to the beat of polka music. That honor goes to a priest in Ohio. But Perkovich popularized the polka Mass.
“I was the one who brought it to another level,” Perkovich told the Duluth News Tribune in 2004. “I went on the road with it.”
While still maintaining his parish work, Perkovich traveled with Cvek’s polka band and a group of singers to churches in such places as the Twin Cities, Detroit and Chicago. They also visited Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, Hawaii and Yugoslavia. They helped pay their travel expenses by selling albums of their polka Mass music.
Perkovich had a scrapbook full of newspaper clippings about the polka Masses. The Masses also drew television reporters, including one who did a feature story that was broadcast on a national news show.
People used to ask Perkovich what the pope thought about the polka Mass. So Perkovich decided to ask him.
“The Vatican or bust,” he said.
In April 1983, Perkovich, the polka musicians and a tour group of 70 people from the Iron Range region flew to Rome. On April 20, Pope John Paul II addressed a large gathering in St. Peter’s Square. Perkovich and the musicians were part of a group granted access to the pope after the address. The musicians played polka Mass music and Perkovich gave the pope one of their records.
The pope said the polka Mass was very good, Perkovich said.
“I went to Rome to prove a point,” Perkovich said. “If the polka Mass was good enough for the pope, it was good enough for anyone.”
Three days after meeting the pope, Perkovich was thrilled to be able to celebrate a polka Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica. He called it the Carnegie Hall of churches.
Perkovich was born to a Croatian father and a Slovenian mother. When he became pastor at Resurrection Church in Eveleth, his ability to speak Slovenian served him and his parishioners well — “he could hear confessions,” said Frank Erjavec, of Fayal Township, who often sang at polka Masses.
After his tenure at Resurrection, Perkovich became pastor at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Gilbert, where he ended his 50 years in the priesthood in 2004.
After he retired, he worked as a chaplain on Royal Caribbean cruises, sailing the Caribbean, Alaska’s Inside Passage and the Mediterranean.
Perkovich was also the subject of a biography titled “Dancing a Polka to Heaven.”
