Encomium Anglicanae
We need our parishes to take seriously what happens on the altar to the bread and wine and, consequently, believe what surrounds said actions should be of the highest quality and attention that we can provide.
We need our parishes to take seriously what happens on the altar to the bread and wine and, consequently, believe what surrounds said actions should be of the highest quality and attention that we can provide.
When the pope warns against “pageantry and prominence,” I want to know how he will also protect against tacky and tawdry because the latter has often been the practical upshot of post-Vatican II liturgical choices.
The Church cannot continue to transform and humanize the world if she dispenses with the beauty of the liturgy.
Since 1970 certain controversial passages of the Bible have been removed or made optional in Catholic liturgical settings. Why was this done? What has been the impact?
At Mass we are swept utterly away from the workaday world we know, summoned across the threshold of time and space, in order that we may be ushered into the very presence of God Himself.
Should the Church “modernize” by becoming more like everyone else? Or, should she hold fast to her ancient, otherworldly beliefs, morals, and rituals?
Cardinal Dolan recently wrote an article asking if Sunday Masses were too long. While taking a potshot against more traditional features of the liturgy, he also seems to completely miss the essence of what makes the Mass different than any other human activity.
The idea that it is wrong to pray the St. Michael Prayer after Mass is only something that could be believed by a rubricist out of touch with reality.
“Active participation” in the liturgy has caused endless controversy in the West. Perhaps it’s time to look to the Christian East for a way forward.
If the Church desires active participation, then self-examination is in order.
The Feast of the Holy Innocents should remind us of the abortion holocaust, not immigration debates. The Church’s vestments are red because the children bled and were dead, not because the Holy Family fled.
A recent series of articles by three respected Catholic scholars argued for the superiority of the new rite of the Mass over the old. We’ll talk to a liturgical expert about the two rites, their relationship, their development, and how they compare.
Criticism of “Tridentine Catholicism” by modernists and even some defenders of the ancient Roman liturgy leads me to think the term should be embraced as a badge of honor.
The venerable tradition of celebrating the liturgy toward the east (ad orientem) is symbolically and theologically more in keeping with the nature of the liturgy as a cosmic and eschatological sacrifice of Christ the high priest.
To look at our diocese, you might assume it’s on the liberal side. Located in Northern Virginia and established in 1974, most of the newer churches (and there are many of them) are “in the round.” You know the ones—they look like spaceships. Needless to say, these triumphs of modern ecclesial architecture generally exclude altar … Read more
In his spiritual autobiography, Apologia pro Vita Sua, Blessed John Henry Newman informs us: “When I was fifteen (in the autumn of 1816), a great change of thought took place in me. I fell under the influences of a definite Creed, and received into my intellect impressions of dogma, which, through God’s mercy, have never … Read more
I have recently seen a handful of stories about clergy and religious with a strong background in the charismatic movement coming to embrace the Tridentine Mass without abandoning their charismatic orientation. This includes an article published by Catholic Herald about the charismatic Franciscans of the Holy Spirit learning the old liturgy and a personal account … Read more
I found the many comments on my recent essay “What Is Sacred Music?” extremely interesting, and am grateful to the commenters who contributed such divers points of view on what for all Catholics is a vital subject. Unfortunately, among those I found most striking is exactly the one I’m now unable to find. Among the … Read more
I have sung regularly every Sunday at Mass for nearly thirty years now, two years more than I’ve lived as a baptized and confirmed Catholic. As I’m not much use serving on councils or committees (although I did teach CCD for several years after being received into the Church), I decided at the start of … Read more