The claim is often made that the traditional Roman Rite brings out more clearly than the Novus Ordo does that the Mass is a true and proper sacrifice—the unbloody re-presentation of the bloody sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. As this dogmatic truth is a point of central importance for living the Catholic Faith and…
With a majority of German bishops now on record as voting for official permission for contraception and the legitimization of sodomy, it seems time to reexamine the irreconcilable contrast between two views of reality. The Church in her traditional Roman Rite frequently prays that we may receive the grace to “despise” (or, as Lauren Pristas…
In response to a recent article about the return of nuptial care cloths, one reader commented: It’s a beautiful, ancient custom. However, it was never part of the American ritual books (as far as I can tell.) Use it in France all you like, but ‘bringing it back’ in the US would be anachronistic and…
Owing to its density and complexity, the traditional Roman liturgy—and the same, of course, would be true of any traditional liturgy—gives rise to multiple “hierarchies” of participation, which I will call here “ecclesiastical, sanctuarial, and congregational.” What I have noticed is that a complex and subtle gradation is of the essence of the rite, although…
I always think about the days right after Christmas: the feast of the first martyr, St. Stephen, stoned to death by the Jews; the feast of St. John the Apostle, who, though he did not die a martyr, was submerged in a cauldron of boiling oil and miraculously delivered from it; the feast of the…
Today—and it has already been thus for some years—the intellectual firepower, not to mention the virtue of basic honesty when it comes to Church history and dogmatic theology, is all on the side of traditional Catholic writers. If one wishes to laugh or groan, one need only visit the blogs Pray, Tell or Where Peter…
In the forthcoming English translation of a new book-length interview with Bishop Athanasius Schneider, The Springtime that Never Came (due out from Sophia Institute Press in Spring or, latest, Summer 2022), Polish journalist Pawel Lisicki muses in the introduction about his experience of assisting at the bishop’s morning Mass in Kazakhstan: It was a strange…
Against the contempt shown in recent decades—and even more, in recent months—toward Catholic tradition, one does not make progress with pacific words, protestations of loyalty, or the wringing of hands. As if the powerlessness of the lowly were not already a heavy psychological burden, we carry the additional weight of knowing that hardly any high-ranking…
The Church, acknowledging that man is not merely an intellectual being who can subsist on thoughts alone but a creature who approaches reality through his senses, has always emphasized the importance of incorporating sense-perceptible signs into her acts of worship. Even if we assent to supernatural truth sola fide, we do not engage with it…
It takes saints to make saints. The liturgical year of the Church is filled with quite literally a priceless array of treasures that are all oriented to make it easier for us to get to Heaven. The commemorations of the saints, the feasts and fasts, the monuments in the life of Christ and His Church…
The Catholic Church celebrates the memory of all her saints in her liturgy today. Besides feast days such as this, the Church also honours the saints in several other ways in the liturgy. Anyone with an understanding of the distinction between latria and dulia would know that this is not saint-worship, and would appreciate the…
