OnePeterFive is pleased to share the following homily from a priest of the Institute of Christ the King, Sovereign Priest. Canon Francis Altiere, ICRSS is rector of Old Saint Patrick Oratory in Kansas City, Missouri. This homily was first preached on the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost in 2018; it has been slightly modified for publication.…
Late in June, we received a warning from a village on the edge of Tuscany that yet another religious house with the wrong sort of mindset was facing the now dreaded prospect of a Vatican “visitator.” The contemplative Dominican monastery of Marradi, the spiritual heart of the little mountain town for over four centuries, is…
A few months ago, when my family was cleaning out some old books, I came across my mid- 1980s glossy gold First Communion textbook. The book held such promise within its covers. Surely, it provided a glimpse of the treasures of our faith within its pages: Our Lord coming to us in the Eucharist, what…
Dear Dr. Kwasniewski, I recently listened to your 1 Peter 5 podcast, which was really helpful to me. The part where you take us through the history of the philosophical ideas that were motivating the liturgical reformers at and after Vatican II was interesting and informative. Thanks to the podcast, I understand better the sort…
When we hear the term “music patronage,” we think of the Medicis, the Esterhazys, the Benedict XVI Institute. We don’t think of the middle class. Yet there is a form of patronage that was once so popular and extravagant that sumptuary laws were passed to regulate it, a form open to most young people and…
New research from Pew published this month indicates that only 26% of US Catholics under the age of 40 believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. In his book, Index of Leading Catholic Indicators, Kenneth C. Jones cites a 1994 poll conducted by the New York Times/CBS that placed the number of…
Before I became a Catholic, I was a member of the Church of England, in a parish in which we sang Christian hymns with organ accompaniment. There was a choir which sang an anthem at the time of communion. The music was good, and the words of the hymns seemed to be representative of Christianity.…
Earlier today, I was engaged in a discussion on Facebook in which, after saying something about the “Novus Ordo Paradigm,” someone asked me, rather indignantly, what that phrase means. I did my best to explain it, and I’d like to expand on it here in greater depth. I want to say at the outset of…
Proponents of the restoration of liturgical sanity speak much about sacred music, and no wonder, given the power of music to transport us heavenward into the mysteries of God — or to stifle our prayer with paltry imitations of secular tunes. But we are no less committed to silence, music’s necessary counterpart and prayer’s inseparable…
The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is a profound work of tremendous meaning, mystery, and beauty. For this reason, I think Catholics need to review just what the Mass is, considering that over the last 60 years many people were rendered ignorant, and those who did know have forgotten, a result of the strong Protestant…
Death, Memory, and Oblivion Toward the midpoint of his 1,000-page Aesthetics, Dietrich von Hildebrand describes the death of culture in violent terms: [U]ntil the beginning of the nineteenth century and the triumph of the machine, culture had not yet been strangled by civilization. The expression of the spirit, the gift of giving form … penetrated…
