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…
So much has been written about the renaissance underway in many dioceses and parishes across the country. With the increasing number of Tridentine Latin Masses that are offered, the newly ordained priests who bring orthodoxy and the Roman Canon to their parishes, and the renewed interest in our Catholic patrimony, the Church in the United…
We hear a lot nowadays about “Eucharistic inhospitality,” a phrase generally abused, but we would do well to reflect on a previous and far more damaging exclusion from the table that has cast a long and still lengthening shadow over the Church. ONCE UPON A TIME, there was a king, his queen, and forty-five honored…
On Saturday, May 18, 2019, a Solemn High Mass was celebrated in the Mariners’ Memorial Chapel on the campus of the United States Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA), the first traditional Latin Mass celebrated there in fifty years. The following is an interview with Midshipman Brian Rainwater, 1/C, who organized and coordinated this historic event. Tell…
Editor’s note: We share the following exchange to show the widening rift between two liturgical camps in the Catholic Church, what exactly that rift entails, and what might be done to fix it. Our goal is to shed light on the truths of the Catholic faith, even when those truths are uncomfortable. Dear Dr. Kwasniewski,…
The International Una Voce Federation (FIUV) is an organization that seeks “to foster the cultural heritage of the Latin rite of the Roman Catholic Church upon which so much of European culture, music, art, literature and architecture has been built and nourished.” Their “principal aims are to ensure that the traditional Roman rite of the…
We all know the old saying: “If a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.” We take comfort in the sentiment, since far too often in this life we are compelled, either by circumstances beyond our control, or by our own inherent weaknesses and limitations, to settle for results less than ideal. We did what…
I was riding in my boss’s car, absentmindedly staring out the window. He was taking my coworker and me to lunch, and he turned down a side street to take a shortcut to our destination. On a sketchy street, in a sketchy neighborhood, where most every house either is torn down or needs to be,…
It has become something of orthodoxy within traditional Catholic circles that we’re destined to win the liturgy and doctrine wars in the end, but this isn’t going to happen without evangelization. Traditional communities are fortresses for us to shelter in, but we can’t be content simply to live behind the ramparts. I’ve heard many Latin…
Readers of Father Z’s blog are probably familiar with the motto “Brick by Brick.” The reverend father is here referring to the slow but steady stacking of liturgical improvements over time. I know this works because I have seen it happen, at St. Rita Parish in Alexandria, Virginia (Diocese of Arlington, USA). My then-girlfriend (now…
