Have you ever sat in Mass and felt like this?! I know I have. There have been many times where I have just zoned out. I realise the priest has got to the end of his sermon and I haven’t really heard a word because I was daydreaming. I suppose it doesn’t help when most…
It is integral to human nature: our focus is principally determined by what we are looking at. When we speak to others, we make eye contact. When we move from place to place, we point ourselves in that direction. Pilots face forward. Drivers too. Surgeons don’t stare at the back wall of an operating theater. I’ve yet to…
As most internet-connected Catholics are now aware, Cardinal Robert Sarah recently encouraged priets and bishops to begin celebrating Mass ad orientem. He also specifically suggested that they begin this Advent. This is an excellent proposal. And judging from the backlash it has already inspired, I think it’s important that we communicate to our bishops our…
Members of Women’s Ordination Worldwide — that’s the name of a group promoting the “ordination” of women — have been in Rome this week, where rather than being shunned, as is appropriate, they were granted an audience with an official from the Vatican Secretariat of State. Hearing their appeal on behalf of some 150 women who have been “ordained”…
Editor’s note: the following is a guest essay submitted by a reader who wishes to remain anonymous. We have agreed to publish it here in the hopes of generating a fruitful discussion. In my efforts to draw friends into my local Latin Mass community, I’ve noticed a curious pattern in the way they evaluate their first…
In our year-long course on music at Wyoming Catholic College, students read and discuss a chapter from Joseph Ratzinger’s book A New Song for the Lord, “The Image of the World and of Human Beings in the Liturgy and Its Expression in Church Music,” one of the best things ever written about church music. Ratzinger masterfully…
So often these days we read of the ongoing collapse of Catholicism in the west. In diocese after diocese we see parishes and schools closing or consolidating, a decline in priests as older clergy pass away at rates higher than new ordinations, and a widespread loss of the next generation to either the secular left…
Part I | Part II The fundamental problem with Praise & Worship In the first part of this essay, I offered a critique of the profane stylistic traits of Praise & Worship music, whether “soft” or “hard.”[1] Praise & Worship music is not suitable for liturgical use. Its style reinforces a false conception of the…
Part I | Part II Whenever the popes speak about sacred (i.e., liturgical) music, the very first quality they put forward is holiness or sanctity, which they describe as a certain worthiness of or suitability for the celebration of the sacred mysteries of Christ, and freedom from worldliness or even that which is suggestive of…
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 In Part 1 of this series, we explored how, in a parish committed to the full Catholic paradigm, even something as simple as entering the church can become an exercise in multi-sensory learning, and therefore a highly effective means to help the people become recollected before Mass. In…
In my life, I have often encountered people who say something like the following to Catholics who love the traditional liturgy—or, for that matter, who wish to see the modern liturgy celebrated in a manner manifestly in continuity with its predecessor: “You’re making too much of incidental things. No matter what form or style, it’s…
