I had just entered the seminary when Cardinal Ratzinger’s book, The Spirit of the Liturgy, came out. I had an English copy expressed to me and brought it with me into the chapel as my spiritual reading during our daily …
Learning the Priesthood: The Role of Altar Service in Vocational Discernment
On March 15, 1994, a virtual tsunami struck the Liturgy of the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church. Cardinal Antonio Ortas wrote a document to the Episcopal conferences announcing that the Vatican had, for the first time, permitted altar girls. …
The Parameters of Christian Orthodoxy
God willed to reveal Himself and to enter into an intimate personal relation with mankind. This revelation and plan of salvation began to unfold through Moses and the prophets, but only in Jesus Christ do we find the fulfillment. He …
The Identity Crisis in the Priesthood: Diminution by Design?
Let us begin with this certitude of Catholic Faith: anything—and I do mean anything at all—that harms the priesthood or the path of priestly formation in any way most definitely comes straight from the Evil One. Of this we can …
Armor and Armament Abandoned: Priestly Prayers Purged (Part I – Júdica Me)
A critique of the 1965 Order of Mass, in three parts A recent online discussion of more reverent Catholic liturgy has revived consideration of the 1965 “transitional” Roman Missal and its similarities with the 1962 Roman Missal (called the Vetus …
Nominalism and the Possibility of a Modern Liturgy
In a recent article here on OnePeterFive, “Liturgy, Adaptation, and the Need for Context,” Adam Michael Wood attempts to draw a sort of liturgical middle way between rigorist traditionalism and laxist liberalism. I recommend reading the article yourself in order …
Liturgy, Adaptation, and the Need for Context
Historically authentic productions of Shakespearean plays are occasionally in and out of fashion. Recently a movement championing “original pronunciation” purports to let us hear Shakespeare’s words precisely as they would have been spoken when the plays were originally written …
Contraception, Marriage and the Culture of Death
While Humanae Vitae is viewed today as the Catholic Church’s official response to the increasing acceptance of birth control within marriage, the actual teaching contained within Pope Paul VI’s landmark 1968 encyclical is much more profound and prophetic than many …
The Emasculation of the Priesthood
Editor’s note: this article originally appeared in the Spring, 1998 edition of The Latin Mass Magazine. It was written by the magazine’s then editor-in-chief, Fr. James McLucas, who has ever been a tireless crusader for authentic, reverent liturgy. Published in the …
Making Mass “Relevant” is Irrelevant to Evangelization
Many Catholics have witnessed or read about Masses gone wild: polka Masses, life-size scary puppet Masses, and probably worst of all, Los Angeles Religious Education Congress closing Masses. In these extreme cases, it is clear that there is something fundamentally …