Image: a modified photo taken from House of Ilona, a UK-based clerical apparel store. We have become aware of a story — an anecdote published three years ago in a Swiss Capuchin journal and never denied by the Vatican — relating a conversation between the pope and an unnamed archbishop in which the pope is alleged…
Image credit: Ben Yanke At one point in Plato’s Republic, Thrasymachus, the nihilistic proponent of might-makes-right, asks his interlocutor Socrates: “Am I to take my argument and pour it into your very own soul?” To which query Socrates replies: “God forbid, don’t do that!”[1] I was thinking about this recently in connection with some truly…
Editor’s note: The following originally appeared at Whispers of Restoration. It is reprinted and adapted here with the author’s permission. Faithful Catholics have something to be edified and encouraged by in the “Filial Correction” of Pope Francis just made public, originating from 62 clerics and lay signatories, with more cosignatories each day. The 25-page document…
Summorum Pontificum: ten years later. The Fifth Colloquium in Rome, which marks the tenth anniversary of Pope Benedict XVI’s motu proprio, sustained the importance of an appropriate liturgy to the spiritual aggrandizement of man Ten years after the promulgation of motu proprio whereby Pope Benedict XVI allowed the Church to celebrate the Mass according…
Image courtesy of Marc Salvatore. We have probably all met people who are thinking of attending the traditional Latin Mass on a regular basis and who, when they actually start going, are struck by how much extra effort it costs. Perhaps we ourselves once felt the same way. For starters, you are expected to kneel…
Photo courtesy of Saint Ann’s Church and Shrine in Buffalo, New York. By Peter Kwasniewski & Michael Foley Given that it can often be less convenient for a person or a family to attend the traditional Latin Mass (and I am thinking not only of obvious issues like the place and the time, but also…
A new papal motu proprio letter on the liturgy was released today. It’s called Magnum Principium, and in my opinion, it’s a ticking timebomb. But to better understand it, we must first have something to contrast it against. If you’ve ever read Pope St. Pius V’s famous apostolic constitution on liturgy, Quo Primum (1570), you know that the…
Editor’s note: This article is Part II of a series. For Part I, click here. The traditional Mass can be compared to a tournament. At the beginning of a High Mass, the priest (knight) processes in with the deacon and sub-deacon (squires) and all the acolytes, torchbearers, and other servers (pages). The priest is arrayed…
Photo credit: Paweł Kula Editor’s note: This article is Part I of a two-part series. For Part II, click here. Author’s note: This article dwells particularly on the vocation to the priestly life. For the most part, the things said about the priesthood are also applicable to the religious life in general. Also, even though about…
Editor’s Note: Pope Francis, in a recent address, claimed that the “liturgical reform [i.e. the Novus Ordo Mass] is irreversible.” Vatican specialist Sandro Magister has said that many interpreted these words “as a halt ordered by Pope Francis to the presumed reverse course signaled by Benedict XVI with the 2007 motu proprio Summorum Pontificum.” Magister…
Dr. Heinz-Lothar Barth is a professor of Latin and Greek Philology at the University of Bonn, a 200-year-old institution boasting over 30,000 students. On the University website, the school is described as “one of Germany’s most prestigious universities and also ranked among the top hundred in the world”. Founded in 1818 as Rhein University, the school has offered programs in…
