As with every Sunday for the last twelve years, my family drove the long 1.5 hour one-way drive up to Chicago for the Mass of the Ages on Sunday, February 6th, 2022. Despite it being a seemingly ordinary Chicago winter day, a blustery and frigid 20 degrees Fahrenheit with an accompanying wind chill, there was…
“That they may become perfectly one…” —John 17:23 The ancient form of the Roman liturgy—that masterwork of the Holy Spirit by the hands of the saints—is once again targeted for extinction. Understandably, more than a few traditionalists are giving vent to their distress in heated and dramatic terms. However, as we struggle to preserve our…
Like the Priesthood, and certainly even more fundamental than any clerical calling, biological fatherhood manifests its form in a single biological act which then reaches through a multiplicity of identities to the very existential zenith defined by God’s own self-revelation. It is a reality which lies at the cornerstone of human experience and being itself,…
Some people maintain that the Church cannot promulgate defective, useless, or harmful rites, citing Pope Pius VI’s Auctorem Fidei n. 78 and Pope Gregory XVI’s regional letter Quo Graviora n. 10. Those who wield these texts do not realize the trap into which they are falling. Let us consider more closely what Pius VI condemned.…
I want to share a little about the uniqueness of Romans who attend the Traditional Latin Mass. To be Italian is great. To be Roman is great. To love the Latin Mass is great. But to be all these things is quite the sight to behold. I think they will be the leaven in the…
As is well known by now, the Responsa ad Dubia from the Congregation for Divine Worship, published on December 18, 2021, try to make the continued use of the Rituale Romanum contingent on episcopal permission. This is but one of many falsehoods contained in the document, which, in addition, violates the rights of bishops on numerous points of canon…
Translated by 1P5 staff For this letter, we’re reusing verbatim the title we gave to our letter #729 (January 15, 2020); it is perfectly topical today, as an opinion piece in La Croix reminds us. We’ll get back to that. The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity was created in January 1933 on the initiative…
The Sunday following Traditionis Custodes, the Novus Ordo readings pronounced “Woe to the shepherds” whose actions “mislead and scatter the flock of My pasture, says the Lord.” Yet unlike shepherds who “have not cared,” the Lord is our perfect “Shepherd.” He “refreshes” the “soul.” His “rod” and “staff” will “give me courage.” Only through the…
The traditional Roman rite of the Mass was never abrogated, whatever His Eminence the finora Vescovo di Leeds may think to imply. Deo gratias. One shudders to imagine the alternative, which may it please God will never come to pass. That the traditional Missal was never abrogated—though one might have been forgiven for believing it…
I have been reading the Traditionalist classic, Tito Cassini’s The Torn Tunic, first published (in Italian, La Tunica Stracciata) in 1967, reprinted by Angelico Press. It is an impassioned, indeed ferocious, statement of the case for liturgical traditionalism, written and published before the Novus Ordo Missae was promulgated. Casini, like most Catholics of the time,…
I never did get my father to see his two grandsons serve the old Mass – I’d harbored a vague notion that seeing them up there amidst the “smells and bells” might help bring him back into the fold. When they assisted at his requiem this past October, it was the first time they were…
