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…
(Editor’s note: this is Part I of a three-part essay. You can read Part II here and Part III here.) Part I In order that the Christian people may more certainly derive an abundance of graces from the sacred liturgy, holy Mother Church desires to undertake with great care a general restoration of the liturgy…
As I reported elsewhere a few days ago, on 4 May, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, allowed himself to make several very important statements while he was visiting Spain at the beginning of May. The most important words he spoke in Spain I then summed up as follows:…
Yesterday, May 6, Pope Francis received the international Charlemagne Prize in Rome. The whole ceremony can be watched here. After the Rome Correspondent of the National Catholic Reporter, Joshua McElwee, tweeted out two pictures of that event – one showing Pope Francis with Cardinal Gerhard Müller, and the other showing him with Cardinal Walter Kasper,…
At a meeting to discuss the apostolic exhoration Amoris Laetitia, Archbishop Bruno Forte revealed new insights into the mind of Pope Francis on one of the most controversial issues facing the Church: communion for the divorced and “remarried.” Forte was the man personally chosen by Pope Francis as the Special Secretary for the synods on marriage…
There are a number of things which are only now becoming clear — or at least, clearer than they were — to a large segment of the Catholic population. The handwriting has been on the wall since before I was born, though it was hard for many to discern. At the beginning of this papacy, it…
Many traditionally-minded Catholics have wondered lately if the Vatican’s recent overtures regarding regularization of Society of Saint Pius X might have muted their likely criticism of the post-synodal apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia. Some have even speculated that the timing of this outreach — which appears to have some real chance of ending the decades-old standoff between Écône and Rome…
As we reported yesterday, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, made the clear statement that the previously continuous Catholic teaching with regard to the “remarried” divorcees and the Sacraments is still valid, and that this teaching has not been rescinded by the papal document Amoris Laetitia. Moreover,…
“Amen, Amen, I say to you, that you shall lament and weep, but the world shall rejoice; and you shall be made sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy. A woman, when she is in labour, hath sorrow, because her hour is come; but when she hath brought forth the child, she remembereth…
G.K. Chesterton wasn’t called the “apostle of common sense” for nothing. Among his many illuminating essays and observations, one of the most insightful is his perspective on women and the colossal importance of their role inside the home: Babies need not to be taught a trade, but to be introduced to a world. To put…
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…
