The futile closed circle of therapeutic navel-gazing hangs on like an overused joke in a few places still, one of them being the Church. The priest and people facing each other during the entire liturgy is a vestige of the illegitimate seizure and subjection of 2,000-year-old liturgical development by primitivist vandals in the post-Vatican period.…
This past Saturday Pope Francis travelled to the parish of Ognissanti (All Saints) in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the first vernacular Mass celebrated there by Pope Paul VI in 1965. Immediately following the Mass, the Holy Father exited the church to address the faithful gathered in the courtyard: “Let us thank the Lord…
It appears a new blasphemy has been revealed. No, I’m not talking about the latest black Mass, a new book by Richard Dawkins, or something Madonna or Katy Perry did on stage. Those sorts of things are just something we’re supposed to put up with in our post-Christian world. This is something different. Something totally unacceptable.…
The sexual revolution, and the Baby Boomer generation that launched it, has often been said to have embraced as its motto Jeremiah’s phrase of “Non Serviam!” “Of old time thou hast broken my yoke, thou hast burst my bands, and thou saidst: I will not serve. For on every high hill, and under every green…
The Lord said to Cain: “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground” (Gen 4:10). The voice of the blood shed by men continues to cry out, from generation to generation, in ever new and different ways. – Evangelium Vitae “Whosoever shall shed man’s blood, his…
Minimalism, in its proper context, can be beautiful. We see this in the peaceful feeling of an uncluttered house, a simple graphic design, the clean lines of good architecture, or the stark contrast of a cherry blossom against the white backdrop of a Japanese silkscreen print. But when it comes to Catholicism, there is a danger in…
I recently kicked up some dust about the recent elevation of Gregory of Narek, a tenth-century Armenian monk, to the status of a Doctor of the (entire Catholic) Church. The debate drags on at my own blog, and my own efforts to make sense of this decision are still underway. The finer points of dyotheletic…
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 community Holy Hour. One of the older men knelt next to me as I was…
“The real reason I cannot be in communion with you [Catholics] is not a disagreement with this or that Roman doctrine, but that to accept your Church means, not to accept a given body of doctrine, but to accept in advance any doctrine your Church hereafter produces. It is like being asked to agree not…
In an exclusive and wide-ranging interview with Rorate Caeli, Cardinal Burke answered questions on a number of the most pressing topics on the minds of Catholics today. Perhaps most notable to readers of 1P5 is this exchange (with my emphasis): Rorate Caeli: What words of encouragement can Your Eminence give to traditional Catholics who are struggling…
It was originally reported that a traditional Latin Mass would be offered for our benefactors yesterday, March 1st, by the Canons Regular of the New Jerusalem at their priory in Charles Town, WV. Through an administrative error, we got the dates mixed up. The Mass was actually celebrated at 11:15 AM today, March 2nd. I sent…
