Liturgy

Is Chant Like Folk Music?

by Jeffrey Tucker

Somehow we have this impression that Gregorian chant is part of a high Church ethos. It’s for conservatives and traditionalists who favor their liturgy buttoned up, obedient, and strict. On the other hand, this line of thinking goes, people who…

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Pope Benedict XVI’s Musical Legacy

by Jeffrey Tucker

One of the many lasting legacies of the papacy of Benedict XVI concerns liturgical music. Enormous progress has been made in his papacy. Incredibly this progress has happened without new legislation, new restrictions, new mandates, or firm-handed attempts to impose…

Christ is Born! Come, Lord Jesus!

by Fr. Robert Johansen

In the crypt of the church of St. Mary Major in Rome, under the high altar, rests a crystal reliquary containing five pieces of sycamore wood, which are believed to be the remains of the crib of the infant Jesus…

Is It Back to Nuns with Rulers?

by Rev. Dwight Longenecker

One of the things I have always found most delightful about the Catholic Church is nuns. Protestants have fearsome and holy women, but they don’t have nuns. There is something feisty and admirable about a nun. Especially a nun with…

An Interview with Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev

by Joseph Susanka

A year and a half ago, while searching for a recording of Bach’s Matthäus-Passion to share with a friend, I stumbled across a YouTube clip entitled simply: ”St Matthew Passion. No. 1.” Filled with idle musical curiosity, I clicked away,…

Cosmic Onions? How Still Lifes Point to the Liturgy

by David Clayton

It is said that all the great art movements begin on the altar. So, for example, the gothic style began as the style for gothic churches and cathedrals in harmony with the liturgy. However, very quickly the architecture of mundane…

The Heavens Proclaim the Glory of the Lord

by David Clayton

Many people that I have come across say that they believe in God, and might even acknowledge the need to conform to a moral code (quite how they discern it is another matter) but see no reason for ‘organised religion’,…

Behold the Lamb: The Triumph of the New Translation

by Rev. Dwight Longenecker

To mark the implementation of the new English translation yesterday, the First Sunday of Advent, and to and facilitate discussion, we have reposted this piece and George Weigel’s column on the topic. The reasons given for the new English…

A Portrait of Dietrich Von Hildebrand

The name Dietrich von Hildebrand is not, perhaps, as well known as it should be among intelligent and literate Catholics — or, for that matter, among Christians of any ilk. He is a man whom Pius XII referred to as…

Worship Gone Awry

by Maureen Mullarkey

Many thoughtful Catholics dismiss concern for style as an affectation, an indulgence in personal taste. Like Puritan prelates, they pull their hems back from what they regard as an overemphasis on ornament and human ceremony. These are distractions from the…

Of Tepees and Tabernacles

by Rev. Dwight Longenecker

We are building a new church in our parish, and to lead the effort I have been thinking and reading about church architecture. Looking around at the dismal buildings that have been presented as Catholic churches over the last 50…

A Eucharistic Prayer

by Most Rev. Eugene J. Gerber

This prayer, offered quietly by the deacon or priest at Mass, often goes unnoticed. It is the prayer said in preparation of the cup of wine that will soon become the cup of the very blood of Jesus. This simple…

Whatever Happened to Palestrina?

by Rev. Lawrence B. Porter

A German opera called Palestrina, composed by Hans Pfitzner during the First World War, portrayed the 16th-century composer as the savior of Catholic Church music. Set during the Council of Trent, the opera had the council fathers on the verge…

Credo

by Rev. James V. Schall, S.J.

The translation of the Nicene Creed used at Sunday Mass beginning in Advent will read, “I believe in God, the Father Almighty” — not, as currently, “We believe in God.” Often I say Mass using the Latin Novus Ordo. This…

The True Beauty of Liturgy

It was expected that Pope Benedict XVI would be a pope of liturgical reform, and he has not disappointed. Catholic conservatives eagerly awaited these reforms, anticipating a return to the “glory days” of pre-Vatican II Catholicism. At the same time,…

There Ain’t No Pure Church

by Mark P. Shea

Some people become Catholic because the Church is a communion of sinners and slobs who are losers, oddballs, factory rejects, and broken dunderheads who can’t tell their butt from a hole in the ground and who have messed up their…

Vatican Instruction Released: The Good and the Bad

by Michael Brendan Dougherty

The long-awaited (and occasionally feared) Instruction on Summorum Pontificum was published earlier today, addressing some of the questions that the ultra-slow motion return of the Traditional Latin Mass has occasioned. So what do we learn? First, the good: Bishops…

Art and Liturgy: The Splendor of Faith

by H. Reed Armstrong

Forty years after the close of the Second Vatican Council, liturgical reform remains one of the most contested topics of Catholic debate. The subject, most often discussed from either the dogmatic or historical perspective, leaves little time for the powerful…

Three Hard Facts about the Liturgy

by Arturo Vasquez

When I hear or see people arguing about liturgy, either on-line or in person, I tend to run the other way. This is not for lack of an opinion, or out of some sense of not wanting to be “controversial”;…

Liturgy and Charity

by Madeline Kenilworth

Some years ago, when speaking at a Catholic meeting, I said that the older rite of the Mass — what we then called the Tridentine rite — should be allowed more widely. I received a massive round of applause….

Inclusive Language and the Liturgy

by Howard Kainz

I belong to a relatively liberal congregation. For instance, the former pastor often applied St. Paul’s admonition about “freedom from the law” to Vatican “laws,” and asked for and received an exemption from the 2002 reemphasis by our bishop on…

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