The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services. But other kinds of sacred music, especially polyphony, are by no means excluded from liturgical celebrations, so long as they accord with the spirit of the liturgical action, … Read more
After I finished with some business at the county building a few years ago, I went to fetch my daughter from the common area where she had been waiting. She was talking with another young girl, and I walked up to the two of them. “You look like your dad,” the other girl said. I … Read more
Over the past few weeks, I’ve read lots of congratulatory backslapping over David Van Biema’s piece in Time, “Is Liberal Catholicism Dead?” Let me offer some words of caution for my friends here at InsideCatholic and in the Church at large: Be very distrustful of the news of liberals you hear borne on the tongues … Read more
We Roman Catholics are in the midst of the First Communion season — dark suits fitted for seven-year-old boys, white dresses and veils for the girls, lots of flash photos, and earnest young faces in prayerful concentration for receiving Christ in the Eucharist for the first time. My memories of First Communion are quite different. … Read more
No collection of contemporary music represents the immediate postconciliar period in liturgical North America quite as well as the Glory & Praise series. In its successes and failures, fawning fandom and bitter critics, Catholics have a body of work that was as ubiquitous as any other music collection in American and Canadian parishes in the … Read more