Pope Leo has continued his catechesis on Vatican II, this Wednesday, May 20th, opening a new cycle on the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium. In this first installment, Leo reminded his hearers, the Council Fathers “sought not only...
In my first article on this topic, I made the historical and liturgical case for standing, which is the normative posture for receiving Holy Communion in the United States. Several readers pressed back from various angles. Rather than rehearse those exchanges,...
Many sincere Catholics associate kneeling with greater reverence and standing with something less. It’s an understandable instinct. But when we look at how the Church herself has understood these gestures across history, a clearer picture emerges. The question is not...
It is no secret that the Catholic Church has faced mounting tension over its liturgical life in recent years. Since the publication of Traditionis Custodes (TC) in 2021, which restricted celebrations of the 1962 Roman Missal, many Catholics attached to...
[Editor’s note: This article originally included a comparison between the “liturgy war” in the Syro-Malabar Church in India and the implementation of Traditionis Custodes in the Archdiocese of Chicago. After speaking with several well-informed members of the Syro-Malabar Church, it became...
Debates over the post–Vatican II liturgical reforms often hinge less on what the Council actually mandated than on myths, misattributions, and misunderstandings. From rumors that Archbishop Annibale Bugnini was a Freemason to claims that Protestants secretly shaped the new Missal,...
Editor’s note: This is a long-form essay in five parts, all published simultaneously below. The word count is around 12,400. Part 1 The liturgical path of the Church after Vatican II Introduction The Second Vatican Council, a watershed in the...
For the past several years, the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, which is based in Southern India, has been riven over a liturgical reform. In one of the nastiest and most intractable intra-Catholic disputes in the world, the church’s general synod has...
“They were men of genius, but they had no perception of what is just and lawful in music; raging like Bacchanals and possessed with inordinate delights-mingling lamentations with hymns, and paeans with dithyrambs; imitating the sounds of the flute on...
“May Christ plant a kiss on me.” — St. Ambrose. Every Romeo wants to kiss his Juliet. If she is a little shy, he may try to cajole or trick her with sweet and gentle words. Shakespeare’s tragic Romeo tells...
On Sunday, March 19, BBC Radio broadcast a story featuring Cardinal Arthur Roche, the Vatican’s Prefect for the Dicastery of Divine Worship. The topic of the segment, which also included comments by papal biographer Austen Ivereigh and several traditionalist Catholics,...
Today at noon in Rome, the Vatican Press Office published a rescript confirming that dispensations from the July 16, 2021, motu proprio Traditionis Custodes are reserved to the Apostolic See. The document, published in Italian and signed by Cardinal Arthur...
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