In my experience, many traditionalists[1] perceive the “New Mass” as empty and bland compared to the richness of the Tridentine liturgy. From their perspective, the new liturgy needs artificial distractions, from ad-libbing to clowns, to maintain people’s interest. The inherent...
Today over at the PrayTell blog, Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago has written an article explaining why Traditionis Custodes—Pope Francis’s recent document abrogating Pope Benedict’s 2007 decision to liberalize use of the pre-Vatican II Missal—is a gift to the Church. He...
Recently Pope Francis gave a video address to the fourth World Meeting of Popular Movements (EMMP), a primarily but not exclusively Latin American coming-together of social and political activists against poverty and inequality. Francis made a positive reference to the...
Is Latin a “Sacred Language”? The “Iconostasis of the West”? A unifying, universal language? Or are we being fed a bunch of “Just So” stories? What attitudes might these “Just So” stories be inculcating? The Use of Latin While Latin...
These days the term “gaslighting,” meaning the emotional manipulation of someone that causes them to question their sense of reality, is frequently used in the context of the news media and interpersonal and organizational dynamics. The word comes from the...
So while our own podcast has been on a bit of a hiatus for the last couple of months (but stay tuned for upcoming announcements on that front), I’ve been doing some listening to other podcasts. Here are some that I...
Six weeks ago Pope Francis issued an Apostolic Letter called “Traditionis Custodes” (“Guardians of the Tradition”). When I heard the news and read the letter, my first thought was, “thank God.” In this essay, I want to explain why, and suggest...
A particular theme stood out among the comments on my recent article. Some critics claimed that the Vatican II liturgy downplayed sacrificial symbolism in the liturgy in favor of meal symbolism, and so is inferior to the older forms of...
Every three years, the Sunday Gospel readings spend a few weeks working through chapter 6 of the Gospel of John. The Year B Gospel readings mostly focus on Mark’s Gospel and so John 6 comes as a somewhat startling and...
“It seems as though we aren’t even part of the same religion.” Sometimes saying a thing enough times does make it true, and in his public response to Traditionis Custodes in a New York Times op-ed, Michael Brendan Dougherty makes...
The dust is settling a little after Pope Francis’s Traditionis Custodes. This is not to say that the matter is over. Rather, we await the process of implementation with uncertainty about how bishops will apply the Motu proprio and how...
By the time I became a Catholic on April 4, 1999, I was already immersed in the Tridentine Mass. Also known as the Traditional Latin Mass, the Mass of St. Pius V, or the Extraordinary Form, I loved the prayers...
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