Column, Guest Author, Read
We have a lot of spaceship churches in these parts, here in Northern Virginia, lots of churches in the round. If they look like churches, which most of them really don’t, they look like they may have been Protestant of a certain vintage. The three local churches we...
Column, Guest Author, Read
For all its good intentions, the grand project of Eucharistic Revival is barely limping to its finish line. Applause is in order, for at least it noticed a precipitous loss of faith in the central mystery of Catholicism. But its cure was carefully wrapped in the naïve...
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The cardinal of Chicago, Blase Cupich, has issued a directive to demand that parishioners in the archdiocese not kneel to receive Holy Communion, on the grounds that doing so interrupts the flow of the procession and calls attention to the individual. Of course,...
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His Eminence Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago has recently written a letter in his archdiocesan publication discouraging the practice of kneeling for the reception of Holy Communion. Now, I state straightaway that I am not here to encourage anyone to be disrespectful...
Column, Guest Author, Read
Researchers in Germany have translated what they believe is the oldest evidence of the spread of Christianity into Europe. In 2018, archaeologists discovered what they’re calling the “Frankfurt silver inscription,” a rolled foil engraving inside a protective amulet,...
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If the Church is to continue to transform and humanize the world, how can she dispense with beauty in her liturgies, that beauty which is so closely linked with love and with the radiance of the Resurrection? —Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) This question,...
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Musicam Sacram, 1967, highlights the importance of singing in the sacred liturgy and provides useful instruction for prioritizing the parts of the Mass that should be sung. Additionally, Musicam Sacram specifically retains the distinctions between Solemn, Sung, and...
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It was a sunny spring day in May 1959 when I entered the nave of Notre-Dame de Paris for the very first time. As I looked up into the seemingly weightless vaults, and then down the colonnade to the distant apse, the sheer beauty of the architecture took my breath...
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In an earlier essay in this series, we remarked how dispassionate or despondent observers at the beginning of the 19th century might have considered that the Catholic Church was terminally ill and on its deathbed. The previous century had seen the rise of despotic and...
