Sacred music is "integral" to the Catholic Church's liturgy, Bishop Alexander K. Sample said in a Feb. 13 pastoral letter to the people of the Diocese of Marquette. "In any discussion of the...'art of celebrating' as it relates to the Holy Mass, perhaps nothing is...

Since the close of the Second Vatican Council, church music has been at the center of a lot of controversy. In many places liturgy has become mere entertainment or an emotional pep rally. Music has become the very center of a crisis which has profoundly affected the...

Ordinarily, do untrained and unprepared people “rise to the occasion” when faced with enormous challenges? In great fiction, they often do. In real life? Well, that’s another story. People who work in fields where error can result in death (e.g., soldiers, law...

The Eucharistic Revival isn’t, as claimed, a grass-roots initiative, and fails to take into account a penetrating blow to the hearts of the faithful in the US and around the world, a blow inflicted by the very hierarchy that now claims to seek to impart love for the...

Singing the Mass — Part one a three-part series by Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted St. Augustine recounts in his autobiography “Confessions” an experience he had during the singing of the Mass: “How I wept, deeply moved by your hymns, songs, and the voices that echoed...

Singing the Mass — Part Two a three-part series by Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted In the first part of this series on sacred music, I described the meaning of sacred music, the music of the Church’s sacred liturgy, as distinct from “religious music.” In this second...

Singing the Mass — Part Three a three-part series by Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted In the first part of this series on sacred music, I described the meaning of sacred music, and the difference between the music of the Church’s sacred liturgy and “religious music” (Dec. 15,...