12th Sunday after Pentecost: You are Christ’s love letter
In the flow of our green Vetus Ordo Sundays, this 12th Sunday after Pentecost brings the last selection from Paul’s Letters to the Corinthians. Next week we begin with Galatians. The order of our readings is very ancient, older in fact than the institution of the Divine Office. Hence, for our ancient Roman forebears, these […]
Forgotten Customs of Saint Days – part 2
Above: St. John’s Eve in Oviedo, Spain. Read part 1 here The Vigil and the Nativity of St. John the Baptist June 23rd is the Vigil of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. This used to be a day of fasting and abstinence, and we may certainly keep it as such to prepare. Dom […]
The Spiritual Dangers of Constant News Consumption
When I ‘reverted’ to my baptismal Catholic Faith almost a decade ago I underwent a simultaneous political conversion. Before I came back to the Sacraments (well, really to the Sacraments for the first time as I was raised only nominally Catholic) I would have considered myself a Liberal or a centrist. As much as I […]
Does Modern Man Have a Capacity for Liturgy? (1966)
Above: St. Engelbert in Cologne, 1928−1932 designed by Dominikus Böhm (1880 – 1955). Translator’s Introduction Jennifer S. Bryson In a letter in 1964, Fr. Romano Guardini offered his guidance for the participants of a conference on the liturgy in Mainz, Germany. He asked, Is the liturgical act, and with it the meaning of liturgy […]
The Road to Reconquista
Lagos de Covadonga, Asturias, Spain. Photo by Kamila Maciejewska on Unsplash. Editor’s note: for our Hispanidad archive, click here. Friday 21st July For anyone that has seen or visited most of Spain, the province of Asturias is immediately, and somewhat starkly, in contrast to the landscape and climate that one might have expected, and indeed predominates […]
Video: The Assumption Proclamation (1950)
Watch archival footage of Pope Pius XII proclaiming the dogma of Mary’s Assumption into heaven:
Saint Nerses the Gracious
Above: Mount Khustup, Armenia. 850 years ago yesterday, on August 13, 1173, after a serious illness, the Saint Bernard of Clairvaux of the East: Saint Nerses Shnorhali (the Gracious), known for his commitment to Christian unity, as well as for his theological, poetic, and musical writings. Nerses IV the Gracious The fourth head of the […]
Fratelli Non Tutti: Trads Not Included
Above: Vatican City – October 28, 2015. Pope Francis meets with an interfaith audience. © L’Osservatore Romano. In 1960, Ida Friederike Görres asked, “Is not the secret crisis of so many fellow believers, often hardly conscious, that they can no longer think of the past and the future together in the Church?”[1] Today this crisis […]
Bishop Schneider Publishes New Prayer for the Triumph of the Faith
Prayer for the Triumph of the Catholic Faith Almighty and eternal God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we kneel before Your Majesty, and thank You from the depth of our soul for the inestimable gift of the Catholic Faith, which you have deigned to reveal to us through Jesus Christ, True God and True man. […]
11th Sunday after Pentecost: Soccer balls instead of doctrine? Not so much.
We continue with this year’s focus on the Epistle, the first reading, in the Vetus Ordo of the Roman Rite. This week we hear from St. Paul in 1 Cor. 15:1-10. Context remains important. Last Sunday we observed the Feast of the Transfiguration, which has its own proper readings. However, last Sunday was in the […]