The Narthex

Highlights of Ulf and Birgitta Ekman's conversion story were described in Part 1 (linked below). In telling their story they identified this long list of books as among the many they read: Peter Hocken’s The Glory and the Shame, on the historical churches and new movements. Ulf arranged for Word…

I promised some friends to read a book by two prominent Swedish Protestant charismatics, Ulf and Birgitta Ekman, about their conversion Catholicism to see if the book could be helpful to mutual friends who had left the Church for non-mainline Protestant churches. I believe The Great Discovery: Our Journey to…

In 1873, Damien’s bishop invited Father Damien, and many of the priests on the Islands, to Maui for the dedication of a new church. After the ceremony, the bishop addressed his priests about the new rules by the Board of Health concerning the leper colony that had been established on…

With the scene of Father Damien collapsed after a strenuous hike, I have stopped the camera, so to speak, and three images come to my mind. The first is that of Ernest Shackleton, the Antarctic explorer. After 16 days in an open boat on the high seas, including one day…

On October 6 and 8, the Ironman Triathlon will take place in Hawaii. In a contest that tests human endurance, the athletes, without taking breaks, will swim 2.4 miles in the open ocean, bike 112 miles, and run a marathon (26 miles). It has been held annually since 1978. I…

Every act of faith, including prayer, terminates not in a proposition or an abstract concept but in the living God. We pray to Him. (In contrast, recall how in the secular realm we often hear, “Our thoughts and prayers are with you,” or we are exhorted to give thanks on…

I had recently finished reading Father Ian Ker’s biography of Cardinal John Henry Newman (who was beatified in 2010 and canonized in 2019) when a review in the Wall Street Journal of a book on the existence and nature of God by a professor of law at Yale caught my…

Review of: Mere Marriage: Sexual Difference and Christian Doctrine. By Andrew D. Cannon, Ph.D. Alphonsus Publishing, available at MereMarriage.com. 215 pages. $24.95.   George Weigel devoted eleven pages of his 1999 biography of Pope John Paul II, Witness to Hope, to the saint-pope’s Theology of the Body. He concluded that…

Everyone -- whether priest, bishop, or layperson -- has ideas on how to change the liturgy. If I had my druthers, I would make the following changes, but these changes are neither mine to make nor a priest's to make: the congregation would kneel for the penitential moments of the…

The post-conciliar period saw liturgical abuses. One alleged abuse is moving altars away from the back walls of churches to allow, or require, the celebrant to face the people. Let us look at Cardinal Ratzinger’s 2003 foreword to U.M. Lang's Turning Towards the Lord: Orientation in Liturgical Prayer (2d ed.…

The Novus Ordo brought a number of reforms besides celebrating in the vernacular. In his Apostolic Constitution of 1969, Pope St. Paul VI approvingly referred to Pius XII’s restoration in 1951 and 1955 of the Easter Vigil and the Rite of Holy Week, respectively. He also cited the desire of…

Cardinal Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, wrote in the Foreword to U.M. Lang's Turning Towards the Lord: Orientation in Liturgical Prayer that the Vatican Council did not require the “disappearance of Latin.” In support of this statement, the cardinal quoted Section 1 of Paragraph 36 of the Constitution on…

I begin this installment by stating my love for the Latin language. I studied it in high school and graduate school. I drew on my knowledge of the language to write my master’s thesis, Aquinas on Marriage. I recently taught Latin for five years to grade schoolers on Saturday mornings.…

The first Mass in English in the United States was celebrated on August 24, 1964, by Father Frederick R. McManus in St. Louis. A New York Times article, “Catholics Hear Mass in English Today for First Time in the U.S.” (Aug. 24, 1964), describes the translation as “hurried”; I am perplexed…

This new blog series addresses certain liturgical changes in the Latin Rite Mass, from the vantage point of a half century after Vatican II. These changes notably began with Mass in the vernacular languages rather than solely in Latin. I begin by observing that I know of two instances in…