The Narthex

In order to appreciate what's at stake in the current Church-wide controversy surrounding restrictions on the traditional Latin Mass (TLM), data on Latin Mass attendees is key. A post at LitugyGuy.com, a blog by Fr. Donald Kloster of Norwalk, Connecticut, shows results of a unique national survey of Latin Mass-goers…

“Going my way?” Well, not yet. Sooner or later, though. Our word obituary comes from the Latin obire, which means “to go toward.” Many of us read the “obit” when someone famous dies. In such cases the obit was written soon after that someone became famous. That’s standard for the…

Every year we hear the same readings, the same parables, the same analogies: sheep & shepherds; seeds & sowers; vines, branches, weeds & farmers; coins, talents & those who don’t know what to do with them. As we slowly progress through life each parable takes on new meaning as we…

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s House of the Seven Gables, Colonel Pyncheon, a Puritan, covets a piece of land that a poor farmer owns. He has him hanged as a wizard so he can seize the old man’s property and build his seven-gabled mansion. At the gallows, Matthew Maule casts a generational…

The early Church fathers were a tough and uncompromising lot. They had to be. Sharp-tongued St. Jerome wouldn’t have done well in the diplomatic service, or even made it past the interview; he bitterly attacked heretical enemies and wasn’t always very nice to his friends. St. Ignatius of Antioch was…

In 1944, my father worked as an apprentice electrician at Bethlehem Steel’s East Boston facility, one of eighteen American shipyards that built 2,710 Liberty Ships as supply transports for WWII. Between 1941 and 1945 the facility cranked out three ships every two days. By the next year my father was…

From time to time, I’ve told people that outrage is the proper response to the outrageous. After all, ignoring the outrageous would be an outrage, wouldn’t? And it’s outrageous that we so often ignore the outrages of the day. Sounds plausible, or at least it did to me. But I…

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…

In the late 1940s, when I was a kid living in predominantly Irish and Italian East Boston, people practiced silence on Good Friday from noon to 3pm, respecting the three hours that Christ hung dying on the Cross. Business traffic slowed way down and cobblestone streets were silent of auto…

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…

On a warm, sunny spring morning, I passed a rose bush blooming in its full glory. Remembering to take time to stop for the roses, I leaned over to smell its sweet, delicious bouquet. I often do this on my walks and have found that only one in ten rose…

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…

Typically our statues and paintings portray saints as individuals. And except for martyrs who are often canonized in groups, canonizations are of individual saints. Nonetheless, many non-martyred canonized saints have had deep relationships with their contemporaries who were also saints. A few are: Mary and Joseph; Sarah and Tobias; Ruth…