Cheap Joy

by Kenneth Colston

The Resurrection without Holy Week would be pie-in-the-sky and cheap joy.  Continue Reading »

4 May 2018

Pope Benedict's Red Thread

by Martin Mosebach

Whenever we have the good fortune to participate in a traditional Mass, we will have Pope Benedict XVI to thank.  Continue Reading »

10 Aug 2017

The Wild of the Mass

by Brian Doyle

Only say the word and I shall be healed. Isn’t that the most humble unadorned thing you can say about faith? Don’t you always say that with a shiver in your heart? The hair prickles on my head sometimes when I say that. Continue Reading »

22 Sep 2016

Dear Father: Please Stop It

by George Weigel

In all the sixteen documents of the Second Vatican Council, is there any prescription more regularly violated than General Norm 22.3 of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy? Which, in case you’ve forgotten, teaches that “no . . . person, not even a priest, may add, remove, or change anything . . . . Continue Reading »

13 Jan 2016

Rules for Being an Altar Boy at Saint John Vianney Parish for the Liturgical Year 1964

by Brian Doyle

If you have to sneeze on the altar do so quietly and turn Your head away from the Holy Sacrament. Please carry A handkerchief in the pocket of your trousers. No jeans. Wear good shoes. No sneakers. Arrive 30 minutes early Minimum: 5 minutes early is 25 minutes late. The bells, As a crucial part of . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Oct 2015

Missing Mass

by Brian Doyle

In our family, we went to Mass every blessed Sunday of the year, and here and there you would have to go to Mass during the week because of funerals or weddings or Days of Obligation or Masses to Open the School Year or Masses in Memory of the Faithful Departed. So by the time I was fourteen years . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Mar 2015

After the Wedding: Diving Off Isla Mujeres

by Lori Brannigan Kelly

It’s been three days now. We continue to find splinters of rice clinging to our scalps; piercing no skin but adamant, predatory at the root. They will not be removed. Thinking back to the Mass we recall the smallest things—yellow neckties splashed with ciliated . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Oct 1990