Suicides among Americans aged ten to twenty-four increased by more than 50 percent between 2007 and 2017. The suicide rate for all ages rose by nearly 30 percent between 1999 and 2016. This is not an isolated trend. Life expectancy in the United States is falling, a shocking trend for a rich . . . . Continue Reading »
Though George Saunders may have formally left the Church, its forms didn’t leave him. Continue Reading »
The Resurrection without Holy Week would be pie-in-the-sky and cheap joy. Continue Reading »
Whenever we have the good fortune to participate in a traditional Mass, we will have Pope Benedict XVI to thank. Continue Reading »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
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