Month: September 2010
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The authentic “Gather us In”
Congregate us, the rich and the boastful, Congregate us who are the stiffnecked, Give unto us a humble and meek heart That boldly we may enter the song.
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A prayer for spiritual benefit from the new missal
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Unintended novelty
The loss of the past is inevitable, and not to face the inevitable is psychologically, culturally, and, I suspect spiritually dangerous.
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First things first
The Trinity, the Paschal Mystery, and music at Mass. How do they relate? Call me crazy, but I think each provides a key to the others.
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The Pope’s successful trip
By all accounts, Pope Benedict XVI’s trip to the UK was a rousing success exceeding every expectation. The Scottish bishops are even hoping for an upsurge in priestly vocations.
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Female priest for Old Catholics in Italy
As a child, she prayed to St. Rita — much venerated in Sicily — asking for her intervention to become a priest.
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First female bishop for Lutheran Finland
Bishop Irja Askola was elected in a 3 June vote in which she received 591 votes to 567 for her rival, Matti Poutiainen. The Helsinki Times reported that one of the differences between the two candidates concerned marriage, with Askola being willing to bless same-sex couples, whereas Poutiainen held that marriage is solely between a…
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No shows: mainline worship attendance
Many people assume that there has been a steady decline in worship attendance for all the mainline denominations since the mid-1960s—the era when most of them began to see their memberships decline. But trends in attendance—usually thought to be a better indicator of church vitality than trends in membership—have actually followed their own patterns.
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A chant expert on the new chants
Bruce Ford writes: “The ICEL musicians ought to have read John Boe’s dissertation, ‘The Ordinary in English: Anglican Plainsong Kyrials and Their Sources’ (Northwestern University, 1969) before they did their work. They appear to have been unaware of all but the most obvious ‘set-forms.'”