At our parish, we try to keep the homilies short on this day, given the length of the liturgy.
Read moreMonth: March 2012
Not Sacred Music, but Sounds of Attack?
Will those more knowledgable read the March 30 column of Sandro Magister and tell us what’s going on in the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music
Read moreAgainst Reading the Passion of the Lord in Parts
Mark F. Hoggard writes: “I still see practices that suggest that the Passion and Death of Jesus is something that we need to ‘act out’ or dramatize like it never happened, in order to make it more ‘interesting’ for our assemblies.”
Read moreWhy they left
Kudos to Bishop David O’Connell of the Diocese of Trenton for asking the question.
Read moreHoly Week Is for Children
What the church does together in its liturgical assembly during Holy Week is almost by definition much more accessible to children than what the church does on, say, the umpteenth Sunday in ordinary time. What the church does during Holy Week, when one boils it down, is simple. In our words and our actions, our songs and our prayers, we tell the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
Read moreThe Pope, Fidel, and the Liturgy
The Pope and Fidel Castro met, and guess what they talked about.
Read moreBlessing for an unborn child
Set to appear by Mother’s Day, this new prayer was commissioned by the USCCB.
Read moreFeast of Peace: Pope Benedict XVI on meal and sacrifice
In Pope Benedict XVI’s theology, the Eucharist is a sacrifice because it is the sacrifice of the cross, made accessible to human beings forever through the eucharistic prayer. It is also a meal, however, precisely because the divine sacrifice completes itself in a community meal that also obliges Christians to ethical service and communal love.
Read moreSetting polemics aside for a moment
Theological debates go back to the origins of the Church. But recent years have seen a number of debates receiving high profiles in the media; these have typically involved militant atheists such as Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens. When Dawkins engaged in a recent debate with the Archbishop of Canterbury, I expected more of the same. To my surprise, this turned out to be a very different debate.
Read more“A Spirit of Compunction”?
by Andrew Cameron-Mowat, SJ.
“The Prayer over the People from which this phrase comes was heard for the first time at the end of Mass on Ash Wednesday this February. The prayer illustrates two of the issues that have emerged from the use of the new translation of the Missal…”