Free Republic

Jesuit who became a Byzantine priest worked to help disparate parts of the Church understand one another Fr. Robert Francis Taft, preeminent historian of the Eastern Christian liturgy and an outspoken voice in relations between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, died at his home in Weston, Massachusetts, November 1, at the age of 86. Fr. Taft, who taught at a pontifical institute in Rome for several decades, is best known for his six-volume History of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. Born into a family that had ties to a U.S. president and a senator from Ohio, he grew up...

The first reaction of visitors to my lovely parish church is generally one of bewilderment, as they anoint themselves with air after reaching out for a holy water font inside the door and coming up empty. No statues, either. No stations of the cross. No confessionals or Rosary group either, for that matter. The first question visitors usually ask is, “Is this a Catholic Church?” Why, yes, it is. But not in the way most Catholics would expect. A young man in my parish once summed up the prevailing assumption when he told me that he hadn’t been able to...