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A NOBLE BEAUTY – Exclusive interview with Dr Peter Kwasniewski We celebrate this year the 10th anniversary of the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, a document released by Pope Benedict XVI that liberalized the use of the pre-Vatican II Missal. If we want to know something more about the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite (the pre Vatican II Mass), we could read Noble Beauty, Transcendent Holiness (2017, Angelico Press) by Peter Kwasniewski, a very well known scholar in the field of liturgy. Dr Peter Kwasniewski, choirmaster at the Wyoming Catholic College (USA), certainly presents very strong arguments to defend...

Green Semidouble THIS Sunday's Introit—which now goes under the name of the Sunday of the widow of Naim, because of the Gospel read on it—gives us a sample of the prayers we should address to our Lord in our necessities. Last Sunday, we heard our Jesus promising to provide for all our wants, on the condition that we would serve him faithfully, by seeking his kingdom. When we present our petitions to him, let us show him the confidence he so well deserves from us; and we shall be graciously heard. INTROIT Inclina, Domine, aurem tuam ad me, et...

In honor of the tenth anniversary of the “Liberation” of the Latin Mass by Pope Benedict XVI, a pilgrimage and conference were held in Rome. Pope Francis was notably silent throughout. AbcNews.com/VATICAN CITY — Sep 14, 2017, 12:27 PM ET: Fans of the old Latin Mass descended on Rome on Thursday for their annual pilgrimage, facing indifference to their cause, if not outright resistance, from none other than Pope Francis.Ten years after Pope Benedict XVI passed a law allowing greater use of the Latin Mass, Francis seems to be doing everything possible to roll it back or simply pretend it never happened.In recent...

Cultic Charity in the Church: Returning to a Full Celebration of the Ancient Roman Rite By Veronica A. Arntz The liturgical treasures of the Church are perhaps her greatest and most sublime. These beautiful treasures, from Gregorian chant to vestments to the language of the ancient rite itself, are to be reverenced and preserved, just as the many great saints of antiquity have done before us. As we are all very well aware, the preservation of the liturgical treasures of the Church has been in decline since the Second Vatican Council, in many, if not most, parishes and dioceses. With...

Pontifical Mass in Philadelphia for the Tenth Anniversary of the Effectuation of Summorum Pontificum On Thursday, September 14, 2017 at 7pm, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, a Solemn Pontifical Mass will be celebrated by His Excellency the Most Reverend Joseph Perry, Auxiliary Bishop of Chicago, at the Cathedral Basilica of Ss. Peter and Paul in Philadelphia, PA. The Mass will mark the 10th anniversary of the going-into-effect of Summorum Pontificum, the Apostolic Letter of Pope Benedict XVI in 2007, which clarified that the Traditional Latin Mass was never abrogated and eliminated the need for priests to...

In a recent article on the state of liturgy in the French journal La Nef, excerpted in English at Sandro Magister’s indispensable blogsite, Cardinal Robert Sarah, the now-neutralized Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, presents the usual “conservative” admissions of the liturgical disaster that has unfolded since the post-Vatican II “liturgical reform” was thrust upon the Church. The usual admissions are followed by the usual “conservative” refusal to admit that the “reform” was a catastrophic blunder that should be abandoned in favor of a return to liturgical tradition. Worse, Cardinal Sarah prescribes a...

If the grand altars, with all their gold and statues and size, are at their core outward signs of inward devotion, what does it say about plain altars that more resemble a table than a temple? For most of the Catholic Church’s 2,000-year history, it has been known for its magnificent churches. In the popular psyche, the stereotypical Catholic church has high, arched ceilings, statues of saints, massive crucifixes, incense that seems to pour from the walls, and gilded, beautiful, and (sometimes) obnoxious altars.There is perhaps no better example of this than St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, the Vatican itself,...

In the seminary of Cologne archdiocese, Germany, students are expelled if it becomes known that they have attended the Traditional Latin Mass, the German philologist Heinz-Lothar Barth told his audience during a workshop in the Old Rite Cistercian monastery of Vyšší Brod (Hohenfurth), Czech Republic, on July 5. The seminary of Cologne Archdiocese is located in Bonn. According to Barth a growing number of theological students attend the diocesan Latin Mass in Bonn. But they are afraid that this becomes known, because this would mean “the end of their training“.

Francis: "We can affirm with certainty and with magisterial authority that the liturgical reform is irreversible" Pope Francis gave an address on the liturgical reform of Pope Paul VI today, speaking to participants of the 68th Italian National Liturgical Week. In it, Francis declares: "After this magisterium, after this long journey, we can affirm with certainty and with magisterial authority that the liturgical reform is irreversible." Francis' remarks ironically read like a Quo Primum for the Novus Ordo. Pope St. Pius V's Quo Primum (1570), which has never been revoked or abolished by any pope, decreed that the Traditional Latin Mass, which the saintly...

Sources inside the Vatican suggest that Pope Francis aims to end Pope Benedict XVI’s universal permission for priests to say the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM), also known as the Extraordinary Form of the Mass. While the course of action would be in tune with Pope Francis’ repeatedly expressed disdain for the TLM especially among young people, there has been no open discussion of it to date. Sources in Rome told LifeSite last week that liberal prelates inside the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith were overheard discussing a plan ascribed to the Pope to do away with Pope Benedict’s famous...

Card. Robert Sarah, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, recently had an article in the French magazine La Nef; in it, he discusses among other things the mutual enrichment of the two Forms of the Roman Rite which Pope Benedict proposed in the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. The text has not yet been made available on their website, but someone provided Fr Zuhlsdorf with an English translation, which he reads (with an introduction) in a podcast posted here. Yesterday, the Catholic Herald published a commentary on the La Nef article by Fr Raymond de Souza, “Cardinal Sarah’s challenge to...

Concelebration in the Roman Colleges (3) Today: a couple of dogs that failed to bark in the night. (1) Dog A is the CDW, still nominally under the direction of the disgraced not-sufficiently-bergoglian Cardinal Sarah. There is no evidence in the Working Paper which we are considering that the CDW was consulted. Yet the Working Paper is exclusively about a liturgical matter! Here we have another example of bergoglian method: the dodge of not entrusting something to an actually relevant dicastery. There would, you see, be the terrible risk that they might not come up with the right answer. After...

Father Roger Thomas Calmel, "Receive without the risk of being deceived..."The True Mass! The Latin Mass:Receive without the risk of being deceived... On 27th November 1969, three days before the fateful day on which the Novus Ordo Missae came into effect, Fr. Calmel expressed his refusal with a declaration of exceptional importance, made public in the magazine Itinéraires. The first and last, as far as we know,of such clarity and most praiseworthy courage. I hold to the traditional Mass, that which was codified, but not fabricated, by St. Pius V, in the XVI Century, in conformity to a centuries old...

One’s first day at college is always disorienting – particularly if it takes place halfway ‘round the world. As an American student at the University of Sydney, everything had shock value: Oxbridgian limestone castles stand proudly next to slouching palm trees, which are home to flocks of cackling kookaburras. (Very ugly, mean-spirited birds, by the way.) But nothing was quite so strange as the sight of twenty students dressed in lace and robes marching slowly across campus. Some carried a canopy; one swung a thurible; another held the Cross aloft. And, in their midst, a priest clutching a monstrance. I...

De Mattei: Francis imposes concelebration in the Priestly Colleges of Rome Roberto de Mattei Corrispondenza Romana June 28, 2017 There is this rumour going around in the Vatican. One of Pope Francis’ collaborators asked him if it were true that a commission had been set up “to re-interpret” Humanae Vitae and he responded “It is not a commission, it’s a study group”. This is not only a linguistic ploy to hide the truth, but a play on words which reveal how the cult of contradiction is the essence of this pontificate. Monsignor Gilfredo Marengo, coordinator of the “study group”, sums up...

For the past two years the Fort Hood Traditional Latin Mass community has celebrated All Souls Day with an outdoor Mass offered on the hood of a Korean era Army Jeep. While the Mass is offered for the souls of all the faithful departed, it is especially for soldiers who fell in battle, including Father Emil J. Kapaun, chaplain for the 8th Calvary during the Korean War. Fr. Kapaun was famously photographed offering the Mass on the hood of a Jeep during the war, shortly before his capture and eventual death, at the hands of the North Koreans.Fort Hood’s Latin...

On Pentecost Sunday, Fr Tymoteusz Szydło, the elder son of the Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło (54), celebrated his first Mass in the Old Rite in the church of the Holy Cross in Krakow. Fr Szydło said to the Polish media about his relationship to his mother, "Now, the contact with my mother is a little difficult, because of her numerous responsibilities, but this is not decisive in our relationship. Mom is present in my life, she supports and accompanies me."

First of all, today is the Feast Day of the Blessed Trinity, and so we would wish all of you a Happy Feast Day, and in particular we would wish the Eternal Father a Happy Father's Day! For those who are unaware or need to be reminded, belief in a Trinitarian God, that is Three Persons, One God, comes to us from our elder brothers and sisters in the faith, the Jews. The belief in the Trinitarian God as described is the universally accepted criteria to receive and accept the designation as a true Christian. So we Catholics should be...

Cardinal Müller: No Need To Teach Old Rite in Seminaries 2 minutes @import url("chrome://global/skin/aboutReaderContent.css"); Cardinal Müller: No Need To Teach Old Rite in Seminaries Cardinal Müller, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, talking to the German writer Martin Mosebach, a strong advocate of the Old Mass, has denied that young priests should know the Old Rite, writes German Radio Vatican.Müller claimed that the program in the seminaries is already "tight", and that not all seminarians have solid foundations in their Christian faith and prayer life. Therefore, from a pragmatic point of view, one must be...

Saint Alphonsus church in Baltimore is one of the gems of the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. A magnificent shrine where Saint John Neumann and Blessed Francis Seelos were once pastors, it has been home to the revived traditional Latin Mass since 1992. Today it has been announced that the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter will administer the parish, with Father Joel Kiefer, FSSP, to be installed as pastor. Monsignor Arthur Bastress, the most recent pastor of the church, has retired at the age of 90, ordained a priest in 1951. He worked tirelessly to keep the TLM going,...