We ought to get back the dimension of the sacred in the liturgy. The liturgy is not a festivity; it is not a meeting for the purpose of having a good time. It is of no importance that the parish priest has cudgeled his brains to come up with suggestive ideas or imaginative novelties. The liturgy is what makes the Thrice-Holy God present amongst us; it is the burning bush; it is the Alliance of God with man in Jesus Christ, who has died and risen again. The grandeur of the liturgy does not rest upon the fact that it offers an interesting entertainment, but in rendering tangible the Totally Other, whom we are not capable of summoning. He comes because He wills. In other words, the essential in the liturgy is the mystery, which is realized in the common ritual of the Church; all the rest diminishes it. Men experiment with it in lively fashion, and find themselves deceived, when the mystery is transformed into distraction, when the chief actor in the liturgy is not the Living God but the priest or the liturgical director. - Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Chile, 1988)
Do we still need sacred space, sacred time, mediating symbols? Yes, we do need them, precisely so that, through the "image," through the sign, we learn to see the openness of heaven. We need them to give us the capacity to know the mystery of God in the pierced heart of the Crucified. - Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Spirit of the Liturgy )
France: Pope Lays Down the Law on Euthanasia
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Dear brothers and sisters,Dear friends who are sick,It is a joy for me to
be with you here in Lourdes, where, for more than a hundred and fifty
years, pil...
The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
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Give peace, o Lord, to those who wait for Thee, that Thy prophets may be
found true: hear the prayers of Thy servant, and of Thy people Israel. Ps.
121 I r...
A Prayer after Communion from the 1599 Primer
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This prayer, appearing in the post-Tridentine 1571 Officium B. M. V. nuper
reformatum, and put into English by Richard Verstegen in the 1599 Primer or
Offi...
Catholicism for Dummies 5th edition now available
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with imprimatur
5th edition of Catholicism for Dummies (2026) has just arrived. Since the
4th edition (2022), we have a new Pope (Leo XIV) and some new ...
Obituary of a very failed Pontificate
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"Nun khre methusthen kai tina per bian ponen, epei de katthane
Mursilos."Such would have been the reaction of the unchristianised Greeks.
But for us, for t...
The Conclave of the Media
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Pope Benedict XVI, in his address to the clergy of Rome on the 14th of
February 2013, revealed that during the sessions of the Second Vatican
Council, ther...
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