Category Archives: WDTPRS

EXCERPT:
The first objective of our participation in the Church’s sacred rites is to praise God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and give God glory. Liturgical and Biblical Latin is rich with words and phrases which exalt and express praise of God. In fact, the concepts of “glory” and “majesty” are nearly interchangeable in this light. We, on the one hand, render up honor and glory to God in a way external to God. On the other hand, glory and majesty are also divine attributes which we in no way give Him, which He has – or rather is – in Himself by His nature. When we come into His presence, even in the contact we have with Him through the Church’s sacred mysteries, His divine attribute of splendor or glory or majesty, whatever you will, has the power to transform us. His majestic glory changes us. So, it is right to translate these lofty sounding attributions for God when we raise our voices in the Church’s official cult. Read More →

I found a rather funny comment on the site of The Remnant (emphasis mine): For traditionalist Catholics nothing is more symptomatic of the crisis in the Church than the deliberate mistranslation of pro vobis et pro multis—for you and for … Read More →

I learned about something at The Undercroft, stemming from something else at Valle Adurni … something rather serious. I am obliged to add additional information to put things straight. Some folks have incorrectly speculated that the late Pope John Paul … Read More →

… "consubstantialem Patri"?

You have read the news from CWN about the pro multis decision.  I reported this a long while back, but it is nice to have additional confirmation… this time from His Eminence Card. Arinze himself.  I have no words to … Read More →

What Does the Prayer Really Say? 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in 2003 DW of CA writes via snail-mail: “Thank you for your weekly column which gives any would-be Latinist a brisk turn around the … Read More →

EXCERPT:
Step into the Twilight Zone for a moment and picture, if you will, someone being admitted to, say, graduate school for a Ph.D in French Literature without knowing how to read any French. Make sense? Imagine a medical school admitting someone who never studied biology. Crazy, right? This is going on everywhere in the Church’s institutions of higher learning today, and the missing indispensable key is Latin. Personal anecdote: years ago a doctoral student in theology paid me to translate sermons of a mediaeval theologian found only in a volume of the Patrologia Latina. Why? He was writing his doctoral dissertation on the fellow’s theology but couldn’t read Latin. Get it? He was writing his thesis on something he couldn’t read. How does that work? Read More →

What Does the Prayer Really Say? 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in 2005 WDTPRS wishes His Eminence Francis Card. Arinze, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and titular Cardinal Bishop of (my) Suburbicarian Diocese … Read More →

EXCERPT:
Some years ago I had an experience which confirmed for me the value of the old-fashioned methods of catechism: long and hard practice, memorization, and repetition. I was called to a hospital to assist in a patient’s difficult death. I gave the man Last Rites and talked with the family as they struggled with the reality of the end of the earthly life of a loved one. A daughter of the dying man had been estranged from her faith and her family for a long time. She was beyond her life’s middle years, which clearly had been pretty rough. She was bitter and cursed life, fate and God for the cruelty of such an end as her father was experiencing. She shouted at me, “Why did God make us if this is all there is?” I responded asking, “Why did God make you?” She became very still and stared at me. Then she said, “God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next.” I continued, “What must we do to save our souls?” On cue she responded with something that she hadn’t perhaps thought of for decades, “To save our souls, we must worship God by faith, hope, and charity. We must believe in Him, hope in Him, and love Him with all our heart.” “Did your father do that?”, I asked. “Oh, yes…. oh yes.” She had obviously been taught very well as a child. One can imagine that she was at times forced to study and to learn, to repeat over and over what at the time seemed boring and pointless. She had been drilled at school by the Sisters, whom these days we see mocked and abused in the media by ungrateful cads who benefited from their dedication. More importantly, she had parents who fulfilled their obligations to see that she learned her faith. I imagine they had to work hard to make her work hard. Her father had done his duty to give her what she needed when the battle was joined. Whatever they all did worked. In the moment of truth, by the grace of God and the help of her guardian angel, the gift her dying father had given her years before was rediscovered and put to its proper use. Read More →

What Does the Prayer Really Say?  31st Sunday of Ordinary Time ORIGINALLY PRINTED IN The Wanderer in 2003 JR writes via e-mail: “Some time ago, you wrote in WDTPRS about the ordo, and its notation of the daily "station churches," … Read More →