Tag Archives: Reflections

More liturgical matters

Again, I go into a subject from which there is little to conclude definitively. I do so because there have been a few exchanges between one blog and another. The real issue I read in these various posts is one … Continue reading

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Gentrified Catholicism

Last Saturday, I attended a Confirmation ceremony of my wife’s thirteen-year old niece in a school chapel in Vesinet. This is quite a chic area near Versailles and in the Diocese by that name. The nineteenth-century houses are in leafy … Continue reading

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Long haired priests

I hesitated writing about this, as it concerns something so trifling as not to merit much attention. Some people do ask the question, as attested by my stats page – Are priests allowed to have long hair? I suppose I … Continue reading

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Secularism and Christianity

This is a fine article – The Offer You Can’t Refuse (the Secular World) One thing that comes out of this is that for as long as churches try to ape the secular world (bureaucracy, steering committees, etc.) we know … Continue reading

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Christian Romanticism

We don’t seem to see an end to the depressing binary dialectic between “cultural Christianity” and conservative Catholicism, Protestantism and Orthodoxy, especially in the American scene. This side of the Atlantic, outside imported American religion, Christianity is decaying like its … Continue reading

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Daemonium Meridianum

Most of us are familiar with Psalm 90 (91) which is said every evening at Compline, that wonderful intimate Office that monks sing by heart in the darkness. As Christ was comforted and protected in the desert, despite the Devil … Continue reading

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Charlie Hebdo back in the News

I’m going to have to be careful on this subject. So far, I have tried to stay away from the subject of the Middle East, the involvement of the west, the situation of thousands of political and economic refugees desperately … Continue reading

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When the Salt loses its Savour…

These are the words that came into my mind as I read A Brief (Very Brief) History of Practical Liturgics by JV. He published an unfinished, or rather in-concluded, posting. I would probably have felt the same had I written … Continue reading

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A People without Memory is a People without a Future

I hated history lessons at school, with a master droning on about events in nineteenth-century English politics that seemed so distant and irrelevant. Why is historical knowledge so vitally important? Simply, historical knowledge is an antidote to ideology and manipulation. … Continue reading

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Square Pegs in Round Holes

JV who often comments here has written an interesting posting for his blog – Unity or Coexistence? One cannot but wonder if some traditionalist Christians have simply missed the bus. JV is very lucid about these matters like in an … Continue reading

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