Recent Items of Interest (Passion Sunday 2016)

1. Another superb series by Fr Hunwicke, this time on “Diaconia in the Tradition of the Roman Church.” (part 1; part 2; part 3; part 4; part 5). “So, despite having no mandate from the Council to change the Church’s teaching on Holy Order as expressed in her lex orandi, the activities of the post-Conciliar liturgical ‘reformers’ offered us, as they so often did, an unedifying example of illiterate mischief. As so often, they gave us a sound lesson on how to eliminate babies without losing a single drop of bathwater.”

2. Dr Anthony Esolen (another writer whose every article is worth reading) : “The Catholic Church’s priest shortage crisis: a self-inflicted wound.”

3. Russell Shaw on the “Oppressive Splendor” of serving as an altar boy back in the day. “I suppose I have gotten more sophisticated about religion since then, but I doubt that the intensity of my faith has increased much.” (Inspired by a famous photograph of an altar-boy by Henri Cartier-Bresson.)

4. Yesterday was the Saturday of the Akathist in the Byzantine Rite. (This is one of several different akathist hymns to the Mother of God.)

5. Today is Passion Sunday; the Veil of St Veronica is exposed for the veneration of the faithful in St Peter’s Basilica after Vespers. (NLM article from 2012)

6. Two Monks Illustrate the Bible. Part of a very funny series in which two monks discuss the contents of their manuscript illuminations.

7. A Different Kind of New Order (Just for laughs; completely irrelevant to liturgy, but one of my favorite songs of all time.)