Category: Art and Architecture

  • Handwritten liturgical manuscripts

    Handwritten liturgical manuscripts

    All of us are familiar with the liturgical books of earlier centuries and, in particular, from centuries predating the invention of the printing press.  The scholarly editions of such works as the Ordines Romani are mainstays of liturgical scholarship. Yet once liturgical books began to be printed, the custom of having handwritten manuscripts fell out…

  • Windows on the World

    Windows on the World

    How do our worship spaces inform our sense of creation?

  • How Big is Too Big?

    How Big is Too Big?

    In May 1999 Pope St. John Paul II warned the Bishops of Ontario on their Their Ad Limina Visit, “the anonymity of the city cannot be allowed to enter our Eucharistic communities.” I remembered this point recently when reading two news articles.  The first is about the dedication of the new St. Charles Borromeo Church,…

  • Brief Book Review: Imagining Our Neighbors As Ourselves

    Brief Book Review: Imagining Our Neighbors As Ourselves

    To the degree that we can see ourselves reflected in particular characters, we can begin the work of engaging with their stories to critique our own way of being.

  • Christmas 2022: Of Cooks and Code-switches

    Christmas 2022: Of Cooks and Code-switches

    What happened in Bethlehem, after all,turns all expectations of what constitutes normality on its head.

  • Liturgical Art and Scandal

    Liturgical Art and Scandal

    Headlines in the Catholic media have recently focused on a series of scandals related to Fr. Marko Rupnik. Rupnik is perhaps the most famous living artist who specializes in the decoration of Catholic churches. Since 1995 he has been the director of the Spiritual Arts division of the Aletti Center attached to the Pontifical Oriental…

  • Book Review: Remove the Pews

    Book Review: Remove the Pews

    “Contrary to the trend among some to sell off or completely redo sacred spaces, Schaper insists that they have deep roots in neighborhoods, in families, in peoples hearts even if they do not regularly attend services in them.”

  • Brief Book Review: New Church, New Altar

    Brief Book Review: New Church, New Altar

    “A thoroughly documented historical and liturgical commentary and a most helpful pastoral guide to the celebration of this ritual for the dedication of a church and an altar.”

  • 50,000 Syro-Malabar Christians Protest in Favor of Versus Populum

    50,000 Syro-Malabar Christians Protest in Favor of Versus Populum

    Yesterday’s Times of India reports that 50.000 Syro-Malabar Christians of the Ernakulam Angamaly archdiocese of the Syro Malabar Church took to the streets to protest in favor of celebrating the Eucharist in the versus populum orientation and in protest of the removal of their archbishop, Mar Antony Kariyil CMI. This is undoubtedly a very  convoluted…