Category: 4_THE PLAZA
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May Day versus Labor Day
Today the General Roman Calendar celebrates St Joseph the Worker as an Optional Memorial. The observance is marked with more or less solemnity in different places. But I have always wondered why it is celebrated on May 1 in the United States. Even though I am currently ministering in Ireland, the land of my birth,…
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Easter Egg in the Desert
We still have a long way to go in the Easter season.
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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…
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Liturgy, Politics, and Vinegar
“Instead they gave me poison for my food; and for my thirst they gave me vinegar.” (Ps. 69:22) I recently received feedback on the essay I wrote on Orthodoxy’s kryptonite. The writer complains that my essay was too political. I do not have much more information to work with, so I am not one-hundred percent…
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Windows on the World
How do our worship spaces inform our sense of creation?
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ChantGPT?
The potential for A.I. to compose everything from new chants to choral works to congregational song creates its own labyrinthine network of questions.
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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,…
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Get a Little Lent in your Life
Lent is not a time for giving up.
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Zaire Rite in Mexico
The Zaire Rite is a favorite of liturgists. It seems that everybody from Pope Benedict XVI to Pope Francis thinks it is a good idea and a valuable fruit of the Second Vatican Council and a good example of the liturgical renewal that it promoted. However, the reality is that very few have personally participated…