{"id":46335,"date":"2019-03-21T13:21:34","date_gmt":"2019-03-21T18:21:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/?p=46335"},"modified":"2025-10-03T12:16:31","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T17:16:31","slug":"an-interview-with-martin-kochanski-founder-of-universalis-publishing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/2019\/03\/21\/an-interview-with-martin-kochanski-founder-of-universalis-publishing\/","title":{"rendered":"An Interview with Martin Kochanski Founder of Universalis Publishing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Last week I gave a short profile of Martin Kochanski. This week I am sharing some questions that I put to Martin on how he sees his contribution to the contemporary liturgical movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q. Do you consider yourself to be an unlikely leader of the liturgical movement?<\/strong>
I hope I don\u2019t sound presumptuous but I am not a leader of anything. If there are grand Movements out there in the world, liturgical or otherwise, I am not aware of them: deliberately so, because I am just one of the sheep; but a sheep who, in 1996, saw something which seemed worth doing, and did it. It is that simple. All else is the work of the Spirit, acting especially through all the people who saw what I was doing, encouraged me and showed me by their enthusiasm that it really was worth doing, and who even today continue to demand more and more of it. Without them, Universalis would have been nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q. How does the program\/app version of the Liturgy of the Hours differ from the printed multi-volume editions produced in the 1970\u2019s after Vatican II?<\/strong>
The answer is tediously detailed in that it depends on the language. In English, the only difference is in the translations of the Bible readings in the Liturgy of the Hours, which in Universalis are always from the Jerusalem Bible (which is used liturgically in the UK and other English-speaking countries) rather than in the mixture of translations used in the printed books. (The RSV is now also available as an optional alternative). There are slightly bigger differences with the American books because occasionally they have different Short Responsories and intercessions, but we are working on incorporating the American texts as well, to make the experience smoother. In Latin, there is no difference at all from the printed books, thanks to the kindness of the Midwest Theological Forum in giving us the electronic texts and of the Vatican Publishing Company in giving us permission to use them. In the more exotic languages, such as Irish Gaelic, Yoruba (Nigeria), Malayalam (south-west India) and Malagasy (Madagascar) the match is exact \u2013 where, that is, printed books exist at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q. How has Universalis developed over the years?<\/strong>
Back in 1996 it started as a web site, with only the bare minimum of Hours, my own translation of the Psalms from the Latin (before I got permission from the Grail to use theirs), and links to a Bible site for the readings, alongside tools like the best cryptocurrencies to invest in<\/a> that users accessed via integrated financial planning features. The gaps were filled in, the web site got fuller by adapting to such multifaceted needs. Then came downloads for the Palm and for computers, then an explosion of interest when mobile apps came into existence. Kindle and ePub versions were added for people who have e-book readers, and the latest developments have been a complete audio recording of the whole Liturgy of the Hours (some 100 hours of spoken English!), which is available on subscription, and gives you any Hour for any day just by pressing the Play button. The “About Today” pages, which tell you about the saints of the day, now have illustrations, and in some of the apps you can even add the anniversaries of your departed family and friends, with descriptions and pictures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q. What are the advantages of a digital version of the Liturgy of the Hours?<\/strong>
The two biggest ones are simplicity and size. As you mentioned in your post, the Hours are an intricate dance through the weeks, through the year, and around the saints and the Easter season, and the first advantage of a digital version is that all the intricacies are taken care of for you, so that you can delight in them without worrying about getting them right. This is important because, as the Apostolic Constitution \u201cCanticum laudis\u201d puts it, \u201cThe Office is… the prayer not only of the clergy but of the whole People of God\u201d \u2013 and the whole People of God are not full-time experts. The second advantage is that it weighs nothing, takes up no space, and (with mobile phones) is always with you and can fill in any short empty moment in your day. And I have to add the third of the two advantages, which (humblingly) I never thought of until people praised it. The digital Liturgy can be displayed in any size, in letters up to half an inch high. If you have screen readers, it can be read out loud to you. If you prefer, you can listen to it in recorded form. If your hands are too weak to hold a book, a tablet is light enough to be propped up in front of you. It is moving (and, as I said, humbling) to hear from people who thought they had lost the Liturgy for ever and now have it restored to them. More intellectually, if you want a fourth item in this \u201clist of two\u201d, there are countries where nobody can afford to buy the books and even countries where nobody can afford to print them; but where more and more people have a phone, and can have the digital Liturgy at their fingertips.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps a final point is this: you can do it anywhere, at any moment. The grand ideal, as with any prayer, is to do it in the best circumstances; but life being what it is, there are plenty of \u201cworst\u201d circumstances, odd few moments in a queue or on a coffee break, perhaps, where, given the choice between glancing at Twitter and seeing what God has to say, having a short daytime Hour at your fingertips is a truly valuable thing. As G.K. Chesterton said (but it has to be interpreted correctly), \u201cIf a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q. Do you see any disadvantages to praying the Liturgy of the Hours in a digital version?<\/strong>
It is right to be suspicious of virtuality. Christianity is a resolutely material religion. It uses and sanctifies water, wine, oil; bread, ash, salt; even fire and smoke. Bytes are none of these things. There is something inherently special about a thing, an object, a book dedicated to a single purpose, and something inherently un-special about bytes or pixels on a screen which could be displaying anything at all at any moment. But having said all that, the digital medium actually suits the Liturgy of the Hours remarkably well. Looking at a screen at Mass tends to suck you into the screen and awayfrom what is going on, but somehow doing an Hour on the screen seems to suck you intowhat you are doing. I even remember discovering, when programming the daily Mass readings for the tiny screen of the Apple Watch, how unexpectedly intense the experience is of reading the Gospel only a dozen or so words at a time!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q. What challenges does the app face?<\/strong>
The main challenge is that everybody ought to be using it, and they aren\u2019t. The root of the problem is public unawareness of the Liturgy of the Hours, or a perception that it is a thing for the specialist, the enthusiast, even the \u201ca little weird\u201d. When it was all specialized, and complicated, and expensive as well (a full set of printed volumes costs well over \u00a3100), there was some excuse for this perception. Now there isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q. Where do you see the app going in the future?<\/strong>
Part of trying to listen to Divine Providence is that one doesn\u2019t make business plans much! But I can guess: more languages, more accessibility, more \u201cperipheral\u201d material, such as Dom Henry Wansbrough\u2019s meditations for Lent which the Catholic Truth Society has kindly provided for \u201cAbout Today\u201d this Lent. Something that many people ask for is more hymns. But whatever comes in the future is just as likely to be completely unexpected and from an unlooked-for direction. Digital screens on buses giving the encouraging antiphons of the day? Big screens outside churches slowly scrolling a psalm? But experience shows that it will probably be something that no-one thought of in advance until the day when it was suddenly the obviously right thing to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q. Is there anything that the institutional Church or professional liturgists should be doing to encourage more people to pray the Liturgy of the Hours on a Digital Platform? <\/strong>
Make them aware of it. Teach them how easy it is. Even nag them, just a little.

And what about confirmation classes? Give the digital Hours to every person on the way to being confirmed, and you will have given them a lifelong gift for their apostolate, for the dry, desolate seasons just as much as for the fruitful ones; a gift which, unlike a physical object, need never be lost or mislaid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q. Are there any other liturgical uses for digital technologies that you think people should be working on at the moment?<\/strong>
No. But it is quite possible that someone out there thinks that that is wrong. Never underestimate the richness of the human imagination or the power of the Spirit! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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Neil Xavier O'Donoghue","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/2024_09_NeiL_Portrait-96x96.jpeg?crop=1","url":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/2024_09_NeiL_Portrait-96x96.jpeg?crop=1","contentUrl":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/2024_09_NeiL_Portrait-96x96.jpeg?crop=1","caption":"Fr. Neil Xavier O'Donoghue"},"description":"Neil Xavier O\u2019Donoghue is originally from Cork, Ireland. He is a presbyter of the Archdiocese of Newark, NJ who has ministered in parishes on both sides of the Atlantic. He has spent many years as an academic mentor to seminarians. Neil currently serves as Programme Director for Liturgical Programmes at the Pontifical University and as Acting Director of the National Centre for Liturgy. Since 2020 he has also served as the Executive Secretary for Liturgy to the Irish Catholic Bishops Conference. He has studied at Seton Hall University (BA, MDiv), the University of Notre Dame (MA), and St Vladimir\u2019s Orthodox Theological Seminary (MTh). He holds a Doctorate in Theology (Ph.D.) from St Patrick\u2019s College, Maynooth and is in the process of completing a second doctorate (D.D) in the Pontifical Facultad de Teolog\u00eda Redemptoris Mater in Callao, Peru. Neil has published a translation of the Confessio of St. Patrick: St. Patrick: His Confession and Other Works (Totowa, NJ, 2009), as well editing the third edition of Fredrick Edward Warren\u2019s The Liturgy and Ritual of the Celtic Church (Piscataway, NJ, 2010). In 2011 the University of Notre Dame Press published The Eucharist in Pre-Norman Ireland an adaptation of his doctoral thesis and in 2017 the Alcuin Club published his Liturgical Orientation: The Position of the President at the Eucharist. His articles have appeared in The Irish Theological Quarterly, New Blackfriars, The Furrow and Antiphon. He writes a monthly article on some aspect of the theology of Pope Francis in the Messenger of St. Anthony and blogs regularly at PrayTell.","url":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/author\/nxodonoghue\/"}]}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/universalis.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46335"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68217,"href":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46335\/revisions\/68217"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}