The distributor of The Parish Book of Chant ask me to give an audio explanation of the book and why it is important. Here is the result. I stumbled on a few words. For example, for some odd reason, I couldn't say the word "inestimable" so I had to re-record and change it to immense. Silly. Anyway, I hope the recording has value apart from the book. Maybe it will help draw people to why chant is important.
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Amalphion - A Documentary about the Benedictine Monastery on Mt AthosGregory DiPippo
I just learned about an interesting documentary which was published two months ago on the YouTube channel of the French-language Catholic television outlet KTO TV, about a Benedictine monastery of the Roman Rite on Mt Athos. (Closed captions are available in English.) When the Athonite peninsula was first settled as a monastic community in the...
The Oratory of the Forty Martyrs in the Roman ForumGregory DiPippo
The original day for the feast of the Forty Martyrs, who were killed at Sebaste in Armenia under the Roman Emperor Licinius, around 320 AD, is March 9th. They were a group of soldiers of the Twelfth Legion who refused to renounce the Faith, and after various tortures, were condemned to die a particularly horrible death, stripped naked and left to f...
Ordo Hebdomadae Maioris & Memoriale Rituum: Useful Books for the Pre-55 Holy WeekPeter Kwasniewski
Saint Anthony Press, established with the mission of publishing rare or otherwise “lost” Catholic liturgical and devotional books, has reprinted the Ordo Hebdomadae Maioris (Order of Holy Week), containing the Holy Week liturgies and Order of Mass with seasonal Prefaces, according to the 1920 typical edition of the Roman Missal (in use un...
Durandus on the First Sunday of LentGregory DiPippo
The following excerpts are taken from the sixth book of William Durandus’ Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, chapter 32, 6-11. There are fewer ellipses than usual, but perhaps a bit more paraphrasing.This is the time of Christian warfare, in which the devil rises up against us more strongly. Therefore, lest anyone despair, the Church sings the introit...
The Station of the First Friday of LentGregory DiPippo
Many of the stories that form the corpus of Lenten Scriptural readings in the traditional Roman Rite are frequently depicted in frescoes in the catacombs, and on early Christian sarcophagi. We may safely assume that such readings were already part of the Roman Church’s lectionary before the end of the persecutions and the building of the earliest ...
Happy Feast of Saint Thomas AquinasPeter Kwasniewski
Today is the traditional feastday of St. Thomas Aquinas, Common Doctor of the Catholic Church, Patron of All Catholic Schools. March 7 is the birthday of the Angelic Doctor into eternal life, at the age of 49, en route to the General Council at Lyons. In his honor, it seems fitting to share the story of his death, as told by Bernard Gui in the Vi...
Cardinal Roche Repudiates Traditionis CustodesGregory DiPippo
Ever since Traditionis Custodes was issued more than 3½ years ago, its defenders have struggled to come up with a rationale for why it was issued at all. This is hardly surprising. The motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, in repudiation of which it was written, was the fruit of decades of careful meditation on the Church’s liturgy problem, on the part...
Concilium’s Attack on Confession (Part 4.2): Mortal Sins Before Communion? No Problem!Gregory DiPippo
This is the second part of an article which we published on Tuesday, Mr Phillip Campbell’s investigation into what the writers of the “progressive” theological journal Concilium were saying about reform of the sacrament of Confession in the years which immediately followed the most recent ecumenical council. This installment is a detailed considera...
Ash Wednesday 2025Gregory DiPippo
Dómine, non secundum peccáta nostra, quae fécimus nos: neque secundum iniquitátes nostras retríbuas nobis. V. Dómine, ne memíneris iniquitátum nostrárum antiquárum: cito antícipent nos misericórdiae tuae, quia páuperes facti sumus nimis. Hic genuflectitur V. Adjuva nos, Deus, salutáris noster: et propter gloriam nóminis tui, Dómine, líbera nos: et...
What Might Christ Say to Us in the Confessional?Peter Kwasniewski
We enter today into the chief penitential season of the Latin Church’s liturgical year. After the loosening up of the 1960s, it isn’t very penitential anymore, although one might well think that Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are worse than ever because no one has built up a habit of fasting, and so we hit those days like a car without shock absorbe...
