Category: religion

I had commented recently that it seemed like there was an inverse relationship between how traditional a church’s architecture was and how traditional the liturgy was. St Gregory the Great apparently decided that they should prove me wrong. I think probably the biggest indicator of traditional liturgy is the presence of lace: Lace mantillas on…

Saint Giles is my home parish, I guess. I’m actually registered elsewhere in Oak Park, but this is the parish where I do music, although for the Mass that’s held in the church hall or gymnasium, not actually in the main church. St Giles himself was a hermit who lived in the woods with his…

The normal tradition in the Catholic church is that saints are commemorated on the anniversary of their deaths, which makes the fact that the feasts of Saint Monica and her son Saint Augustine occupy consecutive days seem a bit suspect, although apparently, the day was shifted from May in 1969 so it’s not merely coincidence…

The icon of St Mary of Częstochowa¹ is one of a number of black Madonnas, showing both Mary and Jesus with dark skin. Tradition says that it was painted by the evangelist Luke and rediscovered by St Helena during her pilgrimage to Jerusalem, although there is no attestation of its existence before the fourteenth century.…

Saint Patricia is an early saint about whom little is known and much is contradictory. She apparently appealed to Pope Liberius to be allowed to become a nun to escape a marriage arranged by Emperor Constans II and was granted her wish after which she distributed her personal wealth to the poor. Later, she attempted…

I have a sentimental attachment to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary as my baptismal parish and the church which established my expectations of the norms of Catholicism was Our Lady of the Assumption in Claremont, California. I would guess that these days, three decades after I left Claremont, there’s nobody that I know there…

Most of the time when I go to a weekday Mass, it’s no more than a dozen people present, St Rita being the main exception thusfar, but today’s trip to Marytown, home of the National Shrine of St Maximilian Kolbe was the most packed Mass I’ve seen, including Sundays. I arrived just as the Mass…

At one point in the Renew My Church process, Saint Jane de Chantal and Saint Camillus were united as a single parish taking the combined name of Saint Faustina Kowalska. Then Saint Camillus was closed. The archdiocesan directory still lists Saint Jane de Chantal as the name of the church, but none of the signage…