The Council of Eight

Post by Zenit News Agency.

Post by Zenit News Agency.

Byzantine (Noble) Women

Post by Medievalists.net.

Criticism of the Wesolowski Case

Post by News.va English.

Vatican Radio

Latin Creativity Isn't Dead

Post by Chant Cafe.

More on the Working Document

Post by Ignatius Press.

10 Questions with Archimandrite Robert Taft

At Pray Tell

Fr. Taft doesn't think Latin traditionalists are traditional but maybe he should try to see things from their perspective, even if their understanding of liturgical participation may be erroneous? I have no idea what his position on "ad orientem" worship may be given his comments below.

He has a forthcoming book: Beyond East and West 2: Problems in Ecumenical Understanding

Pope Francis good for liturgical renewal or not?

Papa Francesco is good for everything, including liturgical renewal. When he first celebrated Mass in the Sistine Chapel he had them toss out the altar facing away from the congregation that his predecessor had installed, and thereby gave the signal indicating how he rated the reformed Vatican II liturgy vis-à-vis the restored pre-Vatican II Summorum Pontificum “extraordinary form.”

Is the Vatican II liturgical renewal secure or endangered?

I think it is secure, because I believe the vast majority of Catholic people throughout the world confirm it by voting with their feet and going to Mass in the reformed rite, showing thereby that despite the right-wing neo-con wackos (hereafter NCW’s), most Catholics prefer the reformed rite.

But that does not mean that the NCW’s are not a threat, since it is said that large numbers of them now control the terrain in our seminaries. As Professor Massimo Faggioli, the Catholic point-man on these issues has shown, the Vatican II Liturgical Constitution was the fundamental document that led the way to the rest of Vatican II, so an attack against that key document is an attack against the guiding spirit of the Vatican II Council.

Anything good coming out of Summorum Pontificum?

Nope, unless creating unnecessary divisions in the Church and driving crazy our harried bishops who have too few priests to start with and now have to try and accommodate the NCW’s is considered “good.”

Something interesting comments on the episcopacy and apostolic succession:

This question also involves a cluster of other issues that I believe need to be reconsidered:

[a] the whole question of conceiving apostolic succession via the “relay race pass the baton model” is questionable, since it is probably not provable with historical verisimilitude for any Church on earth, including that of Rome. It is not clear that Rome originally had a monarchical episcopate rather than some sort of collegial governing body, possibly presbyteral, in the earliest post-apostolic era.

Some books to get, based on Fr. Taft's recommendations:
Liturgy: Model of Prayer — Icon of Life (Fairfax, VA: Eastern Christian Publications 2008)."

Alan Bouley’s From Freedom to Formula. The Evolution of the Eucharistic Prayer from Oral Improvisation to Written Texts