Lectoring in the Roman rite in the US

The Byzantine rite does have instituted lectors but it also does allow for non-instituted lectors, who should chant the reading as well. And, there is also a question here of whether the artchitectural feature of the "sanctuary" reflects a good and proper understanding of the temple as a place for the Eucharistic assembly.

The Past of the Patriarchate of Rome

CWR: The Jesuit Pope and the problematic reform of the Roman Curia by Christopher R. Altieri

2017 was a year in which the micro-fissures in the structure began to be visible to the naked eye. 2018 is likely to be the year in which it becomes clear that major structural reform cannot be postponed.

CWR: Pope Francis and Ideology by Eduardo Echeverria

It is unfortunate that the Holy Father’s overall emphasis on legalism is such that he never addresses the antithesis of legalism, namely, antinomianism, leaving us with a lopsided picture of contemporary culture.

Francesco Arzillo Defends Ratzinger

Sandro Magister: Why Ratzinger Is Not a Heretic. The Defense Speaks. See also Antonio Caragliu.

Fr. Lamb Has Passed

Eternal Memory. Thomistica.net

Ed Peters on Pauline Privilege

Is the ‘Pauline Privilege’ an exception to Church teaching on the indissolubility of marriage? Edward N. Peters
(original)

The Profanation of the Sacred and the Sacralisation of the Profane

The Liturgical Nerds Would Like This Too

New Edition of the Divine Liturgy Available from STM Press (via Byz TX)

Over in Felton on February 10

Byz TX: 2nd Annual Orthodox Bioethics Conference event in Bay Area

Church website

Bishop Barron Has a New Book

CWR Dispatch: “Fundamentally a missionary”: New book captures Bishop Barron’s evangelistic vision by Gregory J. Sullivan

A review of To Light a Fire on the Earth: Proclaiming the Gospel in a Secular Age, by Bishop Robert Barron, with John L. Allen, Jr.

Are Latin bishops able to give a proper presentation of the kerygma? And do they realize their missionary field is not one country, but many within the borders of the United States?

Eastern Christian Books: Veneration of the Cross in the Medieval Islamic World

Eastern Christian Books: Veneration of the Cross in the Medieval Islamic World

Tollefsen and Pakaluk on Capital Punishment

Here and here.

A "Catholic" Cult Busted

Everyone To School With Fr. Milani. But If These Are His Students...

New Men

website

What if...
the exaltation of the monastic life led to the imposition of a quasi-monastic rule on lay people (for example, fasting regulations)? And the denigration of lay vocation? And it had an adverse psychological or emotional impact, with lay people believing that they were too "normal," not good enough to be holy? And thus they identified asceticism too much with certain external practices regarding goods of the body, and not enough with the mortification of the will with the divine agape?

Means to End, End to Means

Time to reconsider God as end in respect of the relationship of the common good to the ultimate end?

From The End of Modernity by Thaddeus Kozinski:

According to St. Thomas, men cannot adequately understand in theory, let alone fulfill in practice, the detailed precepts of the natural law without the help of its author, God, and its divinely appointed interpreter, the Roman Catholic Church. With regard to a non-sacral foundation for political order, the Thomist Joseph May in the 1950s stated: “The only true doctrine is that civil society cannot prescind from the ultimate end [emphasis mine] both because the temporal welfare implies an ordering to the spiritual and supernatural, and because the individual citizens are directly and positively bound to tend to it.”[8] And even Dignitatis Humanae insists that it “leaves untouched the traditional Catholic doctrine about the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and the one Church of Christ” (Sec. 1). As Pope John Paul II often reiterated, the face of Jesus Christ is the only true mirror in which man can fully and accurately contemplate and comprehend his own nature and destiny; thus, only therein can he discern the moral values and goods most perfective of himself and the political order.

A Conservatism That Is Not Critical Enough

Or a conservatism that is just underdeveloped liberalism.

The Imaginative Conservative: Cosmopolitanism: Citizens Without States? by Lee Trepanier

Crisis Magazine: The Triumph of the People’s Church by Anne Hendershott

NCReg: US Bishops Set Course on Liturgical Translations by Joan Frawley Desmond
In the wake of Magnum Principium’s changes to the process for approving liturgical translations, the U.S. bishops are charting a careful path forward.

Show Me the Local Cult That Exists

And proof of miracles attributed to the brothers...

Pray for the iconographer. Lunacy is not the word to describe this.

Dear friends: I'm so happy to share with you this new icon by Robert Lentz, OFM, the great iconographer (with his permission) of two of great prophets of our time: Philip Berrigan and Daniel Berrigan, SJ. https://t.co/UAf9xsyKuv pic.twitter.com/gzQ4znHTDU

— James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) January 7, 2018

Fr. Z