One could never accuse the Eastern Catholic of being a lazy participant in the liturgy. Throughout the almost two hours of celebration the clergy and laity do enough moving to merit applause from the US Gymnastics team. A Divine Liturgy is also a noisy place. The silences common to the Roman Rite do not exist [...]
What Can Brown Do For You? I’m glad to have the opportunity to explain more about sacramentals, which seem to drive many people around the bend. I hope those who have been driven around the bend by sacramentals and the questions about them are offering up their suffering. It IS LENT.We’ve had quite the discussion [...]
Catholics love lists. They’ve inherited this trait from their Jewish forebears. Adam named the animals, and Noah probably used a list to make sure he got them all on the ark. His descendants made sure they included long lists of geneology in their sacred Scripture. Eventually they graduated into discreet quantities:12 Tribes of Israel, The [...]
Catholics can’t remember anything, God bless us. With great effort and much discipline we can sometimes remember the Gospel until the homily starts, but most of couldn’t guess the number of readings done on Sunday let alone the subject matter. We enjoy Palm Sunday when the Gospel is written out like a play and we [...]
Catholics like candles. Lots of candles. We like them next to the altar. We like them next to the ambo (that’s the lectern, guys). We like to light them from big bonfires once a year, and give them to babies we’ve just splashed with water. We particularly like to talk about the significance of the [...]
Protestants have revivals. Catholics, being the more “I prefer experiencing the Spirit kneeling in silence under the stars, thanks” type, have retreats. And oh, do we like them. Ignatian exercises, high school senior retreats, engagement encounter, marriage encounter, Quo Vadis?, Cursillo, TEC, etc….Frankly, the creative Catholic with some cash could spend his whole life [...]
I’m talking about Sanctification–making things holy. Or more accurately, turning things over to God, to be used for his purposes. Catholics do this all the time–usually with the help of a priest. We do it to patron saint medals, strings of beads, necklaces–things that for non-Catholics are jewelry, we have blessed, made holy, sanctified, and [...]
