Sunday

• How the Roman Catholic Church in the US was governed in the 1800s.
• Taylor Marshall loves his traditional Latin Mass parish. Which of course is great. I’m happy the Marshalls have done this but on the other hand it sounds like the idealisation converts are prone to (the kind of thing Owen and Arturo rail against) that’s not like pre-conciliar life for many. I love it but try to keep it real, writing based on my experience of the SSPX and indult groups — Low Mass exactly as it was 50 years ago; no liturgical-movement improvements — and talking to people with no bias who remember the period: ‘Back to Latin? No way!’ Like Taylor I like Latin (like its daughter Italian it’s pretty) and it has its place as the template for all translations and as an auxiliary common language in a worldwide church but... It’s not about Latin™. (The Slav onion-dome church in Pennsylvania is a very similar experience — with a unique little mystical kick — that’s now often in English.)

Labels: Eastern Orthodoxy, history, the Catholic faith