From Fr Z

• Gratiam tuam quæsumus. It’s actually ‘we beseech thee, Lord, pour thy grace into our minds’. The translation Pope Benedict ordered has lined it back up with traditional piety. The few prayers Catholics have a tradition of praying in English, such as in the Rosary and, though you don’t hear it much, the Angelus, have resisted dumbing down and even keep ‘thou’. The liturgical texts don’t have ‘thou’ but no matter; standard English now has only one form of ‘you’. ‘Thou’ only has sentimental value for some people. BTW I think the Angelus originally was a way to mark curfew times, with a nice religious lesson added.
• Looks like Sodom and Gomorrah really happened.
• The Catholic Church does not manufacture what is true, but looks at the way things are, the way God has given them to us. How everybody from Aristotle to classic Anglicans, who retained this from the church, understood reason.
• Recordings of the Latin responses.
• RIP Christopher Hitchens.

Labels: the Catholic faith