These are some of the handsomest and happiest cows (happy in a bovine way) that I’ve seen since I lived in Austria. And no wonder: they are taken care of by the Benedictine nuns in Gower, Missouri. More in a moment… but first, a big announcement.
Podcast activated
I’ve finally taken a step that’s been on my To Do list for a while: to activate the Podcast section of this Substack! You will find it in the menu bar at the top, as indicated here:
Selecting it opens a whole new world of content: dozens of lectures, Q&As, interviews, and the like, from the past several years. Basically, everything I’ve posted elsewhere is now centralized here.
Best of all, the voiceovers from my articles will simultaneously publish as podcasts.
Thanks to Julian’s vastly greater technical know-how (I have no idea how to set all this stuff up…), you’ll find my audio content on Substack, at Spotify, and at YouTube… and maybe at other places too!
(Those who like SoundCloud can check out my page there, but it’s not being updated with voiceovers from the Substack.)
I hope this will be a feature you’ll appreciate and benefit from!
Greetings from Gower
As in 2023, so in 2024, my Triduum was spent at the Abbey of Our Lady of Ephesus with the Benedictines of Mary Queen of Apostles — a place often simply referred to as “Gower,” from the name of the town where it’s located. I arrived around noon on Maundy Thursday and left after the Easter morning High Mass. It was a much-needed retreat. I left my computer — and all internet access — behind. The only modern technology I took with me were a flip-phone and a camera.
I always leave liturgical photography to the experts. Besides, it’s distracting to try to pray and take pictures at the same time. So I have nothing to share in that domain. However, here’s a photo of the tomb of Sr. Wilhelmina, at a side-shrine in honor of St. Joseph, inside the abbey church:
Long-time readers may recall my article from last June recounting my visit to Sr. Wilhelmina on the very last day on which visitors were allowed to pray next to her incorrupt body and touch rosaries to it. After this, her body was moved with solemn procession to the more permanent and more fitting resting place seen above. A steady stream of pilgrims visits the shrine. The nuns have received many reports of favors granted through her intercession. I am sure it will only be a matter of time before there are major miracles.
When I wasn’t in the church praying, or listening to the nuns beautifully chanting the divine office, I was outside walking around, taking advantage of the peaceful, bucolic surroundings.
There was something pleasantly paradoxical about the still-barren look of the trees contrasting with the bright green of the springtime grass and the multitude of wild flowers bursting up under foot, where the bees and butterflies were already diligently at work. (Not only have I not modified the photos, but if anything, the green was more vibrant in person than the photos show.)
Even the debris in a forest is often beautiful… Look at the color and the shape of this discarded leaf from last fall, and the contrast against the sky:
To see God in the mirror of nature is something I always try to do, and feel that it is like perpetually learning to ride a bicycle, falling off and getting back on again. It seems to me that poets (at their best) and mystics are the ones for whom this way of seeing has become natural.
Matters of musical import
Here I join Jim Havens and Fr. Jeff Fasching for a conversation on one of my all-time favorite topics: sacred music (and its various more or less, usually less, adequate substitutes):
Speaking of music, Fr. David Friel of Corpus Christi Watershed wrote a thoughtful review of my book Good Music, Sacred Music, and Silence (you can find it here).
A friend at my local FSSP oratory decided that I needed help designing a cover for my next rap album. Here’s a sneak peak:
Is traditionalism something we need to “recover” from?
Some of you may have heard about a group calling themselves TradRecovery and putting on a conference for ex-trads and post-trads.
Imagine looking back over the past 60 years, and looking back especially over the past 11 years, and arriving at the conclusion: “What's wrong in the Church is that we’re just not following Vatican II, the Novus Ordo, and Pope Francis eagerly enough.”
That’s a special kind of... I’d better not say.
It's like telling the story about the Emperor with No Clothes, except blaming for his nakedness everyone who sees him to be naked, since clearly he is not naked.
A good remedy for this kind of nonsense is to watch all three episodes of The Mass of the Ages. After that, kick back with a few good books (like this one, or this one, or this one). And humor’s always good medicine:
In any case, Dr. Janet Smith made a counterproposal: “Are you a Catholic wounded by the modern Church? Then the ‘Modern Catholic Recovery Conference’ is for you!”
In our times, there is always a lot of discussion about different “camps” among the faithful: conservatives, paleoconservatives, Ecclesia Dei traditionalists, rad trads, SSPXers, ex-trads, etc. Obviously, there are real, significant, and profound differences among us, and I wouldn’t ever wish to downplay them in a fake Pollyannaistic way. Honesty demands that we acknowledge them and engage in frank conversation.
That being said, I also believe we should always strive to follow St. Paul’s advice in the twelfth chapter of Romans: “Rejoice with them that rejoice; weep with them that weep.... To no man rendering evil for evil.... If it be possible, as much as is in you, have peace with all men.”
How can one fail to agree with Charles Coulombe’s moving words, in an article entitled “Dealing with Betrayal”?
After two decades of progress in regaining Tradition, the current Pontificate and many of the Bishops are once again bringing back the nonsense of the 1960s and 70s — once more forcing laity, clergy, and religious alike to make choices they should never have to make. In a word, after a short respite, we are back to hierarchical betrayal. As before, this will again poison personal relationships if we allow it to. So, we must make a determined effort not to damage our personal spheres at the whims of those above us. It is bad enough that they have the power they misuse so badly. Why should they be given further power over our very lives?
Instead, as they force us into ever more unpalatable choices, let us not turn those who make different responses than we into enemies. Let us pray that they see things as we do — and that we ourselves are in the right. Let us aim our impatience and enmity not at our fellow sufferers, who are as confused and removed from the exercise of power as we, but at our masters who have put us all in this position.
Incidentally, people often ask about the legitimacy of using the expressions “traditional Catholic” or, as a shorthand, “traditionalist.” While recognizing it has its drawbacks, I defend this way of speaking here.
Methods of hearing Mass
The original Liturgical Movement tended, as a rule, to frown severely on the “methods of hearing Mass” that were proposed in popular devotional books of the Counter-Reformation era.
Thus begins my article, this week, at New Liturgical Movement.
They argued that these methods forcibly superimposed on the Mass an artificial allegory that was foreign to the original intended meaning or function of its various parts, and that it helped to divide the subjective prayer-life of Catholics from the objective content of the liturgy itself.... Yet the “reading” of the stages of the life of Christ in the Mass is a practice that not only goes back quite a long way but finds easy correspondence to textual and structural features in the Western Mass. That is, the so-called “allegory” finds more support in the rite than the critics allow.
Read the rest there.
New major lecture posted on YouTube
A gentleman from the UK called the Latin Mass “subtly seductive.” He’s right; but why is he right? What is it about the old liturgy that works in a subtle way to draw us into the act of worship? The same man talked about the paradox of the old liturgy being somehow “easier” than the new one, in spite of the fact that the whole Catholic world was turned upside-down in the 1960s in order to make the Mass more “accessible,” as the experts said. But accessibility turned into vernacular verbosity, and that causes a lot of people to be bored and to forget about God — about prayer to God, about being with God. For this is the crucial thing: not hearing talk about God, but meeting Him. There are many reasons the Latin Mass is effective at what it does, effective in communicating what can never be fully put into human words. In this talk, I explore one of the most important aspects of the traditional Latin Mass: the dominance and power of “non-verbal language.”
Joseph Shaw’s handy pamphlet, now in Spanish
Me complace anunciar la publicación de la edición en español del pequeño y práctico folleto de Joseph Shaw, Sagrado y Grande: Una breve introducción a la Misa tradicional. Este folleto puede obtenerse directamente de la editorial, Os Justi Press, o en cualquier sitio web de Amazon. La editorial ofrece descuentos en pedidos al por mayor.
I'm very pleased to announce the release of the Spanish edition of Joseph Shaw's handy little pamphlet Sacred and Great: A Brief Introduction to the Traditonal Latin Mass. (The English original may be found here.) This pamphlet may be obtained directly from the publisher, Os Justi Press, or from any Amazon website. Discounts on bulk orders are available from the publisher.
In Chicago a week hence
Those of you in or around Chicago, would love to see you next Friday at The Carlisle in Lombard!
For more info and to register, go here.
TLM pilgrimage to Greece & Turkey
The spots are filling up fast on the October 2024 Greece & Turkey pilgrimage for which John Sonnen will be the guide, Fr. Pablo Santa Maria will be the chaplain, and I will be the tag-along who eagerly jabbers with anyone who’s in the mood for conversation.
In all seriousness, I am really looking forward to this trip, which will indeed be done as a real pilgrimage to so many holy sites of early Christianity. I will be studying up on things before going, and excitedly sharing with you the experience of going to these prayer- and history-saturated places, to which I’ve never been before.
For all the details, go to this link. There you will find, in addition to a written overview, a link to the video of an information meeting held back in March, reviewing the itinerary and answering a bunch of questions. The priest, the tour guide, and I are all part of that meeting.
Thank you for reading Tradition & Sanity. God bless you this Quasimodo Sunday (also known as Low Sunday, Divine Mercy Sunday, Dominica in Albis, and the Octave of Easter)!
Dr Kwasniewski, this post encapsulates the endeavour you pour into your work. To invest so much time towards your readers subscribers is laudable. I have subscribed to other good men and women to support them, but at the risk of causing you some embarrassment, nothing comes close to what you provide in consistent, scholarly, interesting, and pious material.
Thanks so much for all the juicy items you wrote about here!