What exactly are we losing as our lives move increasingly online? Few of us will be sorry to forgo long commutes, and we will all have our own experiences of online work meetings, email collaboration, and teaching by video-link. As for large-scale devotional events, the Latin Mass Society, like other Catholic organisations, had to learn

The problem of children of all ages bouncing off the walls – while other children attempt to do their lessons, endless meals are prepared and the adult world of work impinges – has been trying for many people during the lockdown, but this describes normal life for a large home-educating family like our own. That’s

In a time of church closures, we need both faith and reason

How to Keep From Losing Your Mind By Deal Hudson Tan, 384pp, £22/$24.95 In the 1920s, some influential academics were dismayed to find that many graduates of elite American universities were, not to put too fine a point on it, culturally illiterate. They lacked the knowledge that could be taken for granted among cultivated Europeans

Mass Exodus By Stephen Bullivant OUP, 302pp, £25/$32.95 Why Catholics Leave, What they Miss, and How They Might Return By Stephen Bullivant Paulist Press, 168pp, £15.71/$19.95 Was Vatican II in some way responsible for declining Catholic practice and “affiliation” (people calling themselves Catholics), or is this phenomenon a matter of trends beyond the Church’s control?

Fra’ Giacomo Dalla Torre, the Grand Master of the Order of Malta, has informed members that henceforth all Masses celebrated in the context of Order events must be celebrated according to the Ordinary Form: that is to say, there must be no more Traditional Latin (Extraordinary Form) Masses. This will come as a heavy blow

Infiltration: The Plot to Destroy the Catholic Church from Within By Taylor Marshall Crisis Publications 224pp, £19.75/$24.95 In 1846, Pope Pius IX condemned schemes aiming at the destruction of the Papal States by Freemasons. In 1851, Mélanie Calvat, the seer of La Salette, sent an account of her visions to the pope, including the prediction

An unlikely intervention by England’s cultural luminaries rescued the Tridentine Mass from threatened extinction

On November 26, 1971, the front page of the Universe informed its readers as follows: As from this Sunday, the first in Advent, it is forbidden to offer Mass in the Tridentine rite anywhere in the world. In very special circumstances old or retired priests may apply to their own bishop for permission to use

The cultural and artistic value of chant exercises a powerful attraction

In the 1973 film Catholics, Martin Sheen – playing a Jesuit come to bring a remote traditionalist monastery to heel – informs the abbot that Vatican IV has forbidden the Latin Mass and the Sacrament of Confession, except for mortal sins. Author Brian Moore’s dystopian vision has not come to pass, and one reason to

Ember days are a particularly ancient and rich part of the Church’s liturgical patrimony