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I am the product of a “dumbed down" generation. During my “Catholic” instruction in the late 1960s, I can’t recall having ever seen a monstrance, prayed a novena, heard Gregorian chant, taken part in a May crowning or prayed a benediction prayer. In This Article... The Affective Shift The Pertinent Questions Up, Up and Away The Affective Shift When Rome recently asked for churches to again start the “Forty Hours” devotion, I found myself asking people exactly what that entailed. So I struggle even in adulthood, reaching back like an orphaned child searching for her parental roots. At one time...

The innocuous carton of eggs, the milk, and bread moved along the black conveyer belt as my daughters surveyed the candy on the rack behind me in the checkout line at the grocery store. As they excitedly begged peanut M&Ms, my eyes drifted up and went wide as my jaw dropped at the sight of the licentious magazine cover before me. Public Shock and Private Failure I hastily flipped the magazine over and embarked on a quest to find the store manager, groceries in hand and daughters in tow. “Have you seen this?” I queried, showing him the magazine cover....

Look up “Gregorian chant” in just about any current dictionary or encyclopedia and you will see a description that says it “is the liturgical chant of the Roman Catholic Church.” Notice that the tense of the verb “to be” is in its present form of “is.” What Should Customarily Be? The definition doesn’t place Gregorian chant in the past tense and tell us that it “was” a liturgical chant that we Catholics long since forgot. If it is our current liturgical chant, isn’t there something odd in the fact that so many of us Roman Catholics never hear it at...

by Mary Anne Moresco Other Articles by Mary Anne Moresco The Sunday Celebration: Do I Come to Worship? 09/21/06 “The Mass is a moment of reflection and encounter with God, rather than a form of entertainment,” said Francis Cardinal Arinze, prefect of the Congregation for the Sacraments and Divine Worship, in an interview from Rome. In This Article...Keeping God in SightTaking StockDirecting Our Hearts and Minds Keeping God in Sight When the Roman Curia member specifically responsible for the liturgy raises this topic to us, it is advisable that we sit up and take notice, to stop for a moment of...