I like to sing the simple tone Marian antiphons with my daughter, who hasn’t had any Latin yet. I sing first the original Latin chant, and then I sing it again, putting English words to the chant melody. That is, if I have an English version of the chant! Maria A. Trapp’s book Around the…
Happy New Year–today’s the perfect day to talk about calendars, of course! If you’ve got a young family, you won’t want to miss the wonderful work done by Michaela Harrison, a Catholic wife and mother living near–and very inspired by!–Clear Creek Abbey in Oklahoma. Even if you don’t have children at home, your own faith…
People used to sing together–on pilgrimage, on Crusade, on the way to battle. It kept up the marchers’ morale for the cause, shared beauty of melody and lyric, handed down and passed on noble ideas. The songs were really love songs: proclaiming love for Christ, and His mother, the saints, the Church, and the good…
This photo is a page from a delightful book called An Alphabet of Saints, by Fr. Robert Hugh Benson, Reginald Balfour, S.C. Ritchie, and illustrated by L. D. Symington. I made this happy discovery when searching for available scanned versions of Msgr. Benson’s fiction books (Lord of the World is probably his best-known work). Immediately…
We recently celebrated a Nameday for a family member–great fun! Namedays are very happy days for little ones. A nameday is the feast day of the saint for whom a person is named (assuming, of course, that when he was baptized he was given a Christian name). Until he is old enough to receive the…
If you are at all intimidated by the idea of starting your students with Latin, know that it will be easier than you might be fearing, but you’ve got to un-think one thing that you’ve been thinking.
Yes, even if you “can’t sing,” you should learn some of the glorious chants by heart and sing them to your babies every night. (I’ll bet you sing in the shower, or somewhere else where no one hears you. And I’ll bet you’re keeping in tune pretty well, too.) I could give you dozens of…
I love books. I love writing and graphic design. And I especially love being Catholic. If you are like that too, then making mini-books is definitely a project for you. All you do is take a regular piece of 8 1/2″ x 11″ paper, fold it in half both ways and the long halves in half again, until you have eight equal sections. Then after you cut at the middle fold, you fold it together inwards and–voila!–a tiny book with a front and back cover and six inner pages.
Today I want to urge all of you dear readers: Don’t be one of those people who are settling! Don’t settle for attending the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass at a local parish church, if you see pastors and staff in you parish church ignoring what the GIRM (General Instructions of the Roman Missal) and the documents of Vatican…
We just enjoyed the feast of St. Michael and the Archangels three days ago, and now we remember the tireless, loving work of our Guardian Angels in this feast today. Today is a great day to have angel food cake for dessert! Although most Catholics know the simple prayer to our Guardian Angels (“Angel of…
St. Catherine Catholic Culture Center 