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…
“Church Latin” is the informal, snappier-sounding term for the more scholarly phrase Ecclesiastical Latin, or the occasionally-used Medieval Latin. All of these terms are used to denote something different from “Classical Latin”–the Latin used by, say, Julius Caesar. Church Latin was (and is!) the Latin used by the Catholic Church for two thousand years–thus, where the “Church” part comes in.
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.
Ever since I reviewed the fantastic exposé of modern ways of presenting “the Middle Ages”, Those Terrible Middle Ages: Debunking the Myths by French historian and archivist Regine Pernoud, I have wished for more. Where could I find a history of this most glorious era of human civilization that got it right, from the beginning? …
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.
Wanna learn Latin? Wanna learn Church Latin, so you can understand Catholic stuff better? Most Latin textbooks today teach Latin using vocabulary terms relating to ancient Roman culture. Great old-fashioned textbooks teach students to read Julius Caesar’s writing, providing them with scores and scores of military words. Catholics interested in understanding Church writings, Mass texts, Scripture, and Gregorian chant need…
Oh, it’s so good to be home! I’m just back from a wonderful, multi-state trip that involved going to Sunday Mass (Ordinary Form) in a little parish church in western North Carolina. Modern (built recently in the 2000s) on the outside, and modern in many ways on the inside, there were yet many statues and holy images prominently placed…
In pursuit of a writing project I have recently started, the other day I decided to read the Book of Acts in one afternoon. And then, since I just happened to have it sitting around, the next day I read Marigold Hunt’s The First Christians: The Acts of the Apostles for Children, just to be…
First of all: Don’t be afraid. I mean it! Latin is an extraordinarily beautiful and sacred language. It is the language of the Catholic Church. Used in the Church and by the Church for millennia, the Latin language does two profound things: it unites Catholics across time and space, and it clarifies the Church’s thought and teaching like…
St. Catherine Catholic Culture Center 