Things liturgical have a way of raising Catholic hackles (Cackles?), even here at "In All Things."  Maybe that's as it should be: the Mass is the "source and summit" of Catholic worship, so Catholics should take the celebration of the Mass (and the other sacraments and other things liturgical) seriously.  With that in mind, here's a brand-new blog called "Pray Tell," a joint venture of Liturgical Press and St. John's School of Theology and Seminary in Collegeville, Minn., historically one of the centers for liturgical research, renewal and scholarship in this country.  The blog chiefs quote from the first issue of Orate, Fratres, one of the great liturgical magazines (now Worship) that helped foster the liturgical renewal that led to the Second Vatican Council's document Sacrosanctum Concilium.  "Our general aim is develop a better understanding of the spiritual import of the liturgy. … [We hope] that many persons may find in the liturgy the first answer to the intimate need of their souls for a closer contact and union with the spiritual and the divine.”  The new blog, the progeny of Orate, Fratres, is nothing if not candid:

Some will ask, Is this to be a liberal blog? Well, what else would you expect from Collegeville?! But more needs to be said than that. If liberal means open-minded, self-questioning, ecumenical, attentive to contemporary culture, and avoidant of romantic nostalgia, then we surely hope to be liberal. But if liberal means yesterday’s progressivism, yesterday’s ideals as if the culture and the churches haven’t changed dramatically since the 1970s or 1980s, then we hope to be not at all liberal. Those in the “old guard,” if there be such, can expect to be challenged and engaged.

Sounds like something worth checking into, fratres, and sistres, too