It took the theft of our church’s tabernacle for me to comprehend the sanctity of its contents.

“When liturgical life is a bit of a banner of division, there is the odor of the devil, the deceiver,” the pope said on May 7.

The great Catholic irony is that the Mass—that ripe cadenced insane activity at the heart of the church—is weirdly, bizarrely, the right and fitting place to bring our concerns about the Mass itself.

John L'Heureux was rightly praised for his novels, short stories, poetry and memoir. But how many other writers do you know also once wrote an experimental eucharistic prayer?

Those of us who have championed the vernacular cause over the years were never so naive (and we said so in print) as to believe that translation would put an end to all problems. In fact, it creates new ones.

The revitalization of ceremonial life in Indigenous communities and the resurgence of the Latin Mass both reflect a desire to return to a more holistic way of knowing, characteristic of our ancestors.