We wish all of our readers a blessed and fruitful Holy Week as we all prepare ourselves for the Triduum. 

An older entry is up first, but it’s well worth your time. In 2009, Gregory DiPippo went through and chronicled in painstaking detail the 1955 Holy Week reforms of Pius XII. (We link to the last post in the series, since it has a links to the previous posts.) At the time, the 1955 changes represented the first significant changes to the Roman Missal since 1570. (The Roman Breviary had not done so well.) However, with the benefit of hindsight, we can see that Pius’s 1955 reforms were but a prelude to the wholesale revision of the liturgy in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. DiPippo’s series is, therefore, essential reading to understand how Bugnini’s big project began.

At the National Catholic Register, there is an article about the preparations for the celebrations of the 100th anniversary of the Fatima apparitions of Our Lady. It seems to us that the Fatima message is as essential today as then. Probably more so.

An anonymous priest at Rorate Caeli writes a very brief note about the dangers of the Church stooping to adopt modern modes of communication.

Fr. John Hunwicke has a lengthy prediction about the forthcoming post-synodal exhortation, which, in point of fact, differs from ours in an important dimension. Fr. Hunwicke says, “It will not open up a regular public pathway to the admission of such people to the Sacraments without the regularisation of their matrimonial situation through the Nullity system.” (Emphasis in original.) We’ll see.

Fr. Joseph Koczera posts an interesting homily on the gospel account of the resurrection of Lazarus, in which he makes the important point, which we had not consciously recognized until now, that we all can identify with Martha and Mary.