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Bring It On: Let All That is Hidden Come to Light, by Anthony Esolen – Brown Pelican Society of Lousiana

Bring It On: Let All That is Hidden Come to Light, by Anthony Esolen

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The Tridentine Mass [Source: Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter, via Wikipedia]

By Anthony Esolen, The Catholic Thing, June 6, 2025

Anthony Esolen is a lecturer, translator, and writer. Among his books are Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture, and Nostalgia: Going Home in a Homeless World, and most recently The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord. He is Distinguished Professor at Thales College. Be sure to visit his new website, Word and Song.

Note: We all know that we need to overcome the deep divisions that plague us all these days in the Church and society. But there are many things – and Professor Esolen points sharply to several of them here below – that cannot be resolved merely by goodwill. They need to be examined. Debated. Resolved. And properly. Here at The Catholic Thing, we’ve been in that business for closing in on twenty years now. And who knows where the Church and world would be if we and others had given up on these struggles? We didn’t. And we won’t. But we need you. Frankly, these first days of our mid-year fundraiser are a little softer than I’d like them to be. I need you to step up, bigger, and again if you already have. The work is long and the day is late. Please, play your part in facing the big challenges that we face. Click the button. Support the work of The Catholic Thing. – Robert Royal

Bishop Michael Martin of Charlotte has made news with his order, if I may be permitted a metaphor, that the Vetus Ordo be celebrated only in a certain broom closet in Swannanoa. It seems also that he was about to ban some of the features of the TLM that tradition-minded people who attend the Novus Ordo favor, such as kneeling to receive the Sacrament, or facing the Risen Christ as we pray ad orientem.  After the uproar about the latter – not the former, Martin has backed away, assuring people that there will be no big changes – until at least October.

Meanwhile, at the website of those music men the Saint Louis Jesuits, I’ve read a short piece in which once-priest Bob Dufford describes how much he loved Hollywood musicals when he was a boy, naming Rodgers and Hammerstein, and Lerner and Lowe, as his most significant influences.

I thought as much.  The “folk” music common at Mass has little or nothing to do, in melody or lyrics, with any folk tradition anywhere in the world.  Such songs as Dufford’s “Like a Shepherd” or Dan Schutte’s “Here I Am” are show tunes. They are not like medieval plainsong, or the Scottish Psalter, or the Lutheran hymns that Bach arranged, or American revival hymns, or English carols. …

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