Friday, September 09, 2005

CIEL Publications

With mention of the CIEL conference in Oxford in 2006 and Rome in 2005, I thought I should share with you a little bit about CIEL for those not familiar.


(Solemn Liturgy at CIEL Conference, France)


First off, let me tell you, you should get familiar with CIEL. CIEL itself works for the scholarly, non-polemical study of the classical Roman liturgy. That much you probably know. But what you may not know off hand is that these proceedings from these conferences are published. These essays are of the highest calibre and are amongst some of the finest liturgical material available today on the Roman liturgy. If there are any books you have been thinking of buying, I would place the CIEL proceedings at the top of them.

If you take a look at my CIEL Canada website, under Publications, you can look at all the of the English translations of the proceedings to date, including the table of contents for each of them.

Here's the themes of the colloquia that have been published in English to date:

The Veneration and Administration of the Eucharist
Altar and Sacrifice
Ministerial and Common Priesthood in the Eucharistic Celebration
Theological and Historical Aspects of the Roman Missal
The Presence of Christ in the Eucharist
Faith and Liturgy
Liturgy and the Sacred

(You'll note that there has been a delay in publishing the 2003 proceedings -- and there was no 2004 colloquium. They are due out still, but there have been delays.)

More recent articles:


“Now About the Midst of the Feast” - Christ the Teacher in the Liturgy of Lent
Today’s Gospel in the Roman Rite, John 7, 14-31, begins with the words “Now about the midst of the feast”, referring to the feast of Tabernacles, which St John had previously mentioned in verse 2 of the same chapter. And indeed, the whole of this chapter is set within the context of this feast.The Expulsion of the Money-Changers from the Temple, th...

The Apple of Her Eye
“The Lord God planted a garden in Eden, which is in the east, and there he put the man he had fashioned. From the soil, the Lord God caused to grow every kind of tree, enticing to look at and good to eat, with the tree of life in the middle of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” (Gen. 2, 8-9) This 17th century painting...

The Exposition of the Holy Lance at St Peter’s Basilica
The YouTube channel of EWTN recently published a video about the exposition of the Holy Lance at St Peter’s basilica on the first Saturday of Lent. This was formerly done on the Ember Friday, which was long kept as the feast of the Holy Lance and Nails, but since this feast is no longer observed, the exposition of the relic has been transferred to ...

The Feast and Sunday of St John Climacus
In the Byzantine liturgy, each of the Sundays of Lent has a special commemoration attached to it. The first Sunday is known as the Sunday of Orthodoxy, because it commemorates the defeat of iconoclasm and the restoration of the orthodox belief in the use of icons; many churches have a procession in which the clergy and faithful carry the icons, as...

The Story of Susanna in the Liturgy of Lent
In the Roman Rite, the story of Susanna is read as the epistle of Saturday of the third week of Lent, the longest epistle of the entire year. This episode is not in the Hebrew text of Daniel, but in the manuscripts of the Septuagint, it appears as the beginning of the book, probably because in verse 45 Daniel is called a “younger man”, whic...

A New Edition of the Monastic Breviary Available Soon
The printing house of the Monastère Saint-Benoît in Brignole, France, Éditions Pax inter Spinas, is pleased to announce the re-publication of the two volumes of the last edition (1963) of the traditional Latin Monastic Breviary.The Breviary contains all that is necessary to pray the complete Monastic Divine Office of Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, S...

A Mid-Western Saint from Rome: Guest Article by Mr Sean Pilcher
Thanks once again to our friend Mr Sean Pilcher, this time for sharing with us this account of the relics of a Saint from the Roman catacombs, which were brought to the cathedral of Dubuque, Iowa, in the 19th century. Mr Pilcher is the director of Sacra: Relics of the Saints (sacrarelics.org), an apostolate that promotes education about relics, and...

Fons et Culmen Sacred Liturgy Summit - July 1–4, Menlo Park, California
You are cordially invited to the Fons et Culmen Sacred Liturgy Summit, which will be held from July 1-4, in Menlo Park, California!Fons et Culmen Sacred Liturgy Summit gathers together Catholics who love Christ, the Church, and the Church’s sacred liturgical tradition for: - the solemn celebration of the Mass and Vespers; - insightful talks on...

A Lenten Station Mass in the Roman Forum
Today’s Mass is one of the series instituted by Pope St Gregory II (715-31) when he abolished the older custom of the Roman Rite, by which the Thursdays of Lent were “aliturgical” days on which no Mass was celebrated. The station appointed for the day is at the basilica of Ss Cosmas and Damian, which was constructed by Pope St Felix IV (526-30) in ...

Do Priests or Religious Need Special Permission to Pray a Pre-55 Breviary?
On occasion, I receive an email like the following (in this case, from a seminarian): “Do you happen to know of any sources/authoritative references which you could point me to that explain why praying the Pre-55 Breviary definitely satisfies the canonical obligation for clerics or religious? As I am strongly desirous of the Pre-55 Liturgy, I ...

For more articles, see the NLM archives: