'This book, a classic guide to the celebration of the Church's ancient Gregorian Rite in the English-speaking world, will serve priests and seminarians of the twenty-first century--just as it served so many priests of the twentieth--in their pastoral mission, which now necessarily includes familiarity with and openness to the use of the older form of the sacred liturgy. I happily commend it to the clergy, seminarians and laity as a reliable tool for the preparation and celebration of the liturgical rites authoritatively granted by the Holy Father in Summorum Pontificum. 'I congratulate the distinguished liturgical scholar, Dr. Alcuin Reid, for his care and precision in ensuring that this revised edition conforms to the latest authoritative decisions with regard to these liturgical rites. As Pope Benedict XVI wrote in his letter which accompanied Summorum Pontificum: "In the history of the liturgy there is growth and progress, but no rupture." The Gregorian Rite is today a living liturgical rite which will continue its progress without losing any of its riches handed on in tradition. For as the Holy Father continued, "What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful. It behoves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church's faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place." May this book assist the Church of today and of tomorrow in realising Pope Benedict's vision.' Dario Cardinal Castrillon HoyosPresident, Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei This fifteenth edition, revised in the light of Pope Benedict XVI's reforms and expanded and corrected throughout, includes a new chapter on the music of solemn and sung Mass as well as clarifications of questions that have arisen in the light of recent experience. It gives descriptions of the rites of pontifical, solemn and low Mass, Vespers, the liturgical year including Holy Week, the sacraments, Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, funerals, episcopal visitation and more.

Adrian Fortescue, a British apologist for the Catholic faith in the early part of the 20th century, wrote this classic of clear exposition on the faith of the early Church in the papacy based upon the writings of the Church fathers until 451. No ultramontanist, Fortescue can be a keen critic of personal failings of various Popes, but he shows through his brilliant assessment of the writings of the Church fathers that the early Church had a clear understanding of the primacy of Peter and a belief in the divinely given authority of the Pope in matters of faith and morals. Referring to the famous passage in Matthew 16: 18 where Jesus confers his authority upon Peter as the head of the Apostles, and the first Pope, Fortescue says that, while Christians can continue to argue about the exact meaning of that passage from Scripture, and the various standards that are used for judgments about correct Christian teaching and belief, the only possible real standard is a living authority, an authority alive in the world at this moment, that can answer your difficulties, reject a false theory as it arises and say who is right in disputed interpretations of ancient documents. Fortescue shows that the papacy actually seems to be one of the clearest and easiest dogmas to prove from the early Church. And it is his hope through this work that it will contribute to a ressourcement with regard to the office of the papacy among those in communion with the Bishop of Rome, and that it will assist those outside this communion to seek it out, confident that it is willed by Christ for all who would be joined to him in this life and in the next.

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1908 Edition.

THIS book forms a continuation, or second part, of The Orthodox Eastern Church by the same author. Its object is to describe the lesser separated Eastern Churches in the same way as that described the greatest. .. Greatest and lesser, by the way, are only meant to qualify their size. No opinion is thereby expressed as to their relative merit (see p. 446). There is a difference in the subject of this volume, which affects its treatment. These smaller Churches are much less known. There is a vast literature on the Orthodox Church, so that the only difficulty in writing the former book was that of selection and arrangement. Moreover, Orthodox official documents and service-books (at least in their original form) are in Greek, which it is no great merit to know. Much of the matter treated here is rather of the nature of a land, if not unknown, at least difficult of access. There is far less information to he had about the other Eastern Churches. And their native literature is contained in many difficult tongues. So to write this book was a much more arduous task, and the result may be less satisfactory. On the other hand, it has tIle advantage of greater originality. Concerning the Orthodox I said nothing which could not be found fairly casily in European books already. Here I think I have been able, in certain points, to bring what will be new to anyone who has not made some study of Eastern matters and languages. Part of this is gathered from notes made by myself in their lands, interviews with prelates and c1ergy of these rites, observations of their services, and information supplied by friends in those parts.

THIS little book is intended to supply not so much matter for controversy as a certain amount of information about the Orthodox Church. People in the West have too long forgotten that enormous mass of their fellow Christians who live on the other side of the Adriatic Sea and the river Vistula, and now that Anglicans especially have begun to take an interest in what they look upon as another branch of the Church, it seems regrettable that English Catholics as a rule have only the vaguest and the most inaccurate ideas about the people whom they confuse under the absurd name of "Greeks." During the late war one saw how widespread were such ideas as that the Russian clergy were under the Patriarch of Constantinople and said Mass in Greek. It is chiefly with the hope of rectifying such mistakes that the book has been written. There is nothing in it that has not been said often and better before, and the only excuse for its publication is that there does not seem to be yet anything of the kind from the Catholic point of view in English. As it is written for Catholics I have generally supposed that point of view and have not filled up the pages by repeating once more arguments for the Primacy, Infallibility of the Pope and so on, such as can be easily found already in the publications of the Catholic Truth Society. ... The other point is the use of the word Orthodox. Since the schism I have called the people in union with the Ecumenical Patriarch so. Of course the name then has a special and technical meaning. Orthodox in its real sense is just what we believe them not to be, But, in the first place, it seems impossible to find any other name. Eastern is too wide, the Copts and Armenians form Eastern Churches, Schismatic involves the same difficulty, besides being needlessly offensive. We do not in ordinary conversation speak of Protestants as heretics. The name commonly used, Greek, is the worst of all. The only body that ever calls itself, or can with any sort of reason be called the Greek Church, is the Established Church of the kingdom of Greece j and that is only one, and a very small one, of the sixteen bodies that make up this great Communion. To call the millions of Russians, who say their prayers in Old Slavonic and obey the Holy Synod at Petersburg, Greeks is as absurd as calling us all Italians. There is no parallel with our name Roman. We use the Roman liturgy in the Roman language and obey the Roman Patriarch. They use the Byzantine liturgy in all sorts of languages, and the enormous majority obey no Patriarch at all. Byzantine Orthodox would more or less correspond to Roman Catholic, but the Byzantine Patriarch has no jurisdiction outside his reduced Patriarchate and occupies a very different position from that of the Roman Pope. And then courteous and reasonable people generally call any religious body by the name it calls itself. We have no difficulty in speaking of Evangelicals in Germany, the Church of England at home, and the Salvation Army everywhere. Of course one conceives these names as written in inverted commas, like those of the Holy Roman and the Celestial Empires. In the same way most people call us Catholics. Naturally all Christians believe that they are members of the Universal Church of Christ, and most of them profess their faith in it when they say the Creed. The way in which High Church Anglicans have suddenly realized this and have discovered that they would give away their own case by calling us Catholics is astonishingly naive. Of course they think that they are really Catholics too so do all Christians. And we never imagined that we are called so except as a technical name which happens to have become ours, and which even Turks give only to us. The body about which this book treats always calls itself the Orthodox Eastern Church, and in the East we call them Orthodox and they call us Catholics, and no one thinks for a moment that either uses these names except as technical terms.

This vital work, first published in 1918, remains of crucial importance to anyone attempting to understand Western liturgy. Fr. Fortescue provides clear, helpful insight into how to correctly order the Holy Mass as well as other liturgical services. His style is both easily understood and authoritative.

THIS series of Handbooks is designed to meet a need, which, the Editors believe, has been widely felt, and which results in great measure from the predominant importance attached to Dogmatic and Moral Theology in the studies preliminary to the Priesthood. That the first place must of necessity be given to these subjects will not be disputed. But there remains a large outlying field of professional knowledge which is always in danger of being crowded out in the years before ordination, and the practical utility of which may not be fully realised until some experience of the ministry has been gained. It will be the aim of the present series to offer the sort of help which is dictated by such experience, and its developments will be largely guided by the suggestions, past and future, of the Clergy themselves. To provide Textbooks for Dogmatic Treatises is not contemplated-at any rate not at the outset. On the other hand, the pastoral work of the missionary priests will be kept constantly in view, and the series will also deal with those historical and liturgical aspects of Catholic belief and practice which are every day being brought more into prominence. That the needs of English-speaking countries are, in these respects, exceptional, must be manifest to all. In point of treatment it seems desirable that the volumes should be popular rather than scholastic, but the Editors hope that by the selection of writers, fully competent in their special subjects, the information given may always be accurate and abreast of modern research. The kind approval of this scheme by His Grace the Archbishop of Westminster, in whose Diocese these manuals are edited, has suggested that the series should be introduced to the public under the general title of THE WESTMINSTER LIBRARY. It is hoped, however, that contributors may also be found among the distinguished Clergy of Ireland and America, and that the Westminster Library will be representative of Catholic scholarship in all English speaking countries. THIS book is intended to supply information about the history of the Roman liturgy. The dogmatic side of the Mass is discussed by the Bishop of Newport in the same series. The title shows that it is a study of the Roman rite. It is only in the Roman (or Gallican) rite that the Eucharistic service can correctly be called Mass. The chapter about other liturgies and the frequent references to them throughout are meant only to put our Roman Mass in its proper perspective and to illustrate its elements by comparison. In spite of the risk of repetition, the clearest plan seemed to be to discuss first the origin and development of the Mass in general; and then to go through the service as it stands now, adding notes to each prayer and ceremony. The present time is perhaps hardly the most convenient for attempting a history of the Mass. For never before have there been so many or so various theories as to its origin, as to the development of the Canon, the Epiklesis and so on. Where the best authorities differ so widely it would be absurd to pretend to offer a final solution. I have no pretence of supplying a new answer to any of these questions, or even of taking a side finally among theories already proposed. The only reasonable course seems to be to state the chief systems now defended and to leave the reader to make up his own mind. I have however shewn some preference for the main ideas of Dr. Drews and Dr. Baumstark and for certain points advanced by Dr. Buchwald.