Monday, February 05, 2007

When altar missals were beautiful...

The full import of beauty should always be enjoyed in the liturgy - even in our printed altar missals. Of course human reason will never be able to fathom the event concealed in the sacred liturgies, but we can at least enjoy the beauty as much as our five senses allow us to.

Ever since I was a kid I noticed that the typography and layout of the old missals from before the late '60s was really lovely and that today we're barred from that former beauty courtesy of the publishing houses/spirit of the age.

I wish we had more of the element of "descent" and "dependence" in keeping the new prints of today looking as lovely as they formerly had. But then again, lest we succumb to the lures of beauty we might look "too" Catholic and that would just be the worst thing, right?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I can guess that this photo was taken on February 3?

John Paul Sonnen said...

yes, it was a lovely funeral mass. wished you could have been there...union of prayers.

Anonymous said...

Bring your missals to Rome and you can have them rebound in sheepskin leather with a nice cross imprint embossed on the cover.