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I have always felt that Maxime de la Rocheterie's description of Marie-Antoinette is one of the best: She was not a guilty woman, neither was she a saint; she was an upright, charming woman, a little frivolous, somewhat impulsive, but always pure; she was a queen, at times ardent in her fancies for her favourites and thoughtless in her policy, but proud and full of energy; a thorough woman in her winsome ways and tenderness of heart, until she became a martyr. ( The Life of Marie-Antoinette by M. de la Rocheterie, 1893) Marie-Antoinette spent the first fourteen years of her life in Austria, worshiping in Rococo churches and listening to the music of Haydn and the Italian composers. Architecture and music in that time and place celebrated the glory of God in the beauty of His creation. As Queen, her desire to promote beauty around her, especially in the lives of those whom she loved, was an outgrowth of the culture in which she was raised. She loved theater, acting, o

Today I attended my first Tridentine Mass! I drove a little distance to get to a small rural church that offers the Latin Tridentine Mass every Sunday at noon, and I was very happy to be there. It was quite different from the Novus Ordo Mass offered at my parish church, where we do not kneel (we sit in chairs, not pews), clap to contemporary Christian music, hold hands during the Our Father, and applaud the cantor following reception of the holy Eucharist (!). The atmosphere today was   not   so different, however,  from a small Roman Catholic church I frequented before entering the Church (because it was close to where I was working at the time) where the Novus Ordo Mass was celebrated with reverent solemnity: silent prayer before mass, kneeling, and the singing of the Ave Maria at the conclusion of the celebration. I have missed going to mass at that little church. Since this was my first Latin Tridentine Mass, I do have some questions.  Obviously, I expected the mass to be in Lati