We have recently received the sorrowful news that Father Kenneth Baker, SJ has died (8/6/2026). He was 96 and resided in the Los Gatos, California Jesuit retirement community. 

Many of our readers may had the chance to encounter Fr. Baker.  The vicissitudes of his long career are eloquent testimony to the nature of American Catholic life after the Vatican II. In 1970 he became the president of Seattle University. The turmoil of those times led him to resign that position in that same year. But that opened up new fields of work for him.  In 1970 he took over the leadership of the Homiletic and Pastoral Review  which he led  for  40 years.  Under his direction it became a critical resource for those who wanted to learn about Catholic faith and orthodoxy in troubled times. 

Fr. Baker ran his publication out of the premises of the Sino- American Amity Fund on Riverside Drive in New York City.  I met him there many times.  For here in the 1980s  young and “younger” Catholics could attend Catholic lectures and social events. He was a great supporter of these efforts.  Perhaps I could compare those times with what is going on today at Saint Patrick’s Old Cathedral, St. Vincent Ferrrer or Saint Joseph’s in the Village. Fr. Baker also had a circle of friends and benefactors  – stars and singers of an earlier era,  like Hildegarde and Celeste Holm. 

 Fr. Baker was a never-ending source of wisdom, advice and, occasionally, admonitions. He was very much aware of the problems in the Church and in his own order, in which he was something like an exile. Yet he soldiered on. 

 I had moved out of the immediate New York area in the early 90s and thereafter saw Fr. Baker only infrequently.  But after the issuance of two indults in 1984 and 1988 expanding permission for the Traditional Latin Mass,  he was active in celebrating the TLM. Just checking our own website,  I find reports on the Fr, Baker’s retreats and celebrations of the TLM. Once I had the pleasure of assisting him in determining whether a certain German wine was authorized for use in the celebration of the Mass; I had to contact the Archdiocese of Munich for that!

Of course, advancing age gradually restricted his activity. The last I heard he was engaged in translating into English some Jesuit constitutional documents and treatises. I can only say that he was an example of perseverance and fortitude through the most difficult times.  At the present time, where those difficulties seem to be recurring, we can learn from his example. May he rest in peace.

His funeral Mass will be celebrated at the Los Gatos Jesuit Center Chapel on Thursday August 13 at 11:15 AM Pacific Time. The service will be live streamed here on youtube,

A beautiful sung Mass is offered every Saturday morning in Greenwich, CT. This Mass takes place in the lower chapel. You need to enter from the parish center door to the left of the church. Plenty of parking in front of the church.

The following churches will offer Traditional Masses on Saturday, August 15 for the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Connecticut

St. Mary Church, Norwalk, 10 am Missa Cantata

St. Mary Church, Greenwich, CT, 8 am Missa Cantata. n.b. in lower level chapel: enter through parish center door to left of the church.

Sts. Cyril and Methodius Oratory, Bridgeport, 8:30 am Low Mass; 10:15 Solemn Mass

St. Patrick Oratory, Waterbury, CT, 8 am Low Mass; 10:30 am High Mass

New York

Holy Innocents Church, Manhattan, 10:30 am High Mass; 1pm Low Mass

Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Manhattan (Harlem) 9 am, followed by adoration of the Most Blessed Sacarment.

St. Josaphat Oratory, Queens, 9:30 am High Mass

St. Rocco Church, Glen Cove, Long Island, 10 am Missa Cantata

St. Paul the Apostle, Yonkers, 12 noon

Annunciation Church, Crestwood, 12 pm, Missa Cantata in lower church

Immaculate Conception Church, Sleepy Hollow, NY, 12 noon.

Holy Trinity, Poughkeepsie, NY, Missa Cantata, 7 pm

New Jersey

Our Lady of Sorrows, Jersey City, 11 am Missa Cantata

Holy Trinity Church, Hackensack, 8 am Missa Cantata

Our Lady of Fatima Chapel, Pequannock, 7 am, 9 am, 11 am

St. Anthony of Padua, West Orange, 9 am Low Mass; 11 am High Mass

Some photos of the Mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel in East Harlem on July18, courtesy of Mr. Brendan Young. He reports that “the bishop was overjoyed and there were about 200-250 faithful.”

From Beltran, Edgar, “Is Pope Leo Maintaining a TLM ‘gray area'”? The Pillar ( August 3, 2026)

This article comments on the obvious fact that Pope Leo has taken no official steps reducing restrictions on the traditional Latin Mass ( the “TLM”). Indeed, in one significant church a TLM he himself had authorized last year may not be repeated:

Meanwhile, organizers of the traditionalist Summorum Pontificum pilgrimage told The Pillar that they have asked permission to celebrate a TLM in Saint Peter’s Basilica this year, but haven’t received a response.

One of Leo’s concrete gestures towards traditionalist communities last year was allowing the celebration of a TLM during the pilgrimage in Saint Peter’s Basilica after not being allowed to do so in 2023 and 2024.

One source said organizers of the pilgrimage intend to ask again after the summer.

“The problem is that in the pope’s close circle, they saw that the Mass helped a lot of people but was also used as propaganda and they didn’t like that,” the source said.

If Pope Leo declines to allow the pilgrimage to celebrate the TLM in St. Peter’s, that could be seen by many observers as a sign that he has grown cold to the idea of abrogating, reforming or even loosening the application Traditiones custodes.

However, it is also possible that the lack of a response is a matter of personnel connected with the basilica.

There is growing speculation that Cardinal Mauro Gambetti, Archpriest of Saint Peter’s Basilica, is due to be replaced soon. Rumors in Rome indicate that Gambetti’s replacement might be Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Cardinal Rolandas Makrickas, or Bishop Guido Marini, who are all thought to be friendlier to the TLM than Gambetti.

It is possible that a forthcoming transition in archpriest could be delaying a response about the celebration of a TLM in the basilica.

Therefore, silence should not be understood as rejection — at least not yet.

Several Vatican sources told The Pillar the decision to allow the Mass last year happened after Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke asked the pope in an Aug. 22 audience to allow the Mass to be celebrated there.

I was aware of this for a number of months now – a while back the organizers of the pilgrimage on its official website had recharacterized the service taking place in St. Peter’s as a “pontifical ceremony.” Now they have evidently decided to go public with the issue. I don’t know about the speculation regarding the changing of the guard at St. Peter’s (which, like many other alleged personnel moves of Pope Leo, has not yet happened). But that there is opposition to a TLM in St. Peter’s from what is called here “the pope’s close circle” indeed is exceedingly plausible.

(Above) Martin Mosebach explaining things to an American visitor a few weeks ago in Kiedrich, near his home town of Frankfurt.

Today, Martin Mosebach celebrates his 75th birthday. The online publication of the German Catholic Church, oddly enough, commemorates the occasion by publishing an article from the Katholischen Nachrichten-Agentur (KNA).  The interviewer characterizes Mosebach as a provokateur (an enfant terrible or, putting it more pejoratively, an “extremist”) yet acknowledges that he “speaks up, as always, forcefully and eloquently.”  But then katholisch.de has never been as one-sidedly propagandistic as the corresponding establishment Catholic media at the Vatican, in France,  the UK or the United States.

Demuth, Norbert, „Der Literat und katholische Provokateur Martin Mosebach wird 75,“  katholisch.de (7/31/2026) 

Below are excerpts from the article. In quotation marks are statements the interviewer directly attributes to Mosebach.

Regarding the liturgy, Mosebach is clear. In his view,  the Church at the end of the 1960s divested itself of its substance  by rejecting the old form of worship. What Paul VI initiated through the reform of the liturgy  ”in reality weakened to an appalling  extent –  or even brought to a standstill  – the transmission of the faith.”

….

Above all, Mosebach  is disturbed by the practical implementation of the reform of the liturgical life of the Catholic Church. “The few Catholics that still go to Mass on Sunday have largely lost the knowledge of what the Eucharistic sacrifice is.” “Through the reform of the liturgy (the Church) has been grievously wounded in her appearance and in her substance.”

….

Regarding Pope Leo, Mosebach is clear: “I urgently hope that Pope Leo will do away with Pope Francis’s new methods of ‘decision-making.’ Especially with ‘synods’ which break with the entire synodal tradition of Church history.” Leo, however, wants to avoid a sharp break with the pontificate of his predecessor and “has apparently resolved for the time being to more or less freeze the status quo.”

…..

In today’s Catholic Church traditionalist thought is in a difficult situation. That’s demonstrated by the action taken by Pope Leo against the FSSPX….

“I am unhappy regarding these excommunications, for they approach the great problem of the Church’s liturgy on a lower, disciplinary level instead of attempting to fundamentally remedy the damage that has arisen in a spiritual and theological manner.”  A state of total disorder “cannot be healed by such administrative acts. ”

(Above ) Guiding a visitor though the extraordinary medieval parish church of Kiedrich.

(Above and below) A hike led by Martin Mosebach among the vineyards and estates of the Rheingau, source of some of the best German wine.

We encounter the art of Hildreth Meiere (1892-1961), the “mistress of Art Deco,” all over New York City: at Rockefeller Center, at St Bartholomew’s, at Fordham University Chapel – among many other sites. But her most elabotrate work is far away in Lincoln, Nebraska, For it was here, in partnership with architect Bertram Goodhue (St.Vincent Ferrer, St. Thomas Fifth Avenue (the latter with Ralph Adams Cram)) and sculptor Lew Laurie (St. Vincent Ferrer, Rockefeller Center) that she helped create one of the first and most amazing Art Deco buldings: the Nebraska State Capitol. It is only matched in its decorative fullness and complexity by the later and larger Rockefeller Center.

The somewhat incongruous skyscraper of the Nebraska Capitol makes even today an amazing impression. Bertram Goodhue died in 1924 and did not live to see its completion.

The artistic “dream team” come all the way from New York City. The “thematic consultant” Hartley B. Alexander (a professor of philosophy)is responsible for the fantastically elaborate iconography of the Capitol, uniting everything from Classical antiquity to American Indian art, from planetary images to dinosaur fossils, all setting forth the history and ideals of Nebraska.

Lew Laurie is ressonsible for the sculptural decoration of the Capitol both on the exterior (above) and in the interior ( below – the decoration of a door).

(Below) Hildreth Meiere designed ceiling roundels in ceramic tile showing various historical aspects of Man’s economic life.

Hilderth Meiere’s main contribution to the Capitol was a vast sequence of floor mosaics such as (below) the “Genius of Creative Energy.”

(Above) The “Spirit of the Soil.”

(Above) The “Spirit of Vegetation.” (Below) The “Spirit of Animal Life.”

(Above) For the main rotunda Meiere executed these images of the “virtues” in glazed ceramic tile. (Below) The largest expanse of floor mosaics is below this dome.

Surounding the central figures is an amazing collection of images of prehistoric creatures based on fossils found in the American Midwest and West.

Completing the program, images of classical Athens and Rome serve as salutary examples for the Nebraska government and legislature.

(Above) Rome ( with the god Jupiter).

(above and below) Athens (Athena and Cecrops).

(Above) Nothing was spared on the other elements of the decoration.

The Nebraska Capitol Art Experience site provides exhaustive descriptions of all these works. For Hildreth Meiere see hildrethmeiere.org or for a briefer account focusing on her Catholic works, “Hildreth Meiere: Mistress of Art Deco,” The Society of St. Hugh of Cluny (3/3/2010)

Cologne Cathedral (and tourists). To see this view an admission ticket is now required.

You may have heard that Cologne cathedral, the largest and most prominent Catholic church in Germany, has introduced an admission charge as of July 1.  Despite the funding available to the German Catholic Church, the cathedral has been running an increasing deficit in recent years. As the provost of the cathedral is reprted to have candidly admitted, 99% of the visitors to the cathedral today are tourists. 1) 

We recently had a chance to experience the new system at work. The admission fee, at 12 euros (approximately $13.64 as of 7/24/2026), is not insignificant. Payment of the fee is necessary to see almost all of the cathedral interior. Moreover, supplementary charges apply for tours of the chancel and other restricted parts of the building. Entry for ticketed holders is through the main (western) portal of the cathedral

But what if one wishes to visit the cathedral for prayer? In that case,  a visitor has to enter through a separate entrance ( the north portal) leading to a side chapel within the cathedral featuring a statue of the Virgin Mary and some banks of votive candles. This space, however, does not extend very far into the cathedral and is carefully blocked off from the rest of the interior. If a not very honest person enters this chapel not to pray but to get a glimpse of the cathedral interior, he will be very disappointed: visibility is exceedingly limited and there is no access from the side chapel to the rest of the cathedral. 

(Above) The “hidden” entrance to the Blessed Sacrament chapel on the cathedral’s north side. This is advertised as the entrance to the cathedral treasury.

But what if our visitor wants to spend some time before the Blessed Sacrament? (“Eucharistic adoration” is treated by the cathedral staff as distinct from “prayer.”)  Such a visitor has to use a separate, inconspicuous entrance, also on the north side of the cathedral. This primary purpose of this entrance is to give access to the cathedral treasury and, at least as of now,  a visit to the Blessed Sacrament may require a discussion with the cathedral staff.  After the visitor enters,  an attendant unlocks a door which springs open like an airlock. Inside a chapel,  the Blessed Sacrament is exposed in a monstrance. I believe this used to be the place of reservation of the Blessed Sacrament for the entire cathedral but now the nave is neither visible nor accesible from this chapel.  Thus, the Blessed Sacrament is effectively reserved outside the cathedral proper. 2) 

We saw relatively few people praying before the Madonna in that section of the cathedral reserved for “prayer.” Far fewer were kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament. “Admission” both for prayer and for visiting the Blessed Sacrament is free of charge. There are also services in the morning and evening – outside of normal “visiting hours” –  for which free access is presumably available.

We might add that charging an admission fee is of course not at all unique to Cologne cathedral. Well known examples in the Catholic world include the cathedrals of Seville and Milan. And in the Church of England, substantial admission fees are assessed in almost all the great cathedrals and churches.

The official site of Cologne cathedral states that:

This cathedral was built to the glory of God and is to this day, above all, a house of prayer and worship. 3)

As of today, the financial policies of the cathedral directly contradict this assertion.  Prayer and worship are limited to specific times and restricted spaces. In their defense, the cathedral authorities speak of most visitors being tourists and of the problems and additional costs they create. The underlying, unmentioned issue, however, is that very few Catholics in Germany practice their religion. This has been true for decades. That is why almost all the visitors to the cathedral are tourists. 

Furthermore,  the Catholic Church of Germany shows a complete misunderstanding of the purpose of buildings such as Cologne cathedral. Medieval cathedrals are not utilitarian “worship spaces,” the seat of a bureaucratic clerical authority, or museums. As Marcel Proust remarked,  the great cathedrals are “sermons in stone.”  Yes, many, even most, visitors come as tourists. But a minority of these will be touched by what they see (or hear in the case of music) and be led to God. Charging admission deadens and distorts the voice of this preaching.

Does not JD Vance in his recent book Communion speak of an “epiphany” upon finding himself, seemingly alone, in a great French cathedral? Of experiencing both the beauty of the architecture and stained-glass windows and the sense of Europe’s cultural decline, seeing that cathedral deserted by the faithful. Yet that cathedral had endured through the ages – and Vance found that one other person – a worshipper – had indeed been present in a chapel all along. For him it was a revelation leading to his baptism. Like this unnamed cathedral in France, Cologne cathedral today illustrates both the spiritual legacy of the Church and its current desolate condition. 

1. “Kölner Dom kostet künftig für Touristen Eintritt” dw.com (3/5/2026)
2. There appears to be a similar, even more restrictive arrangement at the church of St. Joseph (in the Village) in New York City.
3. „Important Notices,“ koelner-dom.de.
4. Vance, JD, Communion : Finding my way back to Faith at 170-72 (Harper, New York, 2026)

(All accessed 7/24/2026)

Due to travel we regettably could not be present at the Traditional pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in East Harlem last Saturday. We have covered this pilgrimage since its inception in 2012. For the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel had become dear to CatholicTraditionalists. Did they somehow sense that Pope Francis would promulgate Traditionis Custodes – aiming at their destruction – on that feast in 2021?

I heard a favorable report from someone present, even though publicity for the pilgrimage (see the flyer resproduced above) had been limited. Let me add a few details. Members of the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of St. George helped to organize the event. And the Society of St Hugh of Cluny funded the excellent music, which included:

Byrd’s Mass for Three Voices.

Offertory Motet Quam pulchra es by John Dunstaple (Song of Songs 7).

Communion Motet Flos florum by Guillaume Dufay

Charles Weaver ( the music director of St. Mary’s, Norwalk) led the music.