"The Liturgy is not about us, but about God. Forgetting about God is the most imminent danger of our age. As against this, the Liturgy should be setting up a sign of God's presence. Yet what happens if the habit of forgetting about God makes itself at home in the Liturgy itself and if in the Liturgy we are thinking only of ourselves? In any and every liturgical reform, and every liturgical celebration, the primacy of God should be kept in view first and foremost."

Joseph Ratzinger

The St. Colman's Society for Catholic Liturgy

St. Colman’s Society for Catholic Liturgy encourages and promotes among its members full active and conscious participation in Catholic Liturgy in accordance with the authentic tradition of the Church especially as expressed in Sacrosanctum Concilium and subsequent liturgical legislation.

St. Colman’s Society for Catholic Liturgy promotes its objectives primarily through its annual International Liturgical Conference which takes place during the month of July.

The International Conference brings together some of the most important contemporary research scholars in area of Catholic Liturgy.

Speakers are usually drawn from the United States, France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, Australia, and Latin America.

While conference topics range over a wide area of liturgical interest, their focal point is the liturgical writing of Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI which the Society explicitly seeks to promote among its members and among the general public.
Acknowledging the Holy Father’s liturgical vision of a bi-formal Roman Rite evolving in continuity with the Church’s constant tradition, the Society organizes celebrations of the Holy Mass in both the modern Roman usage according to the Missale Romanum (editio tertia typica emendata) and according to the extraordinary usage as defined by the Missale Romanum (1962).

St Gregory Mass
Mass of St Gregory

In both usages, the Society strives to pay particular attention to worthy celebration of the Liturgy, in a dignified sacral context, in fidelity to the ecclesiastical norms governing sacred art and architecture, and with a genuine concern to encourage the Church’s prescribed repertoire of Gregorian Chant (as set out in the Graduale Romanum, the Antiphonale Romanum and the Liber Usualis) and of Sacred Polyphony, especially as expounded by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525-1594) and the Roman Polyphonic school.

The Society hopes to be able to organize a series of spiritual retreats for its members and for the any of the public wishing to attend.

The Society’s third International Liturgical Conference will explore the theme of sacred music in the Liturgy and its practical consequences for giving dignified worship to God. This Conference, drawing on the writings of Pope Benedict XVI, will be held 10-12 July 2010 at the Imperial Hotel, South Mall, Cork City, Ireland. It will be opened by His Excelelncy Archbishop Raymond Leo Burke, Prefect of the Signatura Apostolica, who will also give the key-note address.

Details of the conference available here.

Roger Van Der Weyden Deposition Mass
Roger Van Der Weyden Deposition