Now on to Pope Benedict's desired reform of the reform. Today's news informs us that the New Mass translation is approved, and will debut in Advent next year. Providing more faithful, more poetic, and more elevated translations of the Roman Missal, with the Scriptural references clear and strong, is a key step in Benedict's program.

A look at the manner in which some changes to the liturgy were introduced in 1964 might suggest other likely areas for reform. Susan Benofy has provided one such examination in the Adoremus Bulletin: The Day the Mass Changed: How It Happened and Why.

Clearly the biggest factor in the decline of the modern Church is the rapid secularization of culture, which has affected everything and all of us, including those preachers and pastors who have manifested a disdain for the Magisterium. Sadly, some of this continues, as Diogenes points out in a salesman who doesn't like the product.

Of course there are many positive steps still to be taken to desecularize our personal and collective lives, in a sort of reform of our own personal reform. Here are just three:

* Pope Benedict offered some ideas on education to the Italian Episcopal Conference: Helping New Generations Relate to the World.
* Next to the Pope in importance (!), Phil Lawler reflects on the possibilities of America's enduring pro-life majority.
* And I explore the proper attitude toward relations among those of different religions in On the Campaign for Islamic Prayer in a Cathedral of Mary.

As for deeper theological fare, an unusual topic came up recently in First Things, on the trial of Jesus, which can teach us much about what it really means to follow God's will. See my latest In Depth Analysis: Providence, Sin and Love, for Jews and Christians.

Finally, it is almost too late to alert you to today's saint, Bernard of Clairvaux, who nearly a thousand years ago was regarded as the most brilliant man of his age. Another brilliant but more contemporary saint is available for us tomorrow, Pope Pius X, the only twentieth century pope yet to be canonized. here