Through their art, Romantic painters sought to restore the sacramental bond between the heavenly and the human. And among these artists, none was more focused on the lost liturgy of Western culture as Caspar David Friedrich, whose paintings—almost exclusively concerned with the subject of landscapes—at first glance seem to have little or nothing to do [...]
“Robinson Crusoe” contains profound messages for us today. It is an enactment of the modern, secular individual making his way alone in the world and overcoming challenges through the power of his own unaided reason. At the same time, in pointing to a religious interpretation of existence that is never quite fully experienced, it highlights [...]
Oh, the emotional images Schubert stirs within me. A whiff of my childhood, dusk on a wintery Sunday, when the younger, chilled me has gone inside and Mom’s got a roast cooking in the oven, filling the air with an intoxicating aroma and a sense of security. Tell me if this has ever happened to [...]
The only way forward for conservatives is unabashed courage and an utter refusal to continue to accept the status quo that says we are not valuable in culture, academia, and polite society. We must remember who we are and live with conviction. We are the harbingers of joy, hope, sacrifice, and humanity! This week has [...]
Portraying the souls of the faithful and those of the damned, “The Last Judgement” of Michelangelo serves as a powerful reminder of the theology of grace and of the importance of one’s own volition in accepting and actively cooperating with the grace which God so freely gives to men. The Last Judgement When [...]
Mozart’s genius consisted in absorbing, building upon, and transcending the musical influences of his day. The emotional complexity of his music raises it above the gracious, charming, but often superficial and forgettable aesthetics of the rococo era in which he was raised. In an essay in this journal titled “The Wild and Terrible Mozart,” Stephen [...]
Blaise Pascal’s argument in favor of Christianity was simple: Faith is so perceptible, even so palpable, to the intuition that man needs only to be in the world to realize that there must be more. Christianity has a direct connection to the heart; as Pascal said, “the heart has its reasons, which reason does not [...]
When the modern city enshrines the temporariness of facelessness as a permanently utilitarian way of life, then something has gone dreadfully wrong. The Aesthetics of Architecture by Roger Scruton (320 pages, Princeton University Press, 2013) One of the principal observations of Sir Roger Scruton about the modern city is an architectural observation. Modern architecture expresses [...]
Periods of artistic history are not monolithic, nor does the history as a whole consist of a single straight line. This is especially true of the bustling and diverse 20th century, which produced a good deal of music that continues the great humane Western tradition—a tradition that combines passion and intellect, the personal and the [...]
Poetry is the still, small voice of calm in a world gone mad with distraction. It finds us space to breathe. It allows us time to think. It takes us out of time and space into the realm of metaphysics. It takes us from the transient things to the permanent things, from the things of [...]
Joseph Ratzinger was aware of the central event of modernity, namely the transferal of basic Christian categories from the transcendent order to the political order of this world. Like many classically trained German scholars, Joseph Ratzinger was learned in many spheres of knowledge. He displayed a considerable familiarity with those areas in which he did [...]
How do we acquire knowledge about these deepest of questions? People who accept the Judeo-Christian worldview will accept the validity of both faith and reason as sources of knowledge and paths to truth. These two factors interweave and penetrate each other constantly, and the degree of importance or validity that one assigns to one or [...]
“Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day” hearkens back to an era when theological ideas were part of everyone’s mental awareness, ripe for poetry and song. Though the idea of Christ and humanity being united as bridegroom and bride is a classic Christian motif, we are surprised to find it in a popular Christmas carol, and [...]
Do we use our increasingly sophisticated gadgetry and expanding knowledge in an elvish, creative, and artful way to foster beauty and truth? Or do we use technology to manipulate, make money, and gain more power in the world? One of the stress points of the modern age is the pace and power of technology. Will [...]