Michael Kurek's English Symphony is his third symphony and perhaps his best, surpassing even the magic and majesty of his second and, as its name suggests, taking the primary world of England as its creative wellspring. When Britain had an Empire The sun would never set, But the sun set over England And Englishmen forget [...]
Any discussion of Christmas and literature brings to mind instantly the miserly figure of Scrooge and the ghosts in Dickens’ Christmas Carol. It is not likely, however, that such a discussion would bring to mind the medieval classic, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Yet this epic of the Middle Ages, written by an anonymous [...]
As one who has admired Hilaire Belloc for almost half a century, it is gratifying indeed to see such a revival of interest in this great and under-appreciated man of genius. For too long, he has walked in G.K. Chesterton’s shadow. Now, at last, he is emerging in his own right, basking in the light [...]
Dom Prosper Guéranger's tireless promotion of Gregorian chant bore great cultural fruit and helped with the Catholic revival in France. In an earlier essay in this series, we remarked how dispassionate or despondent observers at the beginning of the 19th century might have considered that the Catholic Church was terminally ill and on its deathbed. The [...]
The acceptance of Shakespeare’s Catholic sympathies and sensibilities animates "Shakespeare: The Magician and the Healer," by Annie-Paule de Prinsac, who argues that the Bard disguised himself and his meaning in a mannerist mask, which simultaneously and paradoxically revealed truths indirectly and allegorically which it was illegal for him to reveal candidly. Times have changed and [...]
Natural and supernatural reality are both subject to reason. If the natural is divorced from reason, it leads to the irrational reductionism of rationalism. If the supernatural is divorced from reason, it leads to superstition. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Hamlet’s words to his [...]
Flannery O’Connor knew that her readers would only begin to see the beauty of a life with Christ by seeing the ugliness of a world without Him. Upon my arrival in the United States at the beginning of the present century, I was woefully ignorant of the American literature of the previous century. Today, almost [...]
Pioneering priests such as Frs. Jean-Baptiste Lamy and Joseph Projectus Machebeuf are unsung heroes of Christendom, but deserve to be recognized. From Nebraska, from Arkansas, Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the continental blood intervein’d, All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all the Northern, Pioneers! O pioneers! —Walt Whitman [...]
Fr. Joseph Fessio I have always had a soft spot for the Society of Jesus, even though my heart has been hardened by those modernized and modernist Jesuits who have abandoned the Holy Spirit for the spirit of the age. These Jesuits à la mode are wolves in shepherd’s clothing who betray the [...]
Reading "The Screwtape Letters" can be a creepy and unsettling experience because C.S. Lewis does not merely take us into the head of the human who is experiencing temptation, but into the malevolent mind of the devil himself. This same psycho-dramatic technique is employed by the directors of the recently released horror film, "Nefarious," in [...]
The recent publication of a private letter written by King Charles III in 1998, when he was Prince of Wales, is causing quite a stir. Written to a friend, Dudley Poplak, it expresses King Charles’ disdain for the imposition of scientism on agriculture, which is itself of interest, but also expresses his scorn for the [...]
Why, one wonders, should one of the most famous people in history be featured as one of the unsung heroes of Christendom? This would seem to be a good question until we realize that most people do not perceive Shakespeare as a hero of Christendom. He is sung, to be sure. He is sung more widely [...]
Much as Evelyn Waugh insisted that the theme of "Brideshead Revisited" was “the operation of divine grace”, J.R.R. Tolkien insisted in a letter to a friend that “'The Lord of the Rings' is, of course, a fundamentally religious and Catholic work.” In the fourth and final essay in this survey of liturgy and literature we [...]
Having surveyed the liturgical presence in Medieval and Early Modern literature in my two previous essays, we’ll continue our survey with a review of some of the liturgical highlights in the literature of the modern age. A good place to begin would be the early years of the Catholic literary revival which could be said [...]