While one might respect the French traditions of haute couture and the artistic avant garde, who thought it was a good idea to mar the otherwise grand reopening of the historic Christian monument of Notre Dame by dressing the clergy in costumes so garishly outlandish? Once when I was living in England, I stood in [...]
The first Christians practised a way of life they simply called ‘The Way’ in which they received God’s love endlessly poured out by their Risen Lord. They called this the spiritual life because the love of the Risen Lord was none other than the Holy Spirit, the One whose love had bonded the Father to [...]
As fall gives way to winter and the night grows gradually longer, we find ourselves in the midst of a transition. In the course of the liturgical year, we find ourselves in a similar transition and we must wait. As much as society plays Bing Crosby’s Silver Bells, it is not Christmastime in the city. It [...]
Yes, we must fight and struggle for the ideal, but in the end the ultimate answers lie in God’s atonement and love for us, and in our love and forgiveness for others who are just as implicated as we are. Wendell Berry is a bearer of that message in his books. I have a great [...]
Constantino Brumidi’s fresco is less a deification of George Washington than it is a creative recording of his achievements and his legacy for our nation’s politicians. That the U.S. possesses its own rich history in art and boasts a series of internationally acclaimed painters is no surprise. Indeed, a walk through the Art Institute of [...]
Whether 1968 really was “the year that broke politics” is, at best, debatable. But it certainly was a year during which past patterns of politics were seriously upended. In other words, the title of Luke A. Nichter's book is more eye-catching than accurate. Nonetheless, there was collusion and chaos aplenty in that fateful year. The [...]
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 challenge we face today is humanizing a Bureaucratic Regime, just as our ancestors humanized a German warrior regime. We’re in the position of the Apostle Paul, handcuffed to a Praetorian guard. As the Bubble grows more psychotic and inhumane, opportunities for evangelistic kindness and witness multiply exponentially. As we survey our emerging Bureaucratic Regime [...]
Early Fall is delightfully deceiving. The golden light and turning leaves are signs of things to come. They promise apple picking, hikes, and cool nights by the bonfire. They promise joy just on the horizon. But the anticipation is always better than the fruition. And once they’re had they flee. By December we’re left wondering [...]
Although he wrote a Requiem Mass, Te Deum, and other spiritual compositions, the French Romantic composer Hector Berlioz has regularly received brickbats from Catholic listeners. In The Catholic Encyclopedia (1907), the Dutch-American organist and choirmaster Joseph Otten decried the Berlioz Requiem as a “sacred work, but it does not express any deep personal faith from Berlioz himself... [...]
Such are the power and relevance of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's words, that we would be doing ourselves a disservice if we did not engage with his memories in an effort to connect them with our own, transforming them into something new. And, happily, this is what the authors of "Solzhenitsyn and American Culture" do. “Own only [...]
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 [...]
My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun – In Corners – till a Day The Owner passed – identified – And carried Me away – And We roam in Sovereign Woods – And now We hunt the Doe – And every time I speak for Him – The Mountains straight reply – And do [...]
The greatness of the American myth is that it is mostly real. Enough of the faux-conservatives, these woke rightists, judging America as not worth saving and smearing our heroes as tyrants or war criminals. On December 3, 2024, James Lindsay, rightish provocateur, revealed that he had “very lightly edited” “several thousand words straight out of” [...]