One of the problems with the 1962 liturgical reforms was the senseless suppression of the glorious Octave of Corpus Christi. The suppression of the Octave of the Epiphany is another. (There are many more!) We consider both of these, in … Continue reading
Category: Arts and Culture
Look! Beautiful New Statuary at Saint Benedict Center
Thanks to the generosity of our benefactors, six new statues, handmade in Peru, are now beautifying our sanctuary, lining up as an honor guard on either side of the Holy Trinity. These six saints are, after Our Lady and Saint Joseph, … Continue reading
Father Václav Gunther Jacob: Bohemian, Benedictine, and Baroque
Searching for a recording of Ian Dismas Zelenka’s wonderful Missa Dei Filii (Mass of God the Son), I found myself continuously running across a work of the same name by another Bohemian composer of the Baroque era, Václav Gunther Jacob. I had never heard of … Continue reading
Lenten Music: Jan Dismas Zelenka’s ‘Miserere’
The Jesuit educated Czech Catholic composer Jan Zelenka, sometimes called the “Catholic Bach,”* is too little known. Worthy to be listed alongside his contemporaries, Bach, Händel, Vivaldi and Telemann, his music presents fine specimens of glorious Baroque counterpoint. Damian Thompson has … Continue reading
Lenten Music: Gregorio Allegri’s ‘Miserere’
Below is the full version of the magnificent “Miserere mei, Deus” composed by the Catholic priest and Roman School composer, Father Gregorio Allegri (c. 1582-1652), and here brilliantly performed by the Choir of New College, Oxford. The Miserere is Psalm 50 (51), a … Continue reading
A Raging Bull in the China Shop
Are some stories too harrowing or too intense to be turned into movies? Well, yes there are. Word comes to us that Shusaku Endo’s novel Silence is being turned into a motion picture. Endo’s story of a priest whose mind and … Continue reading
Do You Know What Your Kid Is Studying in College?
Having recently completed a fun and enlightening read of Dr. Elizabeth Kantor’s Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature, then just happening on the article “Un-Donne: When Secular Students Confront Reverent Classics” by Joan Faust in the Winter edition … Continue reading
Catholic Hollywood Actor Planning Film on Padre Pio
Independent Catholic News: Hollywood star Joe Mantegna has announced plans to make a film on the life of St Padre Pio of Pietrelcina. The actor, best known for his roles in ‘The Three Amigos’ and ‘The Godfather Part III’ is … Continue reading
Catholic Film Lauds Heroes and Martyrs of the War of the Vendée
Regina Magazine: “A friend suggested ‘Why don’t you do the War of the Vendée?’ Jim Morlino recounts. “And I said, ‘The what?’ I’d never heard the word; I had no idea what he was talking about. That was a period … Continue reading
G.F. Handel: Dixit Dominus
Doing some research for a series of classes I’m giving on Handel’s Messiah, I came across this fun fact on Wikipedia: In Italy Handel met librettist Antonio Salvi, with whom he later collaborated. Handel left for Rome and, since opera … Continue reading
Vince Lombardi the Catholic
Very good tribute to a great man. On a personal note, someone I knew years ago was the quarterback for the same high school that gave Vince Lombardy his first coaching job in 1940. That was Saint Cecilia’s in Englewood New … Continue reading
The Three Goods
What do people talk about? Apart from something current in the news, like Ebola at the moment of this writing, doubtless the favorite subject of most persons is themselves and their doings. This is so much the case that another … Continue reading
‘Without Tradition, We Are Cattle’
Rorate Caeli has posted a fine piece of Spanish counterrevolutionary writing from the pen of Juan Manuel de Prada. The author makes some of the same points I have tried to make here on Catholicism.org, notably in Traditionalism is an Affirmation … Continue reading
Dostoievsky’s Prince Myshkin, “The Idiot”
After reading together with my wife last night our Austrian friend Friedrich Romig’s carefully crafted and profound review of a 2013 book in German by Botho Strauss, we even started to consider, in light of Dostoievsky’s presentation of Prince Myshkin, … Continue reading
Lauda Sion Salvatórem
Lauda Sion Salvatorem is a sequence prescribed for the Roman Catholic Mass of Corpus Christi. It was written by St. Thomas Aquinas around 1264, at the request of Pope Urban IV for the new Mass of this Feast, along with Pange lingua, Sacris solemniis, Adoro te devote, and Verbum supernum prodiens, which are used in … Continue reading