UCANews: Japan’s prohibition of Christianity began in the early 1600s and raged on for centuries. A painting of the Virgin Mary which is thought to date from the earliest days of this punitive era has finally – after a long and winding … Continue reading
Category: Arts and Culture
What do Universities Teach?
Several recent occurrences have put me to thinking about universities in particular and education in general. One was marching in the Eucharistic Procession through the streets of Cambridge, MA, in support of the Blessed Sacrament against the planned Black Mass … Continue reading
Pop Quiz on Saint John Nepomucene
For all you smart Catholics out there, who know all about the saints, we’re having a pop quiz today. Why is it appropriate, on this feast of Saint John Nepomucene, that the YouTube video of Bedřich Smetana’s Die Moldau (from his the … Continue reading
Catholic Author Honored on Norwegian 500 Kroner Note
Did you know that the great author of The Life of Saint Catherine of Siena, Sigrid Undset, is the only Catholic to have been depicted on a Norwegian banknote? See picture of the banknote here (scroll down) http://www.andrewcusack.com/2013/08/12/some-norwegian-catholics/ The following is … Continue reading
‘Noah,’ a Pathetic Movie, Putting It Mildly
What do you expect, really, from Hollywood? No, I have not seen the movie, but this reviewer, Barbara Nicolosi, writing for Patheos website has seen it. And, reading her review, one can see that she is obviously an experienced and … Continue reading
Portland Archbishop Alexander K. Sample on the Traditional Mass
On March 1, 2014 Archbishop Alexander Sample of the Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon celebrated a Pontifical High Mass in the Extraordinary Form at the Brigittine Monastery “Our Lady of Consolation” in Amity, Oregon. The Mass was the crowning celebration … Continue reading
Dr. Anthony Esolen on How Common Core Devalues Great Literature
(Crisis Magazine) The Common Corers get things exactly backwards. You do not read The Wind in the Willows so that you can gain some utilitarian skill for handling “text.” If anything, we want our children to gain a little bit … Continue reading
Saint Agatha’s Breasts
Father Leonard Feeney once remarked that certain Puritan sectaries refuse to pray the Hail Mary because the Catholic prayer has a bad word in it: womb. On the other hand, many of the Church’s most vociferous critics consider her to … Continue reading
What Is Christendom?
The question posed by the title of this article was asked several of us by our august editor. Its immediacy is reinforced by the season of Christmas – which, despite being under sporadic attack by “holiday” partisans, centers on the … Continue reading
Baseball’s Catholic Hero Roberto Clemente, Movie-Maker’s Dream
Catholic News Service tribute: When he was a young boy, Richard Rossi insisted that his dad get general-admission tickets behind right field at old Forbes Field in Pittsburgh so he could be as close as possible to his boyhood idol, Roberto … Continue reading
The Holy Ghost in Sight and Sound
This year, my High School religion course is covering, among other things, the Catholic doctrine concerning the Holy Ghost. Because I wanted to give my students a sense of how the rich heritage of Catholic art strives to express the … Continue reading
Signs of the Time
Recently a future King of England, dressed in an open-collared shirt and without a jacket, slid behind the steering wheel of a car and drove his wife, new-born son and himself away from a maternity hospital in London. He drove, … Continue reading
Illuminating Faith: The Eucharist in Medieval Life and Art
The Morgan Library & Museum, on Madison Avenue in New York, is hosting an exhibition called “Illuminating Faith: The Eucharist in Medieval Life and Art.” Here is the first paragraph of the Morgan Library’s description: When Christ changed bread and … Continue reading
Father Longenecker on Tolkien’s Dislike for C.S. Lewis’ Narnia
Patheos: If I had a time machine that could not only set me down not only in a particular date, but a particular place, I’d choose the Eagle and Child pub in Oxford on a Tuesday night in 1950 when … Continue reading
Mourning as an Act of Affirmation
In an unexpected way, my husband and I were recently led to a rather deep and deepening reflection on mourning (or mournfulness), and on its seeming incompatibility with human superficiality and human lukewarmness. We thereby also came to appreciate a … Continue reading