From YouTube user, Karl Barton, comes the video below. Giovanni Gabrieli was organist and composer for Saint Mark’s Basilica in Venice. He was the more famous nephew of Andrea Gabrieli. Here is his description from YouTube: This features scenes from … Continue reading
Category: Arts and Culture
Review of Willa Cather’s ‘Death Comes to the Archbishop’
An interesting look at a Protestant who wrote with a pulsating intensity of the inner beauty of the Catholic culture of the Southwest. The Catholic World Report, Bradley J. Birzer: “I am amused that so many of the reviews of … Continue reading
The Lamentations of Jeremias: Art and Music
During the sacred Triduum, the Lamentations of Jeremias are sung as part of the Tenebrae ceremony, i.e., the liturgical office comprised of Matins and Laudes, and done in the dark, as its Latin name suggests. Each liturgical lesson from Jeremias … Continue reading
Father Rutler on Vatican Elegy of Bowie
A must read Father George Rutler, Crisis: In proof of Chesterton’s dictum that if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly, I pound away at the piano playing the easier Chopin Nocturnes and I grind on my violin … Continue reading
Padre Tomás Luis de Victoria: ‘God’s Composer’
Having recently learned Victoria’s sublime O Magnum Mysterium to sing with the Brothers and Sisters at Midnight Mass, I just spent some Christmastide recreation time watching the BBC’s one-hour documentary on the composer. That video is embedded below, and is quite worth watching. … Continue reading
Prayers for This Agnostic Writer: They are the Push He Needs
This man, a very gifted writer to be sure, has been given a great grace. May Our Lady finish the work of his conversion. New Haven Register, Norm Pattis: It is easy to scoff at the Church until you stand … Continue reading
Catholic College Opens in Iraqi Kurdistan
This is an incredible achievement in a land torn by ISIS terrorists. AsiaNews: Msgr. Warda, Archbishop of Erdil: “I hope that all the students – Christians, Muslims, Yazidis – will be able to breathe the Catholic faith and its fundamental … Continue reading
A Poem by Rose Hu, Prisoner of Mao’s Labor Camps for 26 Years
The following is a poem written by Rose Hu. She was the president of the Legion of Mary in China in the 1950s and suffered imprisonment for twenty-six years (1955-1981). Rose is still living. She wrote a beatuful book, Joy … Continue reading
Here’s to Bocce Ball
When I used to walk through Branch Brook Park on my way home from high school in Newark, New Jersey, I would see elderly Italian men throwing little bowling balls on a paved court about ten feet wide and twenty … Continue reading
A Synopsis of the Sixteen Novels of Robert Hugh Benson
Ann Applegarth, Catholic World Report: An impressive list. And, unlike many “Christian”—even “Catholic”—novels that may entertain yet contain no insight whatever into the human condition, Benson’s fictional fare is sustenance for mind and soul. Intended by the author to be tales … Continue reading
Saint Norbert and the Octave of Corpus Christi
Today is the feast of Saint Norbert. It also continues the “phantom octave” of Corpus Christi. Two days ago, I mentioned the concurrence of Saint Francis Caracciolo and the Feast of Corpus Christi. The day Saint Francis Caracciolo died was the eve of … Continue reading
Three Versions of the ‘O Sacrum Convivium’ (and one more)
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
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