This brief essay proposes to consider how two eloquent Catholic authors, Hilaire Belloc and Evelyn Waugh, describe and deal with the phenomenon of noise, an unmistakable mark of the intrusive modern world even in times of putative peace. The first … Continue reading
Category: Arts and Culture
A Little Gabrielli in the Afternoon
If the reader will pardon a little fraternal bragging, my brother, Charles Villiarrubia, played tuba on this CD that was recorded by the Empire Brass some time, I think, in the 1990s. It’s hard not to like Gabrielli. Just imagine … Continue reading
New Spanish Film on the Claretian Martyrs
(Rome Reports) In 1936, at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, the Claretian religious community of Barbastro was attacked by militants. An assembly hall became their jail, where they were pressured to renounce their faith. A new film, Un … Continue reading
G.K. Chesterton in Praise of Chaucer
In 1932, four years before his death and only ten years after his having entered the Catholic Church, G.K. Chesterton wrote a vivid and capacious book on the medieval Catholic poet, Geoffrey Chaucer (d.1400). With his characteristic modesty, his book … Continue reading
The Priest, the Sister, the Statue — and a Louisiana Connection
Catholics know and love Our Lady of Fatima. We are familiar with the miraculous happenings of 1917 when Our Blessed Lady appeared to the three shepherd children at the Cova da Iria near Fatima, Portugal. We know the promises of … Continue reading
Robert Hickson on the ‘Vitality of Mammon’
Robert Hickson’s piece, “The Vitality of Mammon in the Decline of a State,” has been archived on the Culture Wars site: The historic Christian Faith and the historic reality of Christian culture – Christendom – from the outset rebuked with … Continue reading
Hilaire Belloc’s Canterbury Tale
In 1905, just before he entered the House of Commons for four discouraging years (1906-1910), Hilaire Belloc published a variegated and copious book, entitled The Old Road, about his eight-day journey afoot from Winchester to Canterbury, the latter also being … Continue reading
Meet Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber
Forget Justin Bieber. The Canadian pop star has nothing on the Bohemian-Austrian baroque composer and violinist, Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber (12 August 1644 [baptized] – 3 May 1704). Believed to have been Jesuit educated in his earlier years at … Continue reading
Mystery, Obama’s Brain Research Project (and the Pope)
One supposes it may be seen as in questionable taste to cite one’s own work, but that is what I am about to do here. I hope the reader will indulge me. I’m not simply plugging a book. There is … Continue reading
Singing Prayers in Jesus’ Tongue
This Dominican House of Studies in D.C. has posted this video of their Iraqi Brother, Father Nageeb Michael, O.P., Director of the Digital Center for Eastern Manuscripts, singing the Our Father and Haily Mary in Aramaic and “New Aramaic” respectively. Aramaic … Continue reading
Restoring a Catholic Memory
On How to Develop a Catholic Sense Without a Catholic Culture To restore to his people a true memory Alexander Solzhenitsyn has accepted almost unspeakable sacrifice and loss, and especially the cross of patience. Solzhenitsyn has attempted to draw his … Continue reading
This Article is a Work of Art: On Listening to Good Music
Dr. Peter Kwasniewski has written an intriguing article on “artful music” and its place in Catholic culture. If you are looking for instant auricular gratification, then classical music is not for you. Composer Kwasniewski stresses that appreciation of artful music can … Continue reading
I Hate ‘Saturday Night Live’ and So Should You
I have not and will not watch the blasphemous foolishness that the malignant unbelievers at NBC produced in mockery our Holy Savior. Unless all the descriptions of it are sheer fabrications, it was pure evil. Even the LA Times said … Continue reading
A Culture Against the Grain
I am returning here to a theme I’ve sounded the last couple of times I’ve written for the SBC website, but let me state the premise that underlies what I’ll be saying. It is that the Culture War, first named … Continue reading