The Confession Aurelio Porfiri Chorabooks 106 pages $11.18 paperback, $6.70 Kindle Apple Books; Amazon At a moment when the seal of confession is coming under attack all over the world, Aurelio Porfiri has crafted a thrilling novel that illustrates the …
Category: Culture
Leoncavallo, the Earthquake, and Pope Pius X
A century ago, on August 9 in Montecatini Terme, just southwest of Pistoia in north central Italy, Ruggero Leoncavallo, Neapolitan opera composer, died. His fame is linked to Pagliacci (“Clowns”), a two-act opera of 1892, which, together with Cavalleria rusticana …
The Wedding: How to Be a Catholic Music Patron, at Least Once
When we hear the term “music patronage,” we think of the Medicis, the Esterhazys, the Benedict XVI Institute. We don’t think of the middle class. Yet there is a form of patronage that was once so popular and extravagant that …
The Art of Word Painting in Gregorian Chant
Editor’s note: This article is written from a temporal and linguistic perspective oriented toward the Novus Ordo. We elected to publish it as an introduction to a musical subject that may be more comprehensible to those of our readers less …
On Church Music: Sometimes I Miss the Anglican Hymns
Before I became a Catholic, I was a member of the Church of England, in a parish in which we sang Christian hymns with organ accompaniment. There was a choir which sang an anthem at the time of communion. The …
Art and Reclaiming Real Life: Katrina Paints
Is it possible we have come to the point of saturation with the internet, with social media and the distraction culture in general? Are some of us finally getting to the point of looking for an escape back to the …
Mass Hysteria: What the Mass Is and What It Is Not
The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is a profound work of tremendous meaning, mystery, and beauty. For this reason, I think Catholics need to review just what the Mass is, considering that over the last 60 years many people were …
Two Hundred Years of Strangulation: Reviving Form in a Formless Age
Death, Memory, and Oblivion Toward the midpoint of his 1,000-page Aesthetics, Dietrich von Hildebrand describes the death of culture in violent terms: [U]ntil the beginning of the nineteenth century and the triumph of the machine, culture had not yet been …
The Priest Who Formed Gioachino Rossini
Identified in a private American collection, the harpsichord on which Gioachino Rossini learned to play came to light “That barbaric instrument” on which the composer in his adolescence was practicing “every day,” as we read in a letter of 18 …
Book Review: How You Can Meet the Real Francis of Assisi
Franciscan Catechism: Progressives’ Fake News on the Saint from Assisi Guido Vignelli Chorabooks 164 pages $15.61 paperback, $7.80 e-book If the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the name “Francis” is perhaps not quite the same as …