July 17, 2019 saw the dedication of the new “Christ Cathedral” of the Diocese of Orange, California. An originally Protestant work of high modernist architecture repurposed on a staggering budget, the cathedral has understandably been the subject of animated discussion among its ardent proponents (such as Rev. Msgr. Arthur A. Holquin, who offers a guide…
Viganò vs. the Vatican: The Uncensored Testimony of the Italian Journalist Who Helped Break the Story Marco Tosatti Sophia Institute Press 144 pages $14.95 paperback, $9.95 e-book August 26 marks the one-year anniversary of the explosive publication of the testimony of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò. It is a good moment to take stock of all…
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 importance of the sacred space of the confessional for bringing evildoers to justice. This murder…
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 (“Rustic Chivalry,” 1890) by Pietro Mascagni, is the most explosive reaction against Richard Wagner and…
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 sumptuary laws were passed to regulate it, a form open to most young people and…
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 musically inclined from an English-language standpoint. The basic principles herein apply to the Latin Mass…
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 music was good, and the words of the hymns seemed to be representative of Christianity.…
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 Real? I haven’t looked it up, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find statistics showing…
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 rendered ignorant, and those who did know have forgotten, a result of the strong Protestant…
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 strangled by civilization. The expression of the spirit, the gift of giving form … penetrated…
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 October 1868, belonged to his teacher, Canon Giuseppe Malerbi. “The Swan of Pesaro” moved in…
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