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…
This week’s Bastille Day in Paris featured a man flying around on a brand new flyboard prototype, designed by inventor Franky Zapata. This “future soldier” buzzed through the air above the crowds and underneath a sky clouded in the colors of France’s flag. In his hands, he brandished a rifle in the hopes of demonstrating…
Epistle: 1 Peter 3:8–15 Gospel: Matthew 5:20–24 O God, Who hast prepared for them that love Thee good things unseen: pour into our hearts such love towards Thee, that, loving Thee in all and above all, we may obtain Thy promises, which exceed all that we can desire. —From the Collect for the Fifth Sunday…
So much has been written about the renaissance underway in many dioceses and parishes across the country. With the increasing number of Tridentine Latin Masses that are offered, the newly ordained priests who bring orthodoxy and the Roman Canon to their parishes, and the renewed interest in our Catholic patrimony, the Church in the United…
The church was crowded with worshipers that Holy Thursday evening. James was late and had to look hard for a seat. There’s always a seat in the front, he said to himself and pushed forward. This was a Catholic church, after all, and people preferred to sit at the back. He found a spot in…
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 it used to be, perhaps a quick read of Guido Vignelli’s Franciscan Catechism: Progressives’ Fake…
We hear a lot nowadays about “Eucharistic inhospitality,” a phrase generally abused, but we would do well to reflect on a previous and far more damaging exclusion from the table that has cast a long and still lengthening shadow over the Church. ONCE UPON A TIME, there was a king, his queen, and forty-five honored…
Something ancient — paganism — is “struggling to be born” again. It’s slouching toward birth, like Yeats’s “rough beast,” laboring to arrive for its hour. It’s emerging amid the rise of what exorcist Fr. Chad Ripperger ominously describes as the “sixth generation.”[i] According to Fr. Ripperger, specific “generational spirits” — demons — afflict different generations.…
My 27 June article, “Stalinist Purges and More in the Knights of Malta,” has elicited a response in the form of a Declaration of the Grand Magistry of the Order (PDF). I am publishing this brief reply solely to avoid giving the impression that might otherwise arise that the Statement is unanswerable and has vanquished…
The Dubious Consciousness of Contemporary Man The modern doctrine on the dignitatis humanae, or dignity of man, has encouraged and even ensured the laïcité, or secularization of the political sphere. The Second Vatican Council’s Dignatis Humanae at first approaches this doctrine in a descriptive manner, noting that “[a] sense of the dignity of the human…
