Inspired by Truth, Enlightening Minds for the Church in Canada and Throughout the World
Inspired by Truth, Enlightening Minds for the Church in Canada and Throughout the World
Faith and music are forever intertwined in Western art music. Many, if not most, of the leading classical composers were people of faith. Anton Bruckner (1824–1896), a devout Roman Catholic, was primarily a composer of symphonies and sacred music. He was described by his pupil Franz Schalk as, “…a believer without compare. He believed with[…]
Isaac Newton penned his treatise Opticks in 1704 – and who am I to improve upon his spelling, about which they were not exactly rigorous in those pre-O.E.D, and O.C.D., days? – in which he outlined his theory of vision, that light was a stream of corpuscles hitting the eye. Newton was responding to a[…]
Are fairies good Christians? Many say they are not; that they are actually shrunken idols, worshipped into later ages by the people of the fens, the “heathen” or “pagan.” This, after all, is where fairies are met: in the woods, on the margins of human settlement. Max Muller, the 19th century scholar of religions, advanced[…]
Suppose a blind man asked you, “What is a crimson like?” You might answer, “It’s like a blare of trumpets.” And the simile is reversible, for you could tell a deaf man that a blare of trumpets is like a crimson banner. It’s worth our while to consider this characteristic of metaphors and similes because[…]
‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me so I send you’ (Jn. 20:21). ⧾ The text of the Gospel brings us back to Easter Sunday, evening of the day Jesus rose from the dead, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were[…]
The first bishop of Canterbury, Augustine (+604), pronounced in England, ‘Austin’, was a Roman citizen, like the ‘other’ Augustine, of Hippo, who lived over two centuries before, in northern Africa. Neither would have considered himself ‘African’ or ‘Italian’, but Roman, for there was but one civilization. So too, there was one ‘Church’ to which they[…]
Few composers have lived and nonetheless thrived in such a turbulent era as William Byrd. Born sometime between 1539 and 1543, Byrd grew up in newly Protestant England, Henry VIII having passed the Act of Supremacy in 1534, which completed the separation of the English Church (later becoming known as Anglicanism) from the Roman Catholic[…]
Anne Boleyn lost her head on this fine spring day in May, 1536, put to death by the decree of her own quasi-husband, Henry VIII – I say, ‘quasi’, since Henry’s legitimate wife, Catherine of Aragon, was still very much alive when Henry married Anne in a secret ceremony of November 1532. Henry was at[…]
A nation that kills its own children has no future. St. John Paul II In 2008, the late Father Alphonse deValk, founding editor of Catholic Insight, wrote an important editorial that diagnosed Canada’s deepening moral malaise and strongly criticized Prime Minister Stephen Harper for refusing to reopen a national debate on abortion. He began by[…]
St. John Chrysostom wrote: “When Mass is being celebrated, the sanctuary is filled with countless angels who adore the Divine Victim immolated on the altar.” St. Augustine taught that “the angels surround and help the priest when he is celebrating Mass.” The entire company of angels must be weeping with unrestrained sorrow at this time[…]
