Recent News

Brothers in Christ: Caravaggio’s ‘The Calling of Saints Peter and Andrew’

Written by Brad Miner

Friday, November 15, 2024

It’s odd and wonderful that these things happen. I’m speaking of the discovery or re-discovery of paintings by great artists. In some cases, they are complete surprises (a masterwork previously unknown or, anyway, lost to history); in other cases, a work well-known, but misattributed. I’ve written previously here about two such occurrences involving the Baroque master Caravaggio. This column is about a third.

The Calling of Saints Peter and Andrew was found in a Hampton Court Palace storeroom, forgotten for hundreds of years, after having been purchased by King Charles I in 1637. Then came the Commonwealth and Charles’ execution in 1649, at which point the painting was sold.

English history being what it is, then came the 1660 Restoration and Charles II, who re-purchased The Calling of Saints Peter and Andrew.  And then . . .

I pause for clarity: The House of Stuart’s Charles I, ostensibly Protestant, married Henrietta Maria of France, definitely Catholic. This did not sit well with English Protestants, who were also angry at the king’s tolerance of Catholics. Thus, the English Civil War, at the end of which the king was beheaded. Then came the Commonwealth and the restoration of the monarchy following the line of succession, meaning Charles II became king. Then, two years later, came the exile of Charles II, who was rumored (correctly) to be a secret Catholic, and, not so many years later, the Act of Settlement that banned anyone Catholic (or a Protestant who simply married a Catholic) from ascending to the throne. Charles II did return to England and died at Whitehall. Thus, the uneasy, brief Restoration followed by the enduring Glorious (Protestant) Revolution. Clear as mud, right?

This is how The Calling of Saints Peter and Andrew by a Catholic artist ended up in a royal closet gathering dust.

For the rest of the column, click here . . .

The Constitution and Religious “Concessions”

Written by Robert Royal

Monday, November 4, 2024

A crucial presidential election takes place tomorrow. This site operates under tax-exempt, non-profit status, which does not permit us to engage in partisan politics – let alone endorse candidates.  But we’re The Catholic Thing and have the constitutional right to comment on Catholic things. There are several such things in play this year, especially the proper understanding of religious liberty under the American constitutional order.

What follows here, then, will remain non-partisan. But it’s frankly a reaction to an interview that Kamala Harris gave recently in which she was asked whether she would be willing to allow religious “concessions” on abortion. She said no. No concessions on “a woman’s right to control her own body.”

Catholics already know – or should –  how to approach specific moral questions like abortion, LGBT+, parental rights, etc. But there’s another large question here about religious liberty, with wide-ranging consequences for our public life. The partisans and poorly formed won’t listen. But religious liberty is the first liberty. And without that, all the rest is in doubt.

The very use of the term “concessions” by both the interviewer and Kamala Harris is a liberal, unconstitutional assumption that has done great damage – and not only to the unborn. The American Constitution does not speak of religious liberty as a concession by the government to citizens to do what the government would otherwise control. The First Amendment’s protection of religion, speech, assembly, etc. is simply a recognition of natural rights, rights given us by the Creator, that precede and exceed the authority of every government.

For the rest of the column, click here . . .

Roman Waters

Written by Robert Royal

Monday, October 28, 2024

The English poet John Keats spent the last years of his short life in Rome, wrote most of the handful of great poems that have made him famous in the Eternal City, died – and is buried – there. His tombstone in the Protestant Cemetery (in Italian, wonderfully called the Cimitero Acattolico, i.e. “A-Catholic” = Non-Catholic Cemetery) bears the inscription “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.”

An admirer of the poetry – which at its best is quite worth remembering (it’s October and “To Autumn” is a good read) – might like to think that the line is not just a whiny, last Romantic poet’s blast at unnamed “enemies,” who are also mentioned on the tombstone. Other meanings than the poet intended might also be quite possible. In any event, the significance of that line goes far beyond Keats because all of our names are written in water – unless they’re written in the Book of Life.

Perhaps it’s sheer weariness as the Synod on Synodality spluttered to its laborious end, but I think there’s a great deal of wisdom in contemplating the transitoriness of human existence, wisdom that makes us live better in this world too. And helps us to better consider the mission of the Church, synodal or otherwise.

Memento mori. Remember that you will die. The second-century Christian Tertullian wrote that when a pagan general entered Rome in a glorious “triumph” after a victory, someone in the chariot with him would whisper, “Look to yourself. Remember you are a man. Remember that you will die.” (Respice post te. Hominem te esse memento. Memento mori.)

For the rest of the column click here . . .

He’s Just a Girl Who Can’t Say ‘No!’: A Review of ‘Conclave’

Written by Brad Miner

Friday, October 25, 2024

Conclave, Edward Berger’s new film, is based on the novel of that title by Robert Harris, which the movie mostly follows. The book has a curious beginning: the death of Pope Francis. Well, there’s an author’s note that ends with this disclaimer: “despite certain superficial resemblances. . .the late Holy Father depicted in Conclave [is not] meant to be a portrait of the current pope.”

Yes, but the book opens with the death of the Supreme Pontiff in his apartment at the Domus Sanctae Marthae, the Vatican guest house, in which no other pope has lived. None is likely to in the future, although Mr. Harris, a well-known British liberal, may hope future popes embrace Papa Bergoglio’s liberality in this regard.

But not even Francis possesses the peculiar. . .liberality of Conclave’s Cardinal Vincente Benitez.

From far and wide, they come, these red-hatted Cardinals: young and old. By tradition, they are prohibited from politicking, so, of course, at all the pre-conclave meetings, the scheming and the intriguing begin. (Spoiler alert for what follows.)

For the rest of the column, click here . . .

The Conciliar Circularity of Synodality

Written by Robert Royal

Wednesday, October 23, 2024

          The synodal Church is the Church foreseen by the Second Vatican Council.

Why?

Because the Second Vatican Council foresaw the synodal Church.

In a circular argument, the conclusion is in the premise – and that’s that.

For anyone proposing this particular argument, it doesn’t matter that Lumen gentium(“The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church”) never uses the term synodal as it is used here and doesn’t remotely suggest what the circular argument assumes. Yet the Gregorian University in Rome announced Monday that it will hold a three-day conference at the conclusion of the current synod titled, “From the Council to the Synod. Rereading a Church’s journey 60 years after Lumen Gentium (1964-2024).”

For the rest of the column, click here . . .

Rubens’ ‘Consequences of War’

Written by Brad Miner

Wednesday, October 16, 2024

Peter Paul Rubens was a Catholic painter. He was not the most Catholic of Catholic painters, but he was likely the most catholic, as will become clear below.

One thinks of religious artists (i.e., men and women in consecrated life) such as Fra Angelico, Fra Bartolomeo, and Sister Plautilla Nelli – artists whose lives were dedicated not just to painting but also to poverty, chastity, and obedience.

By contrast, Rubens was a wealthy, twice-married man (his first wife died), obedient to the Faith. The case may be made that he was the greatest Baroque-era painter, although the case can also be made that it was Caravaggio. And there’s also no question that Rubens admired Caravaggio’s work and was much influenced by it.

One difference between them was their productivity: Caravaggio produced fewer than 100 paintings that we know of; Rubens’ output (according to expert Michael Jaffé) was 1,403 works. Partly, that has to do with longevity: Rubens died at 62; Caravaggio at 38.

For the rest of the column, click here . . .

The Trinity the Synod Needs

Written by Robert Royal

Saturday, October 12, 2024

It’s often been said that our civilization is based on a kind of historical trinity – Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome – in addition (it needs saying in an age bereft of a historical sense) to the Holy Trinity. While the deepest roots of any culture are religious – and we have seen all around us in recent decades what happens when we human beings are uprooted from our rich Christian cultural soil – there are other elements essential to nourishing a full human life. And this is as true of the life of the Church as it is of the “secular” world in which we move, in and through, every day.

Such considerations shed no little light on the difficulties many people are having about the Synod on Synodality, even those who are confirmed synodistas. One way of understanding the problem is that we seem to want to lean entirely on Jerusalem – the Holy Spirit is often invoked as the guarantor of everything, though who gets to decide what is the voice of the Holy Spirit, and what is not, remains up in the air. Meanwhile, we fail to keep in mind the sacred history that God Himself made clear by His appearance on earth “in the fullness of time.” (Galatians 4:4)

Christianity came into the world at a particular time. It needed, and absorbed, the high rationality of Athens so that the human mind, as well as the human heart, could enter profoundly into relation with Revelation. Much of what we understand about the Incarnation, for example, was worked out using ancient Greek terms. In recent years, even at the highest levels of the Church, we’ve often enough heard philosophy and theology denigrated, almost as if having clear ideas about Faith and morals are an affront to God, who seems instead to be pure, undefined “mercy.”

For the rest of the column, click here . . .

Treasure in Heaven

Written by Brad Miner

Tuesday, October 8, 2024

I grew up in a secular household. What’s worse, my parents demanded I attend church – a Methodist church – for Sunday school and then confirmation, which I did. This all happened a long time ago, and my memories are fading. But I cannot recall my parents ever coming to church. Not on Sundays when I sang in the children’s choir or even on the day I was confirmed.

They had pushed me toward the Christian faith, but they had neither preceded nor followed me. This is by way of saying my parents considered Christianity a path to respectability and not the way to eternal life. On Sundays, they played golf. I took this lesson into my teens and twenties.

After college, I began to take an interest in religion, and I liked talking about it. Dad grew weary listening and asked, “Are there golf courses in heaven, Brad? If you can assure me there are I’ll make a profession of faith.”

We were both exasperated.

Two weeks later, Dad died suddenly. He was 54. I was 23.

For the rest of the column, click here . . .

Perspectives, Paradigms, and Catholicity

Written by Robert Royal

Monday, October 7, 2024

As the first full week of the final session of the Synod on Synodality begins today, little is emerging that has not been heard many times before. Some delegates have expressed pleasure at reconnecting with friends they made last year. It’s no small thing to make friends, good friends, true friends, anno Domini 2024, even in the Church. And while that may not lead to much as many were hoping for in the synodal way – the new way of “being Church,” “listening,” “walking together” – at least it may help keep some measure of calm in the synod hall.

News has been so slow that, at a press briefing the other day, there were just a few more journalists than there were panelists. That may change as things unfold. But there’s “not much there there” – except for Australian Bishop Anthony Randazzo who, on Friday, deplored the focus on so-called “hot button issues,” as if the Church were involved in a political campaign. He dismissed all that as merely being driven by a small number of ideologues. Progressives in the media, however, love to give that small group a big megaphone.

But there was one remark in a previous press briefing that caught my attention. Bishop Daniel E. Flores of Brownsville, Texas has been the synod point man for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Amid some hard-to-get-a-grip-on meandering in the general direction of synodality, he raised a question that will not go away when the synod ends. Or after. Ever. Because it can’t.

For the rest of the column, click here . . .

Some Talking – and Listening – Points

Written by Robert Royal

Saturday, October 5, 2024

Sin, corporate sin, was abundantly confessed this past week during an opening penitential rite for the synod in Rome. And before the whirligig of the news cycle carries off those confessions along with everything else in the coming week – I feel the need to confess myself to a personal temptation to sin in the form of weariness and annoyance with grand gestures that aim at the concrete and spiritual – and result in the abstract and bureaucratic. And pose no little danger. Please bear with me.

The penitential spectacle before the opening of the Synod needs to be viewed through lenses other than pious wishes and all due respect for the doubtless good intentions of the Holy Father. Let us describe it for what it was: Cardinals and others officially confessing sins that they have in all likelihood never personally committed, on behalf of others in the Church, who may themselves be quite personally innocent. (How many people in the Church have in any normal sense of the term sinned against “peace” or women’s contributions or the environment? Repentance on that score is better recommended to the attention of specific criminals, miscreants, terrorists who are not in short supply.)

One might, of course, also start quibbling over why these sins and not others. For instance, how widespread is the “sin” of “using church teaching as weapons to hurl at others.” Particularly as opposed to how frequently this sin is: ignoring Church teaching to please myself. You don’t need a Pew survey to have a fairly good idea of the relative proportions, which now as always tips heavily towards the latter. The Pharisees are a small cohort – the self-willed, especially in our Age of Identity, legion.

For the rest of the column, click here . . .