Recent News

On the Objective Power of Music

Written by Brad Miner

Monday, December 30, 2024

I’ve often written here about painting. Now, I want to write about music, a subject about which I’ve no expertise, although I do have 6,261 tracks on my iPhone.

Act I of Noël Coward’s “intimate” comedy, Private Lives, begins with an off-stage orchestra playing some innocuous tune, to which it “returns persistently,” and occasions this exchange:

Elyot: Nasty insistent little tune.

Amanda: Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.

The notion, I guess, is that emotive music – strings swelling in crescendo, perhaps – is manipulative. Sometimes that’s true. Or it may be what these days we call an “earworm.” My grandchildren, still in their toddler period, can’t get enough of the nasty and persistent “Baby Shark.” It’s on my iPhone, of course.

But to my mind, there’s nothing as potent as great music. Plato and Pope Benedict XVI had a similar view. And I have proof.

There’s an Internet meme called “reaction videos,” in which a young adult YouTuber with a “channel” listens to music suggested by a “follower.” Music, that is, the host has not previously heard.

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Of Christmas and Dynamite

Written by Robert Royal

Tuesday, December 24, 2024

Given all the toil and trouble of the human race in a fallen world, it’s only right that we look to some peace on earth and goodwill to men in this season. There’s certainly no excess of brotherhood and fellow feeling during the rest of the year. And let’s stipulate: It’s not just our happening to be alive at this moment that makes us believe that – anno Domini 2024 and perhaps even more 2025 – things look particularly troubled: Wars and rumors of wars, widespread unrest at home, deep division in the Church. You don’t need to look far for why, to slightly adapt a famous modern philosopher, only the coming of God can save us now.

Or at least that’s the lesson that bad times should teach us.

But there’s another lesson about His Coming. As Bishop James Edward Walsh, one of the first Maryknoll missionaries in China, said after years of experience, even before spending nearly two decades in captivity: “Christianity is not a private way of salvation and a guide to a pious life; it is a way of world salvation and a philosophy of total life. This makes it a sort of dynamite. So when you send missioners out to preach it, it is well to get ready for some explosions.”

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The Church Somnolent

Written by Robert Royal

Tuesday, December 17, 2024

Among the many things that the current Church seems no longer awake to is a crucial trinity: the Church Militant, the Church Penitent, and the Church Triumphant. If you didn’t learn about those three growing up, they’re not so hard to understand. The Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it, simply, under the rubric The Communion of the Church of Heaven and Earth: “The three states of the Church. ‘When the Lord comes in glory, and all his angels with him, death will be no more, and all things will be subject to him. But at the present time some of his disciples are pilgrims on earth. [i.e., Church Militant] Others have died and are being purified [i.e., Church Penitent], while still others are in glory [i.e., Church Triumphant], contemplating ‘in full light, God himself triune and one, exactly as he is.’”

It’s worth noting, among other notables in this passage, that the Church Militant is not just out for a stroll; it’s headed in a definite direction and, given the threats within and without, is engaged in what used to be called spiritual combat. It would be hard to say that the recent focus on “walking together” gets all that. The Church Militant pilgrimage includes much more than endless conversation, in which the process itself is more important than the final destination. It’s about the literal – and in the deepest possible sense – struggle to arrive, in the end of time, at the unity of Heaven and Earth.

All this used to be understood as the very reason for the Faith and the Lord’s coming into the world, as we will remember at Christmas: to redeem us from sin and death.

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Between the Dog and the Wolf

Written by Robert Royal

Monday, December 9, 2024

The re-opening of the Cathedral of Notre Dame this weekend reminded me of an experience I had there over a decade ago – and has stayed with me ever since. I was in Paris to give a lecture on my book about the twentieth-century martyrs. (The sequel, on the 21^st-century martyrs, will be published in May for the 2025 Jubilee). I stopped into Notre Dame for evening prayer. There was just a small group of us – not even fifteen. Afterwards, the priest remarked that all the scaffolding had, finally, just been taken down. (There had been internal work being done for what must have been years.) He said, enjoy seeing the whole church again, but don’t linger too long. The guards and other workers had to lock up and get home.

I must have been the sole non-Parisian because everyone else just vanished. And, marvelously, I had Notre Dame de Paris all to myself for a few minutes. It felt like being engulfed, not so much by the beauties of the building, which are countless, to be sure. But you can mostly see those even when the church is full of tourists. Wh

at struck me, without thinking about it, was the length and breadth and height of Notre Dame, and the sheer scope of the Faith in France, with its centuries of great geniuses and saints – and also, alas, since the French Revolution, its many martyrs and apostates.

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Home Free: a review of ‘The Best Christmas Pageant Ever’

Written by Brad Miner

Tuesday, December 3, 2024

I’m pretty sure I was in a Christmas pageant when I was a little boy, probably at the Worthington (Ohio) United Methodist Episcopal Church, where I also sang in the children’s choir. I’ve never been able to read music (except drum notations), and I can’t carry a tune. But I could listen and imitate, although I mostly hummed. Still, this was almost 70 years ago, and memory fades.

Christmas pageants have been featured in a number of movies, most notably in The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945), in which “Billy,” who can’t be more than 6 years old, does a run-through of the story of the birth of Jesus for Fr. O’Malley (Bing Crosby) and Sister Mary Benedict (Ingrid Bergen). It’s funny and charming.

Just released is The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, and it’s funny and charming. It’s about a church in a small town that yearly puts on a pageant, which the longtime director insists on keeping unchanged in almost every detail, save the kids cast to play Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds.

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

A Different Kind of Listening

Written by Robert Royal

Monday, November 18, 2024

The post-election crowing and whinging are both already wearying. The race is decided. What matters now is not endless analyses of how or why the winners won (that’s best left to journalists, political consultants, and other practitioners of dark arts). What matters is what they will do. I expect a lot. But before the recent campaign passes into the merciful mists of time, it has uncovered some more interesting and longer-lasting matters, Catholic matters, about our democratic peoples just now and several recent developments in the Church.

Something we heard a lot about during the long years of the Synod on Synodality was the need to “listen,” especially to the poor. Indeed, Pope Francis says that when he was elected, his friend, Brazilian Cardinal Hummes embraced him and told him “Don’t forget about the poor.”

As if. . . .

But what secular politicians and, sorry to say, many Catholic prelates usually mean when they talk about “the poor” is not real people living in hard circumstances, but something already turned into an ideological concept.

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

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.

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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.)

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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.)

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