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Maureen Mullarkey: Studio Matters

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Riddle Of The Sphinx, Part I

How many beholders does it take to declare something objectively beautiful? Or not? That is a stumper. The riddle becomes easier to solve if you lower the register and ask how many are needed to declare a thing significant. The answer comes immediately: Not many, just so long as they are equipped to finance the […]

Francis In Wonderland

‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace. [Jeremiah 6:14] There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. [Lord Acton] The papacy is swaddled in sycophancy in the best of times. Add to that the exultant adulation induced by celebrity culture. It is a heady mix that can […]

Gerardus van der Leeuw

Whoever writes about religion and art comes into contact with two sorts of people: Christians of the most varied stamp, and connoisseurs of art. Both are rather difficult to get along with. —Gerardus van der Leeuw Stay awhile with Gerardus van der Leeuw (1890-1950). His lyrical and provocative analysis of consonance—and distance—between beauty and holiness […]

Sacred Sound

A person who is passionately fond of music may quite well be a perverted person—but I should find it hard to believe this of anyone who thirsted for Gregorian chanting. —Simone Weil Is there any such thing as a distinctly sacred sound? Can any single sound summon us to the divine? Does any particular one […]

Of Sausages And Saints

I like to think it speaks well for John XXIII that the mandatory miracle had to be waived on his behalf. There was none to be found, not a trace. No pious Catholic had the heart to come forward with a crumb of evidence that the man who had convened Vatican II—its touted spirit and […]

Tammany On The Tiber

John XXIII once remarked that the Vatican was the hardest place on earth to remain a Christian. The pope’s impish bon mot floated like skywriting over the double canonization in St. Peter’s Square on the Second Easter Sunday. On the glittering heels of this production came advance notice of another: London’s The Tablet reported that […]

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