I stumbled across the pilgrim plague survivor, St. Rocco, when I was 15. It was my first time in Europe, visiting my aunt who was studying at the University of Montpellier (founded c. 1292) in southern France. I hadn’t heard of Rocco before, but I found myself praying in his Read more…
Wine, Romanesque architecture, and the monastic life, all reached their high point in the Middle Ages, tucked away in the province of Burgundy. You may not have heard of Cluny, but, from its humble founding in 910, it quickly constructed the largest church in Europe and built an independent network Read more…
Victor Hugo begins The Hunchback of Notre Dame, amazingly, by discussing a fire! Not any fire, but one that destroyed a beautiful and historical Gothic building. The story opens in the Grand Hall of Paris’ Royal Palace on the 6th on January 1482, with a crowd awaiting a miracle play, Read more…
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89), an Oxford convert mentored by St. John Henry Newman, stands among the greatest Catholic poets in the English language. After teaching at Newman’s oratory in Birmingham, Hopkins entered the Jesuits and, after numerous teaching positions in Britain, was sent as a professor of Greek and Latin Read more…
My family spent Christmas back in my hometown, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Some of us took a pilgrimage of sorts to visit ancient and medieval art in New York City and Yale University’s Art Gallery in New Haven. Connecticut may seem an odd location, but a team from Yale helped to excavate Read more…
Halloween has become a national spectacle that ranges from cute to the macabre. In a culture that tries to forget death in daily life, it breaks forth dramatically and briefly each year, though in a way that trivializes it. Through the Solemnity of All Saints and the Feast of All Read more…
Newman almost died as a young man, still an Anglican, during travels in Sicily. While in recovery he had his first real encounters with Catholics and the Mass. When he was well enough to return to England, he resolved that he would use his renewed strength to enter more deeply Read more…
Neil Postman aptly described our society as a Technopoly, or what we could also refer to as technocracy – a society fundamentally shaped and ruled by technology. Technology has played a central role civilization from the beginning, but a shift has occurred as technology has passed beyond normal human proportions. Read more…
Art enables us to engage in visio divina, a visual contemplation of the Scripture. Each artist attempts to capture particular details and when we put a few works side by side, we can contrast them to discover the elements of the story they emphasized and illuminated. Raphael draws out the Read more…
May is the month of Mary, a time of new growth and a return to life fitting for the New Eve. Blessed John Henry Newman spoke of how nature itself bears witness to the joy we find in Our Lady: Why is May chosen as the month in which we Read more…