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Archives for April 2013
Sanctus Pius V
April 30, 2013 by at 12:00 pm
Mother Church, in her wisdom, knew that the feast day of the Dominican Third Order’s patroness, St Catherine of Siena, on April 29, would leave you hungry for yet more examples of Dominican sanctity. Wherefore today we celebrate the memorial of the Dominican priest Michele Ghisleieri, who acceded to the Throne of Peter in 1566; reigned as Pius V until his death in 1572; and was canonized in 1712.
Here are three fitting tributes to this holy Pope:
First, from the Canons Regular of St John Cantius – An online tutorial on the Tridentine Mass, whose original texts and rubrics were first promulgated in the Roman Missal issued by St Pius V in 1570.
Second, from G.K. Chesterton, who needs no introduction here – A few mentions of St Pius V as ‘the pope’ in the poem ‘Lepanto’, since the eponymous battle took place during Pius V’s papacy. (See also: Our Lady of the Rosary.)
Third, from atheism.About.com – A concise biographical sketch:
A member of the Dominican order, Pius V worked hard to improve the position of the papacy. Internally, he cut expenditures and externally, he increased the power and effectiveness of the Inquistion and expanded the use of the Index of Forbidden Books. Heresy virtually disappeared from Italy and, for his efforts, he was canonized 150 years later.
‘Heresy virtually disappeared from Italy’! What a thrill this phrase must send through every Christian heart! (As for me, I am skeptical of the claim — but I want to believe!)
Sancta Catharina Senensis
April 29, 2013 by at 12:00 pm
Giovanni di Paolo. St Catherine of Siena Dictating her Dialogues
Today is the memorial of St Catherine of Siena, virgin and doctor, patroness of the Dominican Laity.
Here’s a roundup of relevant links.
The Catholic Encyclopedia article on St Catherine concludes,
The key-note to Catherine’s teaching is that man, whether in the cloister or in the world, must ever abide in the cell of self-knowledge, which is the stable in which the traveller through time to eternity must be born again.
Middle aged white dude writes crappy pop chorus for young female singer
April 29, 2013 by at 9:46 am
Don’t call me a ho/ ‘Cuz what I got you can’t afford/I ain’t movin’ on your money/And your braggin’s got me bored/You gotta chain me to your heart/Before you tie me to the bed/If you’re looking for a bitch/Better get a dog instead
LECTURE on CATHOLICISM & ART ~ DANIEL MITSUI
April 28, 2013 by at 2:20 am
Ecce Quam Bonum, by Daniel Mitsui
(from Psalm 133)
The gifted and industrious artist Daniel Mitsui, a great favorite here at Korrektiv, has released the text (and illustrations) of a lecture he delivered earlier this month. The subject: Catholic religious art, and Mitsui’s approach to it as student and draftsman. This presentation is thought-provoking, edifying, and a pleasure to read. Here’s a taste, from near the conclusion:
You have undoubtedly seen [medieval ‘drolleries’] in the margins of illuminated manuscripts: frolicking monkeys, marauding woodwoses, flirting peasants, anthropomorphized pigs playing bagpipes, funny monsters composed of various parts of men, birds, beasts and reptiles[…]. This grotesque, romantic, comical element is not limited to manuscript margins; it is found in almost every medium of medieval sacred art. […]
This same element can be encountered in the worship of the medieval Church: a Festival of the Donkey honored the beast that bore the Blessed Virgin on the Flight into Egypt; during the Mass, certain responses were brayed rather than chanted. […] Medieval sculptors and engineers introduced automation and puppetry into the church […]. [An] example is the Boxley Rood of Grace, a crucifix whose Christ moved his arms and eyes and mouth by means of wires operated by a hidden puppeteer. For all that the Middle Ages can truly be described as a time of liturgical solemnity, monastic discipline, personal piety, scholastic disputation, crusading zeal and fleshly mortification, the faithful of those ages never lost their sense of humor or their spirit of romance.
I tend to keep the company of other traditional Catholics, and their reactions when hearing about these practices diverge; some think they are wonderful. Others are horrified, and see in them only a precedent for current liturgical abuse and artistic gimmickry. To my mind, they are very different.
To learn why Mitsui thinks they are different — and to help yourself to much more food for thought — click here for the lecture.
[Lecture link via Mr Mitsui’s April 2013 newsletter, which is packed with art, including a commission for the American College of Surgeons; a preview of a forthcoming set of Stations of the Cross; and the Ecce Quam Bonum that illustrates this post.]
[For Korrektiv‘s previous coverage of medieval drolleries, click here.]
Thumbing through Bukowski’s last poems
April 25, 2013 by at 10:20 pm
I take the wistfulness of the last stanza to be genuine.
A line Lickona ought to have wrote.
April 23, 2013 by at 3:11 pm
A story Webb ought to of wrote
April 23, 2013 by at 2:41 pm
“I ain’t takin’ you for no kid,” answered Potter. His heels had not moved an inch backward. “I’m takin’ you for a damn fool. I tell you I ain’t got a gun, and I ain’t. If you’re goin’ to shoot me up, you better begin now. You’ll never get a chance like this again.”
The Next Is Silence
April 20, 2013 by at 2:50 am
Deadline Hollywood‘s Mike Fleming, Jr. has the scoop:
Martin Scorsese will finally realize his long-held dream to direct Silence, an adaptation of the Shusaku Endo novel about 17th century Jesuits who risk their lives to bring Christianity to Japan. Financing for the film has been secured […]. The plan is to shoot in Taiwan in July 2014 […].
When I interviewed Scorsese for Hugo during our awards season coverage two years ago, I asked him about why his passion for Silence has never waned. Here is what he said:
DEADLINE: You’ve tried to adapt the Shusaku Endo novel Silence, about 17th century Jesuits who risk their lives to bring Christianity to Japan. It isn’t commercial, it has been hard to finance, but it looks like you’ll finally get your chance to make it. Why has it been so important to you?
SCORSESE: My initial interests in life were very strongly formed by what I took seriously at that time, and 45-50 years ago I was steeped in the Roman Catholic religion. As you get older, ideas go and come. Questions, answers, loss of the answer again and more questions, and this is what really interests me. […]
DEADLINE: We Catholics are always struggling for answers.
SCORSESE: There are no answers. We all know that.* You try to live in the grace that you can. But there are no answers, but the point is, you keep looking. […]
Tamerlan(e)
April 19, 2013 by at 8:18 am
I
I have sent for thee, holy friar
But ‘twas not with the drunken hope,
Which is but agony of desire
To shun the fate, with which to cope
Is more than crime may dare to dream,
That I have call’d thee at this hour:
Such father is not my theme —
Nor am I mad, to deem that power
Of earth may shrive me of the sin
Unearthly pride hath revell’d in —
I would not call thee fool, old man,
But hope is not a gift of thine;
If I can hope (O God! I can)
It falls from an eternal shrine.
– from “Tamerlane” by “A Bostonian” (Edgar Allan Poe)
I find your lack of tact disturbing…
April 19, 2013 by at 7:07 am
“Every time we find someone’s lack of faith disturbing, we’ll think of him,” the family statement said. “At age 66, Richard Le Parmentier is one with the Force.”
For the complete skinny, stride on over here: http://todayentertainment.today.com/_news/2013/04/16/17781096-actor-in-infamous-star-wars-scene-has-died?lite
The rest is silence
April 15, 2013 by at 9:28 am
My man in Monmouth speaks out for the voiceless: (sourced from here: http://chrissmith.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=328605)
“Mr. Speaker, will the decades-long major national news media cover-up of the brutality—and violence—of abortion methods ever end?
“Will Americans ever be told the horrifying details as to how—and how often—abortionists dismember, decapitate, and chemically poison innocent babies?
“Will Americans ever be informed by a conscientious, unbiased news media that in the past 40 years, over 55 million child victims have been brutally killed by abortion—a staggering loss of children’s lives that equates to the entire population in England? And that many women have been hurt physically, emotionally, psychologically—and according to the Center for Disease Control over 400 women have actually died from legal abortions.
“Will Americans ever be told that of the 55 million children, Planned Parenthood alone claims responsibility for destroying over 6 million babies and that just two weeks ago a Planned Parenthood leader in Florida testified at a legislative hearing on a state initiative to protect born alive infants that even when a child survives an abortion, the decision to assist or kill the born alive infant should be “up to the woman, her family and her physician.” In other words, even if a child intended to be aborted survives the assault, the choice to kill remains—so called after birth abortion. Isn’t that extreme child abuse?
“Murdering newborns in the abortion clinic, it seems to me, is indistinguishable from any other child predator wielding a knife or a gun. Why isn’t that that child seen as a patient in need of medical care, warmth, nutrition and dare I say—love?
“Now another national media cover up! In this case, even when a Jeffrey Dahmer-like murder trial of an abortionist named Kermit Gosnell, who ran the benign-sounding Women’s Medical Society, unfolds in a Philadelphia Courtroom replete with shocking testimony of beheadings, unfathomable abuse, death, and body parts in jars. To this day, the national news media remains uninterested, indifferent—AWOL. Why the censorship? Gosnell’s “house of horrors” trial fails to attract any serious and meaningful national news reporting.
“Dr. Kermit Gosnell is on trial for eight counts of murder. One count is for the death of a woman who died during an abortion at his clinic. Seven counts are for babies who survived their abortion and were born alive but then killed by severing their spinal cords with a pair of scissors.
“In the words of the Grand Jury report: “Gosnell had a simple solution for unwanted babies: he killed them. He didn’t call it that. He called it ‘ensuring fetal demise.’ The way he ensured fetal demise was by sticking scissors in the back of the baby’s neck and cutting the spinal cord. He called that ‘snipping.’ Over the years there were hundreds of ‘snippings.’
“Indeed, the national news media has not only taken a pass and looked the other way, but their stunning indifference has done a grave disservice to Gosnell’s victims—the woman killed, other women injured and children slaughtered by Gosnell. Because of the national media’s indefensible silence—because of their failure to report—other women and children at other abortion mills might be at risk.
“Indeed, the Gosnell Grand Jury Report in January 2011 powerfully noted that an absence of press coverage—and gross negligence by health department personnel in Pennsylvania—enabled Gosnell to show a “contemptuous disregard for the health, safety, and dignity of his patients that continued for 40 years.”
“Some media commenters, however, are beginning to take note of the national news media bias and blackout in the case.
“Yesterday an editorial in the Investors Business Daily titled Newtown In The Clinic: Media Ignore The Gosnell Trial said
‘Media Bias: A basketball coach who shoves and curses at his players merits constant coverage by a media also transfixed by Newtown. But a Philadelphia doctor on trial for murdering a woman and seven babies? It’s ignored.
Those who get their news from the three major networks have probably not heard of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, now on trial in Philadelphia, charged with seven counts of first-degree murder and one count of third-degree murder for killing seven babies who survived abortions and a woman who died after a botched pain-killer injection…
According to the Media Research Center, in one week Rice received 41 minutes, 26 seconds of air time on ABC, CBS and NBC in 36 separate news stories. Gosnell received zero coverage…
If Dr. Gosnell had walked into a nursery and shot seven infants with an AR-15, it would be national news and the subject of presidential hand-wringing.’
“In today’s edition of USA Today, columnist Kirsten Powers writes:
‘Infant beheadings. Severed baby feet in jars. A child screaming after it was delivered alive during an abortion procedure. Haven’t heard about these sickening accusations?
It’s not your fault. Since the murder trial of Pennsylvania abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell began March 18, there has been precious little coverage of the case that should be on every news show and front page.’
“She goes on to point out:” ‘A Lexis-Nexis search shows none of the news shows on the three major national television networks has mentioned the Gosnell trial in the last three months. The exception is when Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan hijacked a segment on Meet the Press.’
“In a letter sent by Media Research Center President Brent Bozell and 20 prominent leaders call on the broadcast networks to stop censoring coverage of the trial, pointing out that as of April 4th, since the trial began ABC, CBS and NBC have given the story zero coverage in their morning and evening news shows.
“Again I ask. When will the media blackout stop? Will America ever be told about the brutality of abortion and the violence that is commonplace inside the abortion industry? Or will the media continue to censor this trial of the century, because it exposes an all too inconvenient truth that not only are unborn children destroyed in these killing centers, but that even babies who survive the abortion can’t escape the deadly hand of the child predator.”
UPDATE: At least one reporter either backpedals into honesty or honestly backpedals:
[Daily Beast reporter Meghan] McArdle discusses a reply from Washington Post reporter Sarah Kliff when she was questioned for not covering the trial by Mollie Hemingway of the GetReligion blog. On Twitter, Kliff said: “I cover policy for the Washington Post, not local crime.”
“I could also offer Kliff’s defense, that this is a local crime,” writes McArdle. “But George Tiller’s murder was also a local crime. There was no ‘national policy issue’ involved: murder is a matter for state law…Nonetheless, lots of national journalists — including Sarah Kliff, for Newsweek — covered the killing and discussed what it meant for abortion provision nationwide.”
Complete story here: http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/pro-choice-reporter-apologizes-for-not-covering-gosnell-calls-it-trial-of-t/
“The great chandeliers hang silent.”
April 13, 2013 by at 6:19 pm
Courtesy of Longreads.com, a story in People magazine (!) on Nabokov at the Montreaux Palace Hotel. The ’70s were different.
Punk rocker Patti Smith meets Pope Francis | The Raw Story
Said Patti: Pope Francis is “very interesting” and she “liked him a lot”.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/10/punk-rocker-patti-smith-meets-pope-francis/