December 23rd, 2006
It’s 6:30 pm Saturday, the eve of Christmas Eve, and we’re closing up shop here for the year at Idylls Press. Family time, some much needed R & R…we’ll be back and blogging and so forth in early January. Till then…a very merry and blessed Christmas and New Year’s to all of you from [...]
December 21st, 2006
…J.K. Rowling has released the title of book number 7, the last in the series: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Don't know about you, but it doesn't tell me a blessed thing, which was no doubt at least part of her intention. (Rachel and I were hoping for something more like, Harry Potter and [...]
December 20th, 2006
Check out this very perceptive op ed piece by Bill Barnwell, a Michigan pastor. Here’s a taste:
Much of the problem is that many Christians are told that the arts are evil and need to be avoided. I know that on a mass cultural level, however, that a gifted Christian artist can reach far, far, more [...]
December 18th, 2006
…and Harry Potter, in particular. A mother in Georgia has been trying for a year to get HP banned from her local school's library, and the Georgie Board of Education has upheld the local school's decision against her. Thank God. The woman is no doubt a good Christian and devoted mother, and of [...]
December 16th, 2006
The Mad Mel Mess and Why (or if) it Matters
That’s the title of my new article that’s just gone up on Godspy. Mel and Passion and Apocalypto have been the preoccupation (besides Christmas preparations and everyday Idylls Press business) why I haven’t posted for a few days. If you’re interested in all the other stuff [...]
Debra Murphy on Reviving Christianity’s Artistic Tradition
Kelly Hatzenbihler on Reviving Christianity’s Artistic Tradition
Rach on Nessun Dorma, As You’ve Never Heard it Before
Kathleen Lundquist on Reviving Christianity’s Artistic Tradition Debra Murphy on Reviving Christianity’s Artistic Tradition
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale
Joan of Arc: A Life (Penguin Lives) by Mary Gordon
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Those were the days [the nineteenth century] of the great schism between the artist and Catholicism when it seemed that art and sanctity must be forever separated. One thinks of the convert J.K. Huysmans standing among the crowd of pious pilgrims at Lourdes, his soul harassed by the observation that, although Mary had chased the devil from the rocks of the shrine and the hearts of the pilgrims, he was still there blaspheming her and her Son by the ‘hideous’ architecture of the place. He distinctly hears the devil say to Mary: ‘I shall dog your footsteps, and wherever you stop, there I shall establish myself; you may have at Lourdes all the priests you please, but art, which is the only worth-while thing on earth after sanctity, not only will you not have, but I shall so effect that it will unceasingly insult you by the prolonged blasphemy of its uglinesss….All that represents you and your Son will be grotesque…’
— Calvert Alexander, SJ