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Above the Thunderstorm

At first glance, it seems odd that a major academic publisher should commission a volume on, as it were, the phenomenology of religious life. Insofar as they are perceptible at all, religious have retreated to the margins of our imaginative universe, as defendants in court cases, amiable extras in . . . . Continue Reading »

The Greatest Catholic Opera

Opera has traditionally had little interest in Christian orthodoxy. So when composer Francis Poulenc wrote his masterpiece, Dialogues des Carmélites, the work’s celebration of heroic piety defied the secular spirit of the art form. Continue Reading »

Prurient History

Sex sells, all the more if one throws in Vatican secrets and conspiracy. Long before Frédéric Martel’s In the Closet of the Vatican, the Church had problems with sexual indiscretions, not least in the era of Pope Pius IX (1846–1878). Hubert Wolf, the self-appointed dean of German church . . . . Continue Reading »

Julian of Norwich in Seclusion

Because an anchoress could have a cat,We may assume she had one.  That it satBeside her while the pilgrims came and went,Giving, like her, a lesson in content.That it was quiet when her visions cameAnd when they passed it slumbered just the same,But any mice who trespassed in the cellWere given . . . . Continue Reading »

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