July 22, 2020
by Francis Lee
Editor’s note: the following is an interview with Father Justin Ramos, O. Praem., of the Advancement Office at Saint Michael’s Abbey. Q: In 2018, Saint Michael’s Abbey secured the required funds to begin construction on the new abbey. What initially drove the Norbertine community to undertake this historic project? Can you share some of the [...]
February 28, 2020
by Francis Lee
The White House recently released a draft of a proposed executive order, titled Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again. This unexpected proposal sounded a clarion call to restore “classical and traditional architecture styles” in the future construction of Federal Government buildings in the capital and throughout the nation’s heartland, and discourage the post-1950s Corbusian trends of [...]
May 17, 2012
by Philip Bess
For centuries the public square and the street have been the spatial media of public culture. But just how important is traditional public space—urban space—to a genuinely public culture? In an age of increasingly sophisticated electronic communications, does civil society require the physical and spatial arrangements of the traditional city? I don’t know the answers [...]
December 8, 2011
by Fr. Dwight Longenecker
I’m always wary of using an Albert Einstein quotation because it seems somehow sort of well, sophomoric. There’s always that poster of the German genius with the googly eyes and goofy hair sticking out his tongue. Nevertheless, Einstein came up with some good ones about God not playing dice, and science being lame without religion [...]
October 3, 2011
by Fr. Dwight Longenecker
We are building a new church in our parish, and to lead the effort I have been thinking and reading about church architecture. Looking around at the dismal buildings that have been presented as Catholic churches over the last 50 years, one has to ask where on earth the architects, designers, and liturgists got their [...]
January 17, 2011
by Margaret Cabaniss
The author of a new book on Galileo claims that the scientist's greatest contribution to theoretical physics came about, ironically enough, from thinking about the dimensions of Dante's hell: In 1588, when Galileo was a 24-year-old unknown, a medical school dropout, he was invited to deliver a couple of lectures on Dante’s “Divine Comedy.” Many [...]
September 23, 2010
by Margaret Cabaniss
The Anchoress's recent trip to Rome reminded her of how breathtakingly beautiful churches can be... and how churches in the States mostly aren't. Visiting Rome's splendid, often ancient, churches, my husband and I, who attend newish, barely-decorated, kind-of-ugly churches that are heavy on the felt banners, had not realized how much we’d been missing beauty [...]
March 17, 2009
by Fr. George W. Rutler
Mies van der Rohe's dictum that "God is in the details" fit the moral architecture of Avery Dulles. While his physical architecture was likened to Lincoln, the man was discerned in the details: from his conversion to the Faith when noticing the first spring blossom on a tree, to his intimate regard for all [...]
March 3, 2009
by Tom Howard
I have just been re-reading an old book. Not old in the sense of its being 18th century -- it is Dacre Balsdon's Oxford Life, which came out in the early 1950s. One does not have to have been a scholar or a commoner at one of the colleges in Oxford in order to find [...]
August 30, 2008
by Robert R. Reilly
Over the past few days, three of our writers have offered lighter reflections on why they prefer a given genre of music -- Rock, Showtunes, and Classical. We conclude with Classical Music. ♦ ♦ ♦ Classical music is the greatest music. This assertion is not based upon my preference or opinion; it is as much [...]
June 27, 2008
by Danielle Bean
On the wall behind the altar, where I am accustomed to finding a crucifix on which to focus, hangs an enormous clock, reminiscent of ones I remember from elementary school classrooms years ago. It hums as it tirelessly ticks its way through the Mass. When we stand for the Gospel, metal folding chairs scrape against [...]
October 15, 2007
by Tom Howard
A topic arose recently in a group discussion relating to the vexed matter of “intelligent design.” My impression is that, in its broadest outlines, the question at stake asks whether science, at the end of the day, is obliged to acknowledge a Designer at the root of things, and that, at least as matters stand [...]