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belcimer: Toward the end it was difficult for him to work, and as the illness became protracted and the days were long, as it were, with complications, his spirits were often low. Perhaps the strong and daring, he said, don’t need him, but for me, as for David, who in the Gospel is always singing, […]

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Rowan Williams, “Advent Calendar”

wesleyhill: He will come like last leaf’s fall.One night when the November windhas flayed the trees to bone, and earthwakes choking on the mould,the soft shroud’s folding. He will come like frost.One morning when the shrinking earthopens on mist, to find itselfarrested in the netof alien, sword-set beauty. He will come like dark.One evening when […]

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The loss of the aesthetic sensibility in the Church has weakened its ability to make its call heard in the world. Dante and Hopkins, Mozart and Palestrina, Michelangelo and El Greco, Bramante and Gaudi, have brought more souls to God than all the preachers of Texas. The Catholic Writer Today Encouraging Catholic writers to renovate […]

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Art does not need to be religious. There are great masterpieces that have no hint of religious transcendence. What I am suggesting is something more subtle and complex. Culture is a conversation. A vigorous culture contains different voices, often in active debate. The voice of religious faith enlarges and enlivens the overall dialectic of culture, […]

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The road to Damascus may offer a pilgrim sudden and miraculous intervention, but faith provides no shortcuts on the road to Parnassus. The Catholic Writer Today Encouraging Catholic writers to renovate and reoccupy their own tradition. Dana Gioia

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Writing with no past has no future…

The great and present danger to American literature is the growing homogeneity of our writers, especially the younger generation. Often raised in several places in no specific cultural or religious community, educated with no deep connection to a particular region, history, or tradition, and now employed mostly in academia, the American writer is becoming as […]

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There is no doubt that Byrd is in part expressing the anguish of his co-religionists, caught up in the destruction of their worship and hopes. As an Advent text, though, it implicitly expects salvation, as shown by the repeated versicle Rorate caeli, “Drop down ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down the […]

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