"He instinctively can find the shining greatness of our American culture and does a good job of highlighting it (although he also does have those rare lapses when he writes about hockey, but that is something caused by impurities in the Eastern waters or something)." Erik Keilholtz
Under the patronage of St. Tammany
Mark C. N. Sullivan is an editor at a Massachusetts university. He is married and the father of three children. Email
The venerable Jesuit above is Fr McElroy, founder of Boston College, profiled in the recent BC Magazine by historian James O'Toole.
BC's football team is now ranked third in the country. Those who've read Flashman & the Dragon will hear echoes of the Chinese mandarins in Notre Dame loyalists' imperialhubris.
Strangely, no one seems to have worried about the feelings of old ladies who loved singing “Soul of My Saviour” and other traditional Catholic hymns and suddenly found them replaced, overnight, by “Bind Us Together, Lord”. The poor things must have felt like Mrs Punch, being bashed over the head by a rolled-up copy of the Celebration Hymnal, accompanied by a gleeful liturgist’s cackle: “That’s the way to do it!”
Benedict XVI also told the monks of Heiligenkreutz: "A liturgy which no longer looks to God is already in its death throes." Haydn, a Catholic with a deep spirituality, was not far from this view of beauty in the Christian liturgy when he wrote at the end of each of his musical compositions, "Laus Deo," praise to God.
When in the Creed of the "Mariazeller Messe," the soloist intones "Et incarnatus est," and when the "Benedictus" is sung in the Sanctus, flashes of eternity truly break through. More than a thousand words, great liturgical music communicates the mystery of "He who comes in the name of the Lord," of the Word made flesh, of the bread that becomes the body of Jesus.
The liturgy that inspired Haydn - together with other great Christian composers - these sublime melodies, glimmering with theological joy, was the ancient, Tridentine liturgy: just the opposite of the "sense of staleness" that some associate with it.
Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain &c, on GK Chesterton:
Chesterton's was one of the few voices to oppose eugenics in the early twentieth century.He saw right through it as fraudulent on every level, and he predicted where it would lead, with great accuracy.His critics were legion; they reviled him as a reactionary, ridiculous, ignorant, hysterical, incoherent, and blindly prejudiced, noting with dismay that "his influence in leading people in the wrong way is considerable." Yet Chesterton was right, and the consensus of scientists, political leaders, and the intelligentsia was wrong.Chesterton lived to see he horrors of Nazi Germany.This book is worth reading because, in retrospect, it is clear that Chesterton's arguments were perfectly sensible and deserving of an answer, and yet he was simply shouted down.And because the most repellent ideas of eugenics are being promoted again in the 21st century, under various guises.
![[SMMMHDH]](http://www.mgilleland.com/music/smmmhdh.png){kind=small}
