In this popular presentation, Royal guides us through The Divine Comedy, a literary classic that is enjoying a renaissance as a spiritual masterpiece. In the course of exploring the human pilgrimage on Earth, Dante charts a vivid path through the canticles of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven in his legendary poem. Robert Royal presents a careful but reader-friendly approach to the poetry of the texts themselves and a biographical sketch of Dante, the man, the writer, and the spiritual lover extraordinaire.
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Rarely does a book come along that so succinctly explains the decline of modern culture, articulates a defense of the Church’s teachings, and offers a hope-filled path for building a civilization grounded in Catholic truth.
In these pages, Dr. Ryan Topping does all three, pulling back the curtain on the false philosophies of the secularists and showing that in the West today the most formidable threat to freedom is not failing economies or Islam, but secularism. Our best defense, he claims, is a vibrant Catholic culture, and our best hope for creating it lies in the principles found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
This book takes you on a masterful journey through the relevant portions of the Catechism, distilling sophisticated theological concepts into words that are simple, clear, and direct, while unpacking its core teachings on faith and morals that nurture true civilizations. In Rebuilding Catholic Culture, you’ll also discover sensible ways to begin restoring Catholic culture — right now — in your own life and family, and in our larger communities as well: in the theater, the classroom, in our hospitals, and even in the public square. This profoundly accessible book will renew your confidence in the world-transforming character of our Creed and in the potency of our Faith to shape and redefine the culture of the West.
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Blaise Pascal, the precociously brilliant contemporary of Descartes, was a gifted mathematician and physicist, but it is his unfinished apologia for the Christian religion upon which his reputation now rests. The Penseés is a collection of philosophical fragments, notes and essays in which Pascal explores the contradictions of human nature in psychological, social, metaphysical and – above all – theological terms. Mankind emerges from Pascal’s analysis as a wretched and desolate creature within an impersonal universe, but who can be transformed through faith in God’s grace.
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Real Music by Anthony Esolen (with accompanying CD of 18 hymns recorded by the St. Cecilia Choir of St. John Cantius Church in Chicago) is a comprehensive and delightful guide to the great traditional hymnody of the Church. In an age when sacred hymns of the past have either been “modernized” or utterly rejected as irrelevant, Real Music restores to us to a treasure trove, the vast heritage of glorious sacred music for congregations and choirs. In it, Professor Esolen masterfully illustrates how the traditional hymns combine elegant poetry with sound doctrine and music composed and arranged by great masters. With the Church and Her precepts under assault from all sides, we need now, perhaps more than ever before, to contemplate the beauty and truth that these fine hymns proclaim.
With noted literary scholar, poet, and translator Anthony Esolen as your guide and the St. Cecilia Choir as your muse, join the musical renaissance to recover and to restore to our churches the best that has been sung and played and prayed by Christians down through the ages. Real Music is arranged by events in the life of our Lord and the seasons and Sacraments of the Church. Join Professor Esolen on a pilgrimage into the realm of glorious poetry and incomparable music, all written to bring Christians ever closer to the faith of our fathers and to the Author of our faith.
Real Music is a book meant to be savored. Whether you read the book and listen to, or perhaps even sing along with, the CD at home in your favorite easy chair, or among friends in an informal class at your parish, Real Music will enrich your spiritual life with magnificent music through which we may all offer praise and honor to God.
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In these brilliant essays the renowned writer and churchman Fr. George Rutler addresses our current causes of anxiety and our never-changing, ever-new reasons for hope. His writings on the issues of our day are neither pessimistic nor optimistic, because they are infused with the confidence that God grants us his peace and no earthly circumstance can take it away.
With insight and wit, with breadth and depth, Fr. Rutler comments on the confusion in the Church and the chaos in Western societies, which are not without precedent but are on a uniquely global scale. An underlying theme is his dismay at the lack of historical perspective. He says that the gremlin that haunts our times is ignorance and a failure to recall and to understand the trials of the past..
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LOUIS PASTEUR is one of the glories of France, and, among them all, the one whose light shines clearest and most fertile in results. His name has radiated throughout the world, and for scientists and laymen alike it symbolizes that spirit of humanity which strove to succor all the ills of his fellow men and that genius for invention which opened vast new horizons to the researches of science. His sovereignty is now undisputed, there is no nation which has not rendered him due homage, and, as his fame has “riddened, it has, according to his own desire, increased the moral patrimony and the intellectual force of his native land.
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Before reaching the tender age of 30, Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) had already sculpted Pietà and David , two of the most famous sculptures in the entire history of art. As a sculptor, painter, draftsman, and architect, the achievements of this Italian master are unique– no artist before or after him has ever produced such a vast, multifaceted, and wide-ranging oeuvre.
This fresh TASCHEN edition traces Michelangelo’s ascent to the cultural elite of the Renaissance. Ten richly illustrated chapters cover the artist’s paintings, sculptures, buildings, and drawings, including a close analysis of the artist’s tour de force frescoes in the Sistine Chapel. Full-page reproductions and enlarged details allow readers to appreciate the finest details in the artist’s repertoire, while the book’s biographical essay considers Michelangelo’s more personal traits and circumstances, such as his solitary nature, his thirst for money and commissions, his immense wealth, and his skill as a property investor.
