The demands on our “visual literacy,” as it is called, have multiplied exponentially. One 2013 study found that Americans spend 32 hours per week online, while the average global user spends 16 hours. That’s 19% of all the hours in a week, including time devoted to sleeping. If you subtract, say, 7 sleeping hours, the percentage becomes 27% for all waking hours, over one quarter of our waking time!
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“Beauty, indeed, does come through the eyes, and it is beheld by the senses, that is true,” said the priest. “But it’s not subjective, no more subjective than truth or goodness, which come from God through his creation. Beauty, too, was part of His creation, because God Himself is perfect Beauty.”
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Until now, calling someone, or yourself, a social conservative has had a useful purpose. But like all buzz words and brand names its usefulness has come to an end.
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How to describe something that is all around you, influencing you during every waking hour, perhaps while sleeping as well. Culture is like that, like the air you breath but completely unaware, unless you are choking. That’s precisely why I am raising the issue of culture directly, because to a great degree it is choking us, doing us harm without our knowing it.
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It was by “crying wolf” too often at important, well-made films, the Legion and its supporters became irrelevant. A simple, one-sentence summary of The Miracle certainly makes the condemnation sound plausible: A poor shepherdess named Nanni who believes herself to be the Virgin Mary is seduced with liquor drink by a wanderer whom she thinks is St. Joseph, played by director and co-writer Federico Fellini.
Read MoreCatholics need to be more welcoming to each other and to parish visitors. It’s not the first time I have made that observation, and it’s not the first time much of the response has been negative. Why? I’m accused of forcing...
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Catharsis is not an emotional purgation, it is an experience of clarity, of insight, that in making sense of the human condition allows us at least a moment of relief from the anxieties that we bear from day to day.
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It’s not too far-fetched to say that film music has been the ‘classical music’ for far more listeners than the music played symphony halls around the world for the past fifty years. The time has come to claim to not merely admit it, but to celebrate the music and musicians who have continued to minister to the human ear, and the human heart.
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When Hitler wanted to decimate a people, he not only killed all he could, he also destroyed their museums and libraries.
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At Christmas, music abounds. There is no other sacred day, or holiday, so deeply intertwined with music. If you are considering stretching your musical palette this Christmas, here is a list to choose from.
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