Commentary
198—The Music of St. Hildegard of Bingen—Margot Fassler
St. Hildegard of Bingen, 12th-century abbess, mystic, polymath, and Doctor of the Church, is best known to non-Catholics for something else – her music. We have more pieces of music by Hildegard than by any other medieval composer whose name we know. Her chants are beautiful, otherworldly, virtuosic and ahead of their time. Some of them were written for her morality play, the Ordo virtutum, which is also the first of its kind. Musicologist Margot Fassler joins the podcast to discuss what makes St. Hildegard’s music so special.
In an alternate timeline, our Supreme Court wins would have been bigger
It’s common for pro-lifers today to note that Trump accomplished for us what Reagan and the Bushes could not or would not. But that’s not the whole story.
Throwing things at the Pope
How will Pope Leo, schooled in no-nonsense American business dealings, respond to the lackadaisical accounting practices of the Roman Curia? Will he move to settle the wrongful-termination lawsuit brought by Libero Milone, the onetime auditor general of the Vatican?
What we learned about Pope Leo through the Knights of Malta
What is clear in this message to the Order of Malta is that Pope Leo is emphasizing the key features of any authentic Christian commitment, and of any properly Christian life and work. Just as the Order of Malta can undergo effective renewal only by actualizing the baptismal promises of its members as the impetus for the Order’s particular mission and charism, so too is this conformity to Christ essential for all of us.
5.13 St. Hildegard of Bingen: Teutonic Prophetess
St. Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) was a mystic, an anointed prophet, a reformer, theologian, poet, teacher, and preacher. Over eight centuries ago, she wrote, “Today the Catholic faith is in a state of agitation, on a global scale. The gospel limps its way around the world; the early Church fathers, who wrote so well, are ignored; people are apathetic; they refuse to read and taste the nourishment in the Scriptures.”
Can bombing Iran satisfy just-war criteria?
President Trump has been clear and consistent in saying that Iran cannot be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. I fully share the desire to keep Iran out of the nuclear club. But does that desire constitute a moral justification for war?
The downside of dialogue…as compared with the Gospel
Our Lord’ injunction to love one another might be taken to refer to love among His disciples, and that is certainly an important feature of Christianity. But it is clear that those closest to Our Lord took this to refer to the difficult and self-effacing love expressed through the effort to bring others into the light of Christ—clear because this is the most marked aspect of their lives following Our Lord’s Resurrection and their reception of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.
I am a Good Person
The tension was too much for me, so I surrendered to the demands of Catholic logic. I freely express my opposition to the indiscriminate destruction of population centers as gravely evil. I’ve risked friendships, but I’ve restored my self-esteem.
Pope Leo: Hope for an ecclesial synodality rooted in Christ
I used to explain “synodality” as “the Church firing on all cylinders”—an over-simplified mechanistic phrase which, in our day, is fairly easy to understand. But under Pope Francis it gradually took the shape of the Church trying to find guidance by consulting with all available earthly interest groups. It seemed that the more synodality was stressed, the less it was understood, and the more it produced ecclesiastical stagnation. Fortunately, Pope Leo explains synodality in a very different way.
On immigration, the US bishops see only one side
It doesn’t matter at all what our immigration laws say, if those laws are routinely flouted. It doesn’t matter how many legal immigrants we will accept, if illegal immigrants stream across the border with impunity. So while Archbishop Broglio is right to say that enforcement is not the ultimate solution to the immigration crisis, nevertheless enforcement is a necessary first step toward any solution.
Sowing or reaping? There is no third option.
There is an opposite danger in our excessively “psychological” age, an age which provides a simple excuse for every failure in perception and commitment. For we remain obliged as Christians to take both grace and resistance to grace seriously. While it remains a mystery why one reaps and another sows (I’d rather be reaping, personally), that mystery is bound up in another—the mystery of why some refuse to listen, some listen but do not hear, and others really do hear, yet they do not yet believe.
Hitchcock’s I Confess and the world’s failure to understand priesthood
In Alfred Hitchcock’s 1953 film I Confess, a young priest in Quebec City is suspected of murder because of his unwillingness to break the seal of confession. A major theme of the film is the incomprehension with which the world sees the priesthood, such that people project their own sins onto the priest, resulting in a kind of white martyrdom.
Israel, Palestine, and Jason Jones
No reasonable person could disagree that the Palestinians have suffered terribly and that it is wrong to deny their humanity. But does that somehow put them above criticism? Or disagreement?
The under-the-radar growth of Catholic commitment
Most Americans think the Catholic faith is losing public influence, and no wonder. The overall statistics look grim. But they aren’t noticing the emergence of what then-Cardinal Ratzinger famously termed a “creative minority” of dedicated faithful Catholics.
5.12 St. Hildegard of Bingen: Multimedia Visionary
St. Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) was a visionary, teacher, Abbess, composer, theologian, painter, and the first woman in history to be given papal approval to preach in public. Four centuries before the emergence of the “Renaissance Man,” there was Hildegard of Bingen. Usually known mostly for her music (and rightfully so) there is so much more to this medieval mystic.
St. Francis: Spinning, off balance, but onto a new path
If we must twirl around and even fall down at times, so be it. But let us at least learn the one thing needful—that is, to pray our way through the spin, listening only for the Master’s voice even in our own dizziness. For only at Christ’s command, through whatever messenger He sends, will we end up facing the way we are to go.
Will this be an ‘ordinary’ pontificate?
Maybe now we should be prepared for an “ordinary” pontificate. The trouble is, not many of us are old enough to know what that means.
197—Same-Sex Attraction and Conversion w/ Andrew Comiskey & Marco Casanova
Today’s guests both have a background with same-sex attraction, and yet are each now married with children. Andrew Comiskey and Marco Casanova run Desert Stream and Living Waters Ministries, which for decades have offered help to Christians seeking healing from sexual disorders (including but not limited to SSA). This conversation offers solid, spiritually sound, experience-based answers to some disputed questions about how the Church should be pastoring those with same-sex attraction.
Forks in the Road
The birthday of the Church fulfills one of the loveliest phrases in Revelation: “Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth.” (Psalm 104)
St. John Henry Newman—The Indwelling Spirit
"The Comforter who has come instead of Christ, must have vouchsafed to come in the same sense in which Christ came... by a real and personal visitation."
What Musk vs. Trump means for Catholics and for Vance
Vance hasn’t spoken a word about the Musk/Trump split as I write this column. But you know it’s coming. So let’s get out ahead of it and have that conversation now.
Understanding Pope Leo, bit by bit
Pope Leo does not need to draw the obvious inference: Insofar as Amoris Laetitia allowed for admitting divorced and remarried Catholics to Communion, it is an aberration.
Should there be “performances” in Church?
A church is not one of the seven sacraments; it is not a ritual instituted by Christ to give grace. But it is both the normal locus for these sacraments, and is itself sacramental in the sense of an outward sign—the extraordinary housing and atmosphere, so to speak—within which the grace of Christ is intended to be communicated.
Occult subversion of traditional Catholicism
A prominent traditionalist Catholic press has published a book advocating the practice of "Hermetic magic", equating Catholic spiritual practices with magic words and talismans. More generally, among some traditionalist intellectuals there is an increasing interest in the occult, magic, and esoteric spiritual traditions. This is rooted in a philosophy called perennialism, which holds that the various great world religions have passed down the same essential wisdom from a single ancient source.
The Ritual portrays exorcism accurately, but is stuck in genre cliches
The new exorcism film The Ritual, starring Al Pacino and Dan Stevens, is based on the famous 1928 exorcism of Emma Schmidt, which also partially inspired The Exorcist. The Ritual is touted as more realistic and meticulously researched than most exorcism films, and it avoids many of the worst pitfalls of exorcism movies. However, the film is still sensationalistic, and flattens interesting real-life details to fit the genre’s cliches.
Small is Beautiful
War-related PTSD has become depressingly common. As we carefully reserve judgment subject to the facts, in many cases, a significant cause of PTSD is likely a gnawing sense of personal responsibility for unjust killings in war that violate the Fifth Commandment.
Now available: Liturgical year ebook for Ordinary Time after Easter
We have just released the fifth volume in the 2024-2025 Liturgical Year series of ebooks. Volume five covers the first half of the long stretch of Ordinary Time between the close of the Easter Season on Pentecost and the beginning of Advent. Like all CatholicCulture.org ebooks, this volume is downloadable free of charge.
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