Register Now: Conference to Showcase World Premiere of Oratorio About St Rita

Full details are now available online for the conference about sanctity, beauty and catholic artistic expression taking place at St Rita's Catholic Church in Dallas, Texas; May 19-21.

It has been organized to showcase the world premiere of a specially commissioned Oratorio about St Rita. The oratorio, A Rose in Winter - the Life of St Rita of Cascia has been composed by Frank LaRocca and librettist Matthew Lickona. The performance will be conducted by Dr Alfred Calabrese.

Scheduled speakers are the composer, librettist and conductor; as well as Dr Ron Rombs and Dr Kathryn Rombs of the University of Dallas, Fr Michael Digrigoria OSA, Fr Joshua Whitfield of St Rita's Church and myself. Titles and abstracts of the talks are on the website.

For more information and register go to stritaconference.com.

My hope is that they might commission a piece of art work to go with it! Judging from the selection on Google images when you put her name into the search engine, there aren't many high quality holy images of her around! I like this one, which I found on the internet, but with no mention of who the artist is.

DSPT to Offer a Catholic Orientation for Working Artists in Any Creative Discipline

The Way of Beauty Book Will Be a Text Book for the Course.

The Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, which is part of the Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley University in California is offering an exciting new Certificate in Theological Studies which is intended for working artists. This is a Masters level, four-course (12-unit) Certificate which is recommended for those who already have a working knowledge of a specific art medium (visual arts, music, architecture etc.) and wish to augment their expertise with a specialized focus in the relationship of the fine arts to Catholic worship and culture.

The approach to this certificate program assumes the “cross-disciplinary approach” between philosophy and theology that uniquely characterizes all DSPT curricula. Furthermore, in this particular program there will be a focus on the integration of theory with praxis, particularly as it applies to Catholic worship and culture. An emphasis on the outcomes of this course is on the evangelization of the culture through a well discerned engagement with contemporary cultures so that the creativity of the artist is directed towards the engagement of contemporary man, without any compromise of the core principles of a traditional Christian culture.

The Certificate program of studies is organized by the Academic Dean of the DSPT, Fr Chris Renz (some readers may remember that I highlighted his excellent article on liturgy and culture published in Antiphon recently). Also involved will be Fr Michael Morris, art historian and professor of religion and the arts at DSPT, who is also well known as a writer on Christian art and culture. . He and Fr Renz are both leading lights in the research institute for religion and the arts called the Santa Fe Institute which has over 12,000 volumes in its library. This resource will be available to students on this certificate.

Anyone who has read any of my writings over the years will see why I am enthusiastic about this – these themes of inculturation, worship and fresh creativity are at the heart of my own ideas about the evangelization of the culture. I am thrilled, as you can imagine, when Fr Renz told me that he intends to use my book the Way of Beauty as one of the texts for the opening course of the Certificate program.

The first course of the four to be offered, in the coming Fall, is called the Foundational Principles of Catholic Liturgy and Worship. To complete the Certificate in Theological Studies program with a specialization in Sacred Arts, the student must complete the four courses indicated below, typically over two or more semesters.

1. Foundational Principles of Catholic Liturgy and Worship (next offered Fall 2016)

2. Liturgical Piety: Anthropological Foundations of Catholic Worship (next offered Spring 2017)

3. One Elective offering from any advisor-approved Religion and the Arts course. These are the courses particularly that will be practical elements, such as painting.

4. Christian Iconography (next offered Fall 2016)

The format for all courses is once per week for just under 3 hours. Courses will typically offered during the weekday (which means that you have to be within striking distance of Berkeley, California in order to take it).

The named outcomes are to:

• imbue students with an understanding of sacred art and its relationship to sacred liturgy;

• provide students with the philosophical and theological foundations for the anthropological as well as the transcendent aspects of art;

• provide basic principles for using the fine arts as a vehicle for “preaching the gospel” to the contemporary culture.

Application Process

Applicants must complete the DSPT Certificate of Theological Studies application (found at the DSPT website), including a statement of purpose, official transcript, and two letters of recommendation. Application is on a rolling admission process.

Tuition and Fees

Tuition rate for 2016-2017 academic year is $715 per semester unit (all courses are 3 units). For further information, contact Fr. Chris Renz, O.P. at crenz@dspt.edu, or 510-883-2084. You can read about this course on the DSPT website at www.dspt.edu/sacred-arts

Magnificent New Russian Cathedral Bases its Style on Traditional Western Sacred Art

Here is an inspiration for artists in the West!

The latest edition of the Orthodox Arts Journal has a feature on the recently dedicated Cathedral of the Protection of the Mother of God at Yasenevo, which overlooks Moscow. It is was dedicated by Patriarch Kirill and appropriately (given his recent meeting with Pope Francis) the mosaics especially draw inspiration from traditional Western iconographic forms. As the article explains, they looked to the Romanesque churches of Sicily built in the Greek Byzantine influenced Romanesque style in the 12th century under the patronage of the Norman king, Roger II. In doing this, the art conforms fully to the principles that define the iconographic tradition, but in an exciting way that is unusual in Russia.

Below, the interior mosaics and the (very Russian) exterior of the cathedral:

Compare and contrast those with the interior and exterior of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo, Sicily

I have only seen the photographs that are included in the article, but based upon these I would say that this is a model lesson in how to draw into your own tradition outside influences without compromising core principles. It is fresh and exciting and this is the mark of a truly living tradition.

Furthermore, there is plenty of more conventional, Eastern style iconography here too, and the external appearance of the Church clearly that of an Eastern church.

I suggest that Catholics in the West should look at the way in which the Eastern Church so successfully reestablished its iconographic tradition of art in the  mid-20th century. (The leader figures were Russian ex-patriots, theorists and painters living in Paris, the leading figures were Vladimir Lossky, P. D. Ouspensky and Gregory Kroug - we will be talking more about them and style of Russian icons in coming weeks!).

The new iconography is so much more than an unthinking recreation of the past - which would be pastiche. The best of the icon painters of of today who work in this tradition are producing work that bears the mark of its time and place; and can stand alongside the great artists of the past.

This is what I hope to see applied to our distinctly Western traditions of liturgical art in the future. If any of you are interested in knowing more about icons and also my ideas on how we might re-establish a culture of beauty in the West you can read the book The Way of Beauty. This book is the basis of a whole program of study soon to be available at www.Pontifex.University - a generic formation in beauty that will give you a deep understanding of the basis of culture, it will cultivate (if you will forgive the pun!) creativity and an openness to inspiration.

You can read the whole article in Orthodox Arts Journal, here.

The Anglican Ordinariate Divine Office - A Wonderful Gift For Lay People and Hope for the Transformation of Western Culture

I am a great enthusiast for the Liturgy of the Hours. It holds a key, I believe, to the evangelization of the culture (if you want to know my arguments, I have included them in both books, the Little Oratory and the Way of Beauty). Whatever our thoughts on the appropriateness of the vernacular in the Mass, I do think that the availability of the Liturgy of the Hours in the vernacular is one great gift of the Council. I am not a Latin scholar and generally, and certainly in my personal reading in order to pray the psalms properly I need to be able to understand the text as I read it. Reading or singing Latin while looking across the page at a translation on a regular daily basis does not work for me. The Mass is Latin does not present the same difficulty for me - the bulk of it is repeated and so with relatively little reference to additional texts I can participate.

I have often wondered if this question of language is why some traditionalists are not enthusiastic about the Liturgy of the Hours - tending to promote a piety that excludes it. Certainly, some I have met are reluctant to acknowledge any legitimate case for a value for the the vernacular in the liturgy for fear that it would undermine the argument for an exclusively Latin Mass. A piety focused on he Mass and the Rosary is wonderful of course, but one oriented to the Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours is even better I suggest, and for me that means going to the English for the latter.

Ever since Pope Emeritus Benedict created the Anglican Ordinariates, I have felt that it has given the move for greater dignity and beauty in the liturgy in the English a huge boost. I wrote about the general principle of this when Pope Francis strengthened the mission of the Ordinariate in an article called Has Pope Francis Saved Western Culture?

It has taken time, quite reasonably for the approved and final versions for the texts to come forth. Now that the texts have been set for the Mass, I am hoping that we will see a final version of the Office soon in the US very soon. As a preview I use the version produced for England and Wales, which is in the Customary of Our Lady of Walsingham. It has been recently approved for continued use in England and Wales as I understand it.

You can get hold of the Customary from bookdepository.com which promises free delivery worldwide and sells it at a reduced price.

The Customary follows the general scheme recommended for the Ordinariate (you can read this at the bottom of this article. It is very short and simple). In essence, Morning Prayer is like a merging of the Matins (the Office of Readings) and Lauds. I am wondering if this is what the old Anglican Office of 'Mattins' always was. The morning readings are correspond exactly to those of the Office of Readings in the Roman Rite (with some approved alternatives for the second reading for English readers). Other than the psalms, there is a traditional hymn, an old testament canticle or the Te Deum (depending on the day), and structured prayers.

Similarly, Evening Prayer, like Choral Evensong, looks a bit like a running together of Vespers and Compline in form. So we have psalms, traditional hymn, readings, both the Magnificat and the Nunc Dimittis and again structured prayers.

I have had it for a week or so now and from what I have seen I am excited. I think that this, the indications are that this provides great possibilities for lay people especially to start praying the Office. The Anglican Office has a proven record not only in enabling laity as well as clergy to pray the Office but also as a public celebration of Morning and Evening Prayer. I heard recently from Mgr Andrew Burnham in England, who was instrumental in producing this, that this continues to this day. As he told me, the 'English Anglican cathedrals and choral foundations are in the midst of a golden age, as regards both attendance and music, and clearly meet a very deep need'.

Here are my reasons for suggesting that lay people look at the Anglican Ordinariate Office:

First, convenience and simplicity: the psalm cycle is designed such that it is possible to sing the whole Office with just two Offices in the day - the hybrid Morning and Evening Prayer which allow us, one might say, to sing four Offices as two, and to sing the whole psalter in the course of the monthly psalm cycle. This means that it really is the Office for those who do not have many hours in each day to devote to singing the psalms. However, for those who do have more time, perhaps occasionally, and wish to add more Offices in the day from time to time, there are simple options to add Prime (yes Prime!), Terce, Sext, None and Compline.

Second, as I mentioned, it has the full psalter, all 150 psalms, in its cycle. I am not aware of another version approved for use in English that has this. The other option in the vernacular that I know of is the approved translation of the Paul VI psalter. In the Paul VI psalter, even if all the Offices are sung (a minimum of five in a day), you will still not sing the whole psalter as the cursing psalms are omitted altogether (that is three psalms in total), and many of those that are included are incomplete and have missing texts. According to my count 24 psalms that are included in the Paul VI psalter are incomplete and have missing texts. There were no doubt very good reasons for this, bu I am happy that now the Church has decided in her wisdom to allow for a translation of the full psalter to be available for praying in the Liturgy of the Hours. (I wrote about this in more detail in the past, here - Where Have All the *!*?ing Psalms Gone?).

Third, is beauty. I love the approved translation of the psalms that the Anglican Ordinariate uses, which is a form of the Coverdale Psalter. I have to say I am not negative about the Grail translation either, but I do find the Coverdale Psalter especially good. It is has an elegant, poetic Shakespearean feel to it, but is nevertheless accessible. I had have had to look up the meaning of the occasional word I will admit (froward and peradventure for example) but not so often that I lose the flow of text as I sing or read it. (Just fyi, I am the sort of person who finds the actual Shakespeare easy to understand at all. If I attend a performance of even a top quality companies - such as the Royal Shakespeare Company - I always have to buy a program with a one-page synopsis of the plot, otherwise I lose track of what on earth is going on!). I think that if this version of the psalms was sung in the domestic church of Catholic family, the impact it would have on the formation of children growing up and listening to, reading and praying such texts sung on a regular basis would be profound.

There is of course a centuries old tradition of chanting these psalms within the Anglican church and this is now available to us. The text is set out with traditional chant in mind - with couplets. Again, this is one of the great drawbacks of the American version, at least, of the Paul VI psalter. It's almost as if it was set out deliberately to make any form of singing that might be close to a traditional chant very difficult (the British version is better in this respect).

To indicate how adaptible this text is for singing. When I sing the Office I sing the Coverdale psalter to psalm tones based upon traditional chant that we used in the Office when I was teaching at Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in New Hampsire. I use these because if the pointing is done according to the natural emphasis of speech, regardless of which tone is sung, then the tones are designed to match this pointing pattern and so every psalm tone can be sung to any psalm. As a result you don't need to have a full repertoire of tones in order to be able to sing the whole Office, but it does mean that as your repertoire of tones increases, you can apply them to any psalm. The setting of this psalter means that with a quick exercise in pointing, with a pencil, you can sing it in your family. Here is a bit of the text which I have pointed...

For more information on these psalm tones, you can follow the link here. It was these tones that we sung also, when we sang an Evening Prayer (with both the Magnificat and the Nunc Dimittis in English) in the VA Hospital for the Veterans in Manchester, NH. This was very well received by patients and nurses alike (some readers may remember me writing about this in the past, here)

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that something similar and easily available will be produced here.

Note, you don't have to be a member of the Ordinariate to legitimately sing the Office. I mention this because after Leila Lawler and I first suggested, in our book the Little Oratory, that readers think about this as an option at home, some people thought that we were suggesting that people who were already part of the Catholic Church should leave their parishes and become official members of Ordinariate parishes. We were not!

Below is a copy of the CDF approved outline for the layout of Morning and Evening Prayer for the Personal Ordinariates:

Notes:

• Required elements appear in bold, while elements in [squared brackets] are occasional or optional. • The Old and New Testament Lessons are to be taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Catholic Edition.

• The Collect of the Day should correspond to the relevant Collect in Divine Worship: The Missal. • If the Litany is to be recited at Morning or Evening Prayer, it is to be taken from Divine Worship: The Missal (Appendix 8).

• The Invitatory may be accompanied by seasonal antiphons.

• In place of one of the scriptural Lessons, a non-scriptural reading drawn from the 2nd Reading from the Office of Readings in the Liturgy of the Hours may be included. Other non-scriptural readings may be added, but may not replace on of the scriptural Lessons.

• When a lay person leads a public prayer of the Divine Office, the invitation “The Lord be with you” is omitted or substituted by “O Lord, hear our prayer” and the response “And let our cry come unto thee.”

• Night Prayer (Compline) may be recited apart from Evening Prayer, in which case the Nunc Dimittis is always included.

• This Guideline does not exclude the addition of an optional, supplemental provision for the Lesser Hours (Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Compline).

The Devil Hates Latin, Says Exorcist

I just attended a talk by the exorcist for diocese of San Jose dioceses Fr Gary Thomas. He is the subject of a book and a film The Rite starring Anthony Hopkins. (The talk was organized by a group called Catholics at Work.)

First, he was a great speaker. He described how almost by accident and after 20 years as a parish priest he found himself sent to Rome to learn how to celebrate the Rite of Exorcism. He was very clear in saying how, in his opinion, the rise in interest in New Age paganism in recent times has opened the door to adherents to the occult in greater numbers than before, which in turn opens the way to diabolical possession. He has always been inundated with requests (even before the publicity).

The fact that he described these things pretty much in the same straightforward, matter of fact way that one might describe what goes on in a marriage or baptism in a parish RCIA class only served to reinforce the truth of it all for me. And I would say that if anything is to increase your faith, it is  listening to accounts of how the Church overcomes the effects of possession by the devil and demons and the suffering of those poor people who are affected by them.

I wanted to pass on one little comment that he made almost in passing. I do not know where he stands liturgically in regard to the Mass - there was nothing in what he said that led me to believe that he celebrates the Latin Mass for example. However, he did explain that the Rite of Exorcism is only said in Latin. One reason is practical - there is no approved translation in English as yet. He gave another reason why he was so strongly in favor of the use of Latin in the Rite of Exorcism: 'The Devil hates Latin, it is the universal language of the Church'. I asked him about this afterwards and he repeated it saying that his personal experiences as an exorcist who has performed many, many exorcisms have convinced him of this. He told me he had heard from exorcists who did exorcisms in Italian, Spanish and Portuguese (the only approved vernaculars for this Rite) that Latin was the most effective language.

I found an interview with him online, which may interest readers, here.

and here is Fr Gary Thomas,

How Modern Psychology Fails to Account for the Fall

And why the success of Alcoholics Anonymous is based on the fact that it does! In my last blog posting I described the recorded lecture series from Audible.com, which is also a book, called the Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal. I enjoyed it and much of what I heard I found interesting and, as I described in the last posting, very helpful in many ways.

Whatever her personal beliefs on spiritual matters are, she approaches this subject in these lectures as a pure scientist who observes what influences human behavior in order to help people have greater self-control. I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of her observations of general human behavior or her methods for controlling personal behavior based upon those observations. As I mentioned last time, much was consistent with traditional methods for controlling behavior. There were some insights that were new to me and when I tried them out myself they were very helpful in my self control.

However it was when she started to describe why we had these difficulties in the first place that I found myself less convinced.

If you remember, her assessment of the sort of problems in self control arose from an inner conflict. Part of us knows what is good for us in the long term but some people have a problem because they don't have sufficient self control to live in accordance with what we know is good in the long term. This is because we are drawn to what will give us pleasure in the short term. So even thought the dieter knows he should eat healthily, he still can't resist the cream cake when it is put in front of him.

All pretty reasonable so far.

But then she starts to give her reasons as to why she thinks that this conflict exists. She accounts for it in terms of evolution. She begins by assuming that in prehistoric man, all instincts would be in perfect harmony with each other, and with external circumstances. Because man had evolved to deal with his natural environment, she assumes, our emotions and instincts would work well for the sort of situation that prehistoric, precivilization man would have to deal with. When food is in short supply for example, it is important to eat as much as you can when it is available, she says. That instinct remains with us even though the situation has changed. Nowadays we have a surfeit of food and these instincts don't help us. So we continue to act as prehistoric man would and our instincts keep telling us that we should just keep eating even when part of us knows that this isn't serving our long term goals.

The question one might ask at this point is, why didn't man evolve with his environment? Surely the more successful people, and those most likely to reproduce and dominate the general profile of the psychology of the species are those who stay healthy. So those who by naturally have instincts that do not cause them to over-indulge when there is an abundance of available food will dominate and the overall nature of the human race will change.

My guess is that her answer to this would be that something like this would happen in time, but the environmental change has to lead the evolutionary effect that it causes; and there hasn't been time yet for this change in human nature to occur. There is some evidence to support this - from what I recall those races who have had much longer exposure to alcohol historically (eg Jews and Italians) have a much lower rate of alcoholism than those who have a relatively recent exposure, (eg Celtic races such as the Irish, and especially Eskimos and Native Americans).

While I can accept that there might be some general pattern of improvement over time and that it is conceivable that evolution might have a part to play in chat change, I do not believe that this time lag in effect is the sole cause of our problems. Let's apply this to the case of the alcoholism. Clearly, before alcohol was invented there could be no alcoholics. This wasn't a problem for prehistoric man, or at least pre-alcohol, prehistoric man. Once alcohol came into society, the propensity for addiction to alcohol would be different for different people and natural selection would gradually weed out of the population that strain of those who have a greater propensity for alcoholism over time. This explains the observation referred to above, that Jews and Italians have a low alcoholism rate.

However, that doesn't mean, I suggest, that life was mental-problem free for prehistoric man. He was as much subject to Fall as we are. There will have been temptations to immediate gratification of the emotions then as there are now and evolution would never remove those. Regardless of how their environment brought them to the surface, these conflicts would have been as real for them in their interpersonal relationships as they are for us today.

As a Christian would propose the following hypothesis: man has a fallen nature. He will always be in a conflict between what his passions bid him do - the short term goals as described by Ms McGonigal - and between what he knows to good based upon reason. So while the actual temptations might change depending on where and when we live, there will always be something that is going to cause us problems. That's part of human life. Some people will always be greedy and the part of this that derives from as self-centered nature cannot be removed from man altogether by natural means.

In the Christian understanding of man, he is body, soul and spirit. The spirit is that part of our soul that is most likely to be aware of what is good for us in the long term (see more on this anthropology in a past article, here). By long term, I mean the longest term possible, eternity. The spirit is that part which desires our heavenly destiny. In the properly ordered man, spirit, soul and body are all in harmony. In man since the Fall, dubbed by St John Paul II 'Historical' man, these are in conflict. Hence St Paul says that the 'spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak'. Only in heaven will we have perfect ordering of spirit, soul and body. But by degrees we can move towards greater self control in this life.

Both hypotheses - that of modern psychology which says that short term and long term instincts were in harmony for prehistoric man; and the Christian one that says he was as subject to temptation and the effects of the Fall - are scientifically unproven and perhaps unproveable. Prehistoric man comes from a time when, by definition ,there were no historical records, so we just don't know enough about his psychology to be certain about what he was like.

The assumption that primitive man was perfect gained great popularity with the 18th century French writer, Rousseau and his concept of the 'noble savage'. For Rousseau civilization corrupted man, it did not perfect him. Modern psychology, if these lectures are anything to go by, seems to have adopted a faith in the very unscientific and ininspired speculation  of Rousseau.

For the Christian, the ultimate answer to our inner conflict is the same then as it was now, and that is grace - God's help. While this does not invalidate scientific, psychological methods of self control, it does offer an additional and I would say potentially even more powerful source of help for our problems relating to the conflict between the doing what we know we ought. It might even give an explanation as to why the the psychological solution works - it helps us to cooperate with grace.

In support of this I would point to Alcoholics Anonymous and the other 12-Step fellowships that deal with addiction. My understanding is that these are still the most successful means to overcome addiction. They are unapologetically spiritual in their approach. Generally the AA solution does make us of routines and exercises that are very similar to those suggested in the Willpower Instinct, but it adds also a spiritual dimension, such as prayer to a loving Higher Power, God.

No doubt some psychologists will look at AA and try to explain its success in purely psychological terms without consideration of the spiritual. But at root of all these explanations will be an assumption, an unproven hypothesis, that God does not exist and that there must be another explanation. So even where such a psychologist acknowledges the powerful effect of prayer or mediation for example, it will tend to discount the possibility that the reason that it is helpful is because there is truth to the beliefs that underlie them. So they might, for example, acknowledge those those who pray to and worship God have happier lives, but will tend to explain it in terms of a useful psychological trick of self delusion.

Scientific progress in all fields is one of the great blessings of the modern world. However, scientists and non-scientists alike should be aware of the limitations of what science is capable of describing. The underlying assumptions of the scientific method mean that it is absolutely incapable of having anything to say, for or against, about the spiritual realm. When you hear a scientist talk about the spiritual you should be aware of this fact. That person is not speaking as a scientist, but as a non-believing individual who has no more authority in this area than anyone else. The genuine scientist, speaking purely as a scientist, will acknowledge that science cannot test the truth of a hypotheses that relies on the existence of God and a spiritual realm for its validity; while allowing for the possibility, at least of its truth.

--------------

As an afternote: there is, in the Christian worldview a past in which man was perfect and that was man before the Fall. If man today, in the nomenclature of John Paul II is called Historical Man then the perfect man is not 'prehistoric' but pre-Historical. Pre-Historical man was called 'Original Man' by John Paul II. The Judeo-Christian tradition has proper names for Original Man - Adam and Eve. Furthermore, we do not need to wait for evolution to take it's course, which it might, for the perfection of man. By degrees we are transformed supernaturally in this life through our participation in the sacramental life of the Church. We reach our ultimate destiny in union with God in heaven.

So we should ask yourself if the perfect man looks like this:

...or this? To paraphrase St Paul: 'We preach the crucified Christ, who is a stumbling block to Jews and folly to modern psychologists...'

How Modern Psychology Can Help Us To Be Moral

And how it can reinforce the Christian understanding of human behaviour.

I recently listened to a recorded lecture series which was intended to help people increase their self-control in order to have better lives. It was called the Willpower Instinct and was by Kelly McGonigal.  It is available as a book or recorded lectures.

As I listened to this I had a number of thoughts. First, there is plenty here to help Christians to become more moral - I will describe these later on in this blog article.

Second, she approaches this subject as a pure scientist who observes the influences on human behavior in order to help people have great self-control. While I wouldn't quarrel with her observations as a scientist or her methods for controlling personal behavior based upon those observations; I would say that her explanations as to why they work were, for the most part, unproven hypothesis. In fact, it sounded to me as though a Christian understanding of the human person could add even more to what she was offering. I will discuss how in a separate article. Here I want to consider how it struck me that her presentation might help Christians.

These recorded lectures were based upon talks and workshops that she offers that use modern psychological research to help people to gain self control. From the sound of it a lot of her clients are addicts and failed dieters. Through her workshops, she helps people to assert their will power over their own behavior. She defines will power as the capacity to do what part of you really wants to do when another part of you really doesn't want to do it.

What it seems to boil down to in these lectures is trying to order our lives so that they are generally governed by our long term goals rather than short term responses. In order to do this we need to be able to do two things:

1. Do things that part of us doesn't want to do.

2. Resist the desire to do things that part of does want to do.

So, for the addict the need is to learn how to resist that part of us that desires the pleasure of taking whatever substance or indulging in whatever behavior we are addicted to. For those who are procrastinating over doing something that we know gives long term benefits, it is about learning to overcome that lethargy. And for the dieter it seems to a bit of everything: cultivating that part of you that wants to eat healthily, and trying to resist the desire of that part of you that wants to eat cream cakes all day long; and to overcome inertia towards exercising properly.

In this series of lectures she gives a series of exercises that she says have been shown to help people. I tried them out myself in order to try to overcome some bad habits and introduce some good habits into my life and they seemed to work.

The point to understand, she says, is that once a behavior becomes a problem the more we focus our attention on the problem, the more difficult it is to overcome it. So, for example, trying to tell ourselves constantly that we don't want to eat cream cakes is, paradoxically, more likely to increase cream cake consumption than reduce it. This is why dieting is so extraordinarily difficult.

Her suggestion for overcoming this hypothetical cream-cake problem is to introduce three simple exercises into our lives:

1. Find some little activity or group of activities that you don't like doing, but you know you can do regularly - for the slobs among us it could resolving to make your bed everyday, for example - and then resolve to do it regularly. This activity can be anything we choose except the problem behavior.

2. Find some little pleasure to which you are not too attached and then make a point of resisting it daily. Again, this can be anything you like except the problem behavior that you are trying to rid yourself of. This exercise strengthens our capacity to resist temptation if we do it regularly.

3. In a detached way, monitor how often you do the behavior that you really interested in trying to control, the problem behavior that you either want to either reduce or increase. It is important that you don't consciously try to reduce or increase the regularity. Just monitor how often you actually eat cream cakes each day. How many do you eat in a day or week, truthfully?

4. Set yourselves the highest ideals in life, but don't be too hard on yourself when you fall short. Draw a line underneath what happened and start again.

She then describes common pitfalls and temptations along the way and how to be prepared for them.

What struck me about this is how much it reinforces the traditional Christian practices of committing to fasts and abstinence; and to regular commitments to good works. It is not simply that these are good things in themselves, but also, as it was explained to me, if done regularly they will transform us. We become a person who is better at resisting the dangerous temptations; and more inclined to overcome acedia - a sloth towards doing what we ought to do.

So, just taking the examples of a regular routine I was given years ago: in habitual fasting we develop control over the passions and increases our capacity to resist our immediate wants. Similarly; in the habitual practice of loving action by, for example, doing some weekly voluntary commitment for a charity, it will make us better lovers who will take that increased capacity to love into all our relationships. If we habitually give thanks to God for the good things that we have in life regardless of we feel, then in time we will genuinely start to appreciate them and feel good about them. And if we habitually pray to God, regardless of how we feel during the prayer we will strengthen our faith.

The great value of what Ms McGonigal describes is the systematic approach to the subject which gives such great insights as to how to introduce such exercises into our lives so that they become very effective. Also, as in any situation where modern science reinforces traditional Christian practice, it helps to reinforce my faith still further and perhaps, you never know, might help persuade the odd atheist of the truth of the Faith.

What Ms McGonical does not do is help us very much to decide what we ought to want to do. What long term goals, for example, are going to make us happiest if we actually achieve them? Furthermore, in some of her explanations as to why man's desire for short term pleasure so often override what we know objectively will make us happier in the long run. More on this next time....

Denis McNamara to Speak In New York City February 6th (This Saturday)

The Catholic Artists' Society series of talks entitled, the Art of the Beautiful continues this Saturday in New York Saturday with a presentation from architectural historian, Denis McNamara entitled, Incarnation and Transfiguration: Rediscovering the Iconic Nature of Church Buildings. Anyone who has attended one of Denis's lectures or seen the series of talks produced by the Liturgical Institute in Mundelein, where he works, will know that this promises to be a stimulating and enjoyable evening. As usual with the CAS events the talk is followed by a reception and Compline.

Just in case you can't make out the detail on the poster above, the talk is at the Catholic Center, NYU, 238 Thompson Street.

Documentary about the original Divine Mercy image - is this really what Christ looked like?

One of the most familiar images in Catholic churches today is the Divine Mercy image.

Most will be aware of the story of the vision of Sr Faustina and how she instructed an artist in Lithuania to paint it. What I did not know is that the images that we see most commonly in churches, and which are usually reproductions, are not reproductions of the original, but of painted copies of the original.

You can see this in the trailer for the documentary here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSB7uiE7sTA

I present this because I know that this image has a central place in popular piety of Catholics. But I am going to have to come clean here and give my personal opinion. I do not like the Divine Mercy image - I find it a poorly rendered naturalistic image and very sentimental and not conducive to prayer at all. Although now that I look at it, the original, shown above, does look less sentimental than the one I am used to seeing, which always looks something like this:

I did hear a story that Sr Faustina was never happy with the image either and in the end reluctantly agreed to its use assuming that no artist could ever reproduce satisfactorily what she had seen. Then years later, so the story went as related to me, she saw an image of Christ painted in the iconographic style and said, 'That's what he looked like!' I can't corroborate this, but I find it plausible.

Putting my personal preferences about the style aside, there is another very interesting point about this image, I am happy to accept that there is at least a basic likeness between the image and what Sr Faustina actually saw in her vision and described to the artist. The Divine Mercy image of Christ corresponds to the classic likeness that we are used to seeing in so many paintings from the tradition. He has a beard and long hair, for example. This corresponds also to other images not created by human hand, such as the Turin Shroud and the Mandylion.

Is this what Christ looked like historically? The skeptic would say that the Divine Mercy image looks as it does because Sr Faustina's vision came from her imagination, which had been influenced by images that she had already seen; and it was not a vision direct from God at all. The criticisms from the politically correct who are interested in cultural diversity, would take the same line and then go further. They say that the whole tradition is influenced by a Eurocentric vision of the world that makes him a white Western European in flat contradiction to what history tells us about him.

I argue from faith and say that Sr Faustina did see a vision from God, and that (for all my reservations about the style of the painting itself) Christ did look like this. Furthermore, I would say, history backs this up. I will present the arguments in my next blog post on Friday...

May 2016 • World premier of major choral work and three-day conference for musicians and artists

I have just received early notice of the premier of a new major work by composer Frank La Rocca in Dallas, Texas on Saturday, May 21, 2016 at 8:00pm in Dallas, Texas. It is an oratoria called A Rose in Winter - the life of Saint Rita of Cascia. The original libretto is by Matthew Lickona.

The 90-minute work for chorus, orchestra, and soloists was commissioned by Saint Rita Catholic Church (URL) in Dallas, and is the brainchild of Alfred Calabrese, director of music at the parish.

The church is organizing a three-day conference entitled “High Above the Stars: Sainthood, Beauty, and Catholic Artistic Expression.” which will take place on three days prior to the performance (May 19 - 21. The conference is designed for musicians, artists, poets, theologians, and Catholic laity, and deals with the creation of sacred music and art, the promotion of beauty, and the quest for sainthood in everyday life. Masterclasses will be held for conductors, composers, and poets.

For more details, you can read a blog post on the Corpus Christi Watershed website written by Dr Calabrese, through the link here. We are told that a website with more details about the event and on how to register for the conference is coming soon. As soon as I have more information I will pass it on to you.