A Greek choir in the liturgy (from the UNESCO report)     “UNESCO Recognizes Byzantine Chant as Part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.” So it was proclaimed last December, upon the  motion of the governments of Greece and Cyprus. 1)  Well, UNESCO has spoken, so it must be right! According to the ruling: […]

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Dr. Jennifer Donelson-Nowicka will be teaching sacred music course this summer on-line.   Full informatio can be found at the St. Joseph Seminary website: Summer Sacred Music Courses June 1-July 28 – Principles of Sacred Music ( 3 credits or audit, taught by Dr. Jennifer Donelson-Nowicka, 8 weeks asynchronous online + 2 days online-live [synchronous] via Zoom, […]

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This is the final section of a three-part post. The article begins here     After 1920, St. Paul’s continued for decades on its established path. A massive pamphlet rack was maintained in the church. The Gregorian chant choir kept on its course. The Paulists set up and operated a radio station on the parish […]

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Continued from Part I   What really distinguishes St. Paul’s from other Catholic churches of the era is the magnificent surviving decoration by the noted artists of the era 1890-1920. 1)We should start with the stained glass and painting of the (Catholic) John Lafarge. His non-figurative windows glow with rare deep blues and yellows. These […]

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St. Paul the Apostle 8 Columbus Avenue (or 9th Avenue)  and West 60th Street A major Catholic religious order arising in a modern-age, Protestant and secular city’s streets?  Such was the “Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle” of Isaac Hecker, founded in 1858. An order conceived because Hecker wanted to “convert the Americans” but […]

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  …about how the democracies are dealing with the Coronavirus. “A country, even a culture is imploding right now and nobody seems to care.  What’s taking place right now in the countries which claimed to be civilized?” …… Since I have recalled the responsibility of all of us, I cannot avoid mentioning the even more serious […]

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We wish you and your families a blessed Easter. Medieval stained glass windows are in the Strasbourg Cathedral in France.

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(Above) The “communion package”   This time at the Catholic Chaplaincy of the University of Munich. To enable Students ( in the original German a politically correct, nongrammatical, androgynous form of the word is used) to receive communion at home. The idea is that in this time of pestilence everyone can be  an “extrordinary minister” […]

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(Above) The transept of the grandiose interior. My first encounter with this church was as a solitary visitor in the early 1980s. The interior was dark and dilapidated; like many other Victorian-era churches it had been painted in the course of time a miserable battleship gray. Only a few Vatican II-type banners, hung here and […]

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Church of St. Francis Xavier 30 West 16th Street “Exuberantly complex, a bit offbeat and impossible to ignore” – so David Dunlap describes St. Francis Xavier Church on West 16th street.1) The complex, gray stone exterior  with its jutting porch, towers over its neighbors on this quiet block, which include the buildings of St. Francis […]

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