You are invited to a new Young Adult Series on the Most Blessed Sacrament on Saturday, July 24th at the Shrine of Holy Innocents in New York City.
Join us for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, a Eucharistic talk, and young adult social with refreshments. Grow in faith in community with young Catholics (~18-40) from the New York area!

This event series is hosted by Juventutem NYC, a newly-formed official chapter of Fœderatio Internationalis Juventutem.

RSVP at Juventutem NYC Events.

A Bernini marble sculpture of a skull rediscovered in Dresden – as described in Art News:

Eerily life-like marble skull—hidden in plain sight in a German castle—was made by Bernini for the Pope.

The artistic sensitivity of the baroque world was extraordinary! The marble skull was made for Pope Alexander VII around 1655. If you visit Dresden the skull can be viewed in an exhibition that has just opened. The gallery’s full description is here:

Bernini, the Pope and Death

“In the seventeenth century, sudden and often violent death was omnipresent, which is why people were intensely preoccupied with mortality. A constant threat was posed not only by wars and assaults, but above all by diseases. In 1656 there was an outbreak of plague in Rome, and it is remarkable how closely the measures Alexander VII used to fight the epidemic (quarantine, masks, and the extensive shutting down of public life) resemble those that determine our everyday life in the face of the coronavirus today. Death, too, is again more prominent in people’s consciousness due to the current situation, and Bernini’s death’s head thus proves to be a memento mori of extraordinary topical relevance.“

(From the gallery’s description)

Actually, people “were intensely preoccupied with mortality” in almost all ages and cultures up to the dawn of Western Modernity, which has made a deliberate effort to suppress and marginalize the subject. A topic already incomparably set forth by Edgar Allen Poe in The Masque of the Red Death.

Friday, March 5, 2021 at 7:15 PM EST

Price: Free

Public  · Anyone on or off Facebook. To access the event go to https://www.facebook.com/events/289596409255454/

A lecture by Charles Weaver, Music Director at St. Mary’s Church, Norwalk, CT

Much music composed for the Roman Catholic Mass over the last millennium and more has found a wide and appreciative audience outside of its original liturgical context. Listeners with little or no connection to the Church often react favorably to the transcendent and timeless qualities of plainchant, and sixteenth-century choral settings of liturgical music are a staple of concerts and recordings by vocal ensembles. In this talk, Weaver will relate this music to the gestures and ritual actions of the Mass of the Roman Rite as practiced from the sixteenth century to the present day, with an aim to enriching the understanding of modern audiences from outside of the Western Catholic tradition. He will also discuss the role that liturgical music (especially plainchant) played in older, Church-run models of music education, and how these might be adapted for use in teaching music to children today.