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Cankultur at the end of an age |
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Written by Michael D. O'Brien
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The difficulty a serious Christian writer faces in this country, when speaking of the cultural revolution (or coup d’état?) that displaces the spontaneous flowering of authentic culture, is that there are no gulags or torture chambers we can point to as evidence that anything remotely like suppression afflicts us. The tragedy, the high drama of the writer’s struggle under overt totalitarianism, is in such stark contrast to the minor trials of the Western writer, that most people consider our situation benign, and our complaints grossly exaggerated. In my opinion, it is precisely our situation that may in the long run prove more deadly to the preservation of “the national heart, the national memory.”
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Written by Michael D. O'Brien
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Subsidiarity is the principle which states that freedoms and their inherent responsibilities are best managed by the smallest competent authority at the level most appropriate to the nature of the persons involved. For example, the family, not the state, is the “first teacher” of the family’s children. Governments may assist the family if parents are unable to exercise their subsidiarity, but the state should do so only as a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed effectively at a more immediate or personal level. In other words, the government and its administrative organs, such as a department of Education, must serve the family, and not the other way around.
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Read more... [Subsidiarity in Art]
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Mediated Media—Anton Casta |
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Written by Anton Casta
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Man is also media to himself insofar as he represents his actualized personhood imperfectly. On a Christian level, we can comment further — man as the tabernacle of the Holy Spirit, "represents" or "mediates" his charge, his divine potential, imperfectly. Christians can speak of man as image (living art), or word (living literature), or as man as media — in terms of dialogue within the universal call to evangelization and the renewed call to engage in that dialogue in the "new" media. For Pope John Paul II , the term "new" here denotes the application of the unchanging Gospel message into the world of new media.
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Pope Benedict XVI to Artists |
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Written by Pope Benedict XVI
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The world in which we live runs the risk of being altered beyond recognition because of unwise human actions which, instead of cultivating its beauty, unscrupulously exploit its resources for the advantage of a few and not infrequently disfigure the marvels of nature. What is capable of restoring enthusiasm and confidence, what can encourage the human spirit to rediscover its path, to raise its eyes to the horizon, to dream of a life worthy of its vocation—if not beauty?
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A Letter to Artists by Michael O'Brien |
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Written by Michael D. O'Brien
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I have received many letters from young Christian painters, writers, and musicians, and ask those of you who have written to me to pardon my delay in responding to your inquiries. The amount of interest in StudiObrien has been overwhelming, and for that reason I’ve been able to reply to only a fraction of the letters I receive.
I would like to write to you a few thoughts about our calling. This will be a sort of Combat Journal from the Culture Wars, penned by a battle scarred veteran. I hope it will cover most of the questions I am regularly asked.
I began to paint full-time for Christ on May 1st, 1976. Though I had been practicing as an artist since 1970, when I had my first one-man exhibition at a gallery, I had not until then made a commitment to overtly Christian themes, nor was I pursuing my art as a vocation. To a certain extent I was drifting and dabbling with the idea, but rather daunted by the seeming impossibility of it. Then I made a consecration prayer on the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker, 1976, quit my job, and threw myself off a cliff so to speak.
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