Arts and Culture

When Pieter Claeissens the Elder was painting Moses Breaking Pharaoh’s Crown, Europe was entering a complex and confusing period of continual warfare. The crude version of this history blames it all either on Catholics trying to wipe out Protestants or Protestants trying to eliminate Catholics. Actually, it had more to do with money, geo-politics, empire, trade and a ruling class that was deeply incompetent.

LONDON -- In a basement of London’s stately British Library, the light plays through interconnected rooms on a glittering array of paintings, jewels and statuettes, encased amid ancient books, manuscripts and letters.

From the cover art through the 175 pages that follow, Fr. Harrison Ayre’s new book is a contemplative experience.

Singer songwriter Kat Higgins has finally discovered her Vancouver voice, and it only took relocating to Nashville a decade ago to find it.

In two decades as a Catholic convert, I am privileged to have called Holy Father two immense Popes: the unconquerable Pole, St. John Paul ll; and the scholarly German, Benedict XVI.

The hamlet of Downeyville in Ontario’s Kawartha Lakes region is a very different town from when author and community historian Dan Sullivan grew up there in the 1950s and ’60s.

Celebrated Canadian actor Robert Holmes (R.H.) Thomson is about to step back into his element after a pandemic-induced hiatus.

Count Fr. Paul Massel among the Canadian theatre lovers hyped for the return of Jesus Christ Superstar, now on stage in Toronto.

VANCOUVER -- Living with cerebral palsy and blindness, restricted to a wheelchair, 35-year-old Melanie Krishna does not fit anyone’s preconceived image of a singer-songwriter. But the St. Joseph’s, Langley, B.C., parishioner is not only a member of a community choir and an enthusiastic singer of hymns at Mass, she has also produced her own CD — one filled with joyous, life-affirming songs that she wrote herself.

When Pablo Picasso said “The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls,” it wasn’t a casual remark. Picasso thought a lot about his own soul, the soul of the Spanish nation, the soul of 20th-century modern art, and he thought about it in very Catholic terms.