Beauty Makes a Comeback

Beauty Makes a Comeback by Jeremy Tate at First Things. While fans of clichés will insist beauty is in the eye of the beholder, numerous surveys say otherwise. The public despises brutalist designs by an overwhelming 3-to-1 margin. Traditional styles, by contrast, draw one’s attention because they are attractive. One day, as he was driving in the mountains north of Los Angeles, actor Anthony Hopkins noticed an ornate tower rising high above the tree line and, intrigued, decided to stop and investigate. He found himself on the campus of Thomas Aquinas College. “I’ve never seen such a beautiful place in my life,” he explained during an impromptu question and answer session with students. “It’s amazing.” Read  

St. MacKillop Can Inspire Educators to Foster Hope, Pope Says by Catholic News Service at Our Sunday Visitor. Catholic education is an excellent form of evangelization, Pope Francis said. “Indeed, education does not consist of filling the head with ideas,” he told people at his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square June 28. Education is “accompanying and encouraging students on the path of human and spiritual growth, showing them how friendship with the Risen Jesus expands the heart and makes life more humane,” he said. Read

Dignity in Death: Catholic High Schoolers Bury the Dead by Emily Lehman at National Catholic Register. Many Catholics are familiar with the corporal works of mercy; a plethora of ministries serve the basic needs of our fellow men and women, especially clothing the naked and feeding the hungry. But one way of meeting the material needs of the less fortunate tends to be forgotten in our time: burying the dead…. The pallbearer ministry at St. Ignatius serves at about 250 funerals per year, totaling more than 1,600 to date. What is more, the ministry has spread to more than 10 high schools in the area and further into the Midwest, offering pallbearer services, prayer and companionship to the indigent and lonely who pass away. Read

The Drug on Your Phone by Emile Doak at The American Conservative. “What I’m trying to convey is that the arrival of the iPhone and the move of social media onto mobile, which happened around 2011 or 2012, caused a great rewiring of childhood, creating childhoods that are not conducive to human development,” [Jonathan] Haidt told TAC. Read

Reading and Math Scores Plummet as Racial and Sexual Activism Replace Academics by Tony Kinnett at The Daily Signal. Several California suburban public school districts reported abysmal reading and math performances in 2022 but have spent little time attempting to provide remediation since. Instead, these California districts threw their time and resources into celebrating LGBTQ activism. Hollywood and Glendale schools chose to implement curriculum on the history of “LGBTQ+ activists” in place of additional reading and math instruction. Read

Throwback Thursday

Why Beauty Matters by Dana Gioia at First Things on February 18, 2020. Contemporary culture has discarded the concept of beauty in both art and philosophy. It is not a word much used nowadays, even by art critics, except ironically.  But the absence of beauty as a positive concept has left a hole in our thinking—not only in art and philosophy but also in education, politics, worship, and civic life. And its absence has doomed much of what we do in the public sector to failure. Watch