Archive for the ‘Art’ Category

Originally from Calcutta, Jesuit Father Saju George Moolamthuruthil is a dynamic and unique artist with a rare vision and passion for the art and culture of India and a dancer of the bharatanatyam style.  For over 15 years, he has shown a constant concern to conjugate his dancing with his Catholic faith and considers art as an effective means of spiritual integration and social transformation.

In recent years, Fr. Saju has given over 200 performances in India and worldwide and adopting both Hindu and Christian themes in his incorporation of images whether of Radha-Krishna and Shiva-Parvati or of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ.

“I love dance, I love to dance, I love to teach, and I love to experience God and the sacred in and through dance,” says Fr. Saju.

According to the Saju, this art involves prayer and adoration, self-awareness and divine realization, social service, the promotion of interreligious peace and harmony and ecumenism.

The bharatanatyam is an elegant form of dance with a strong visual impact. Originating in the temples in Tamil Nadu, a state in southern India, literally thousands of years ago, this dance style is the oldest of the main forms of classical Indian dance. The dancers, through their choreographies, display gestures and movements representative of mythology, philosophy, epics, ancient stories, contemporary themes and other experiences of life.

Jesuit Father Antonio Spadaro,  the editor of the influential Jesuit journal Civilta Cattolica, U.S. Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl of Washington, a Portuguese poet, a Spanish architect, two astrophysicists, a Belgian journalist and a curator at the Vatican Museums were named by Pope Benedict XVI to help advise the Pontifical Council for Culture.

For the first time since 1993, religious and laymen — not just cardinals and bishops — were named full members of the council.

The new lay members are French philosopher and writer Jean-Luc Marion and Estonian classical composer Arvo Part. Eleven new consultors or advisers were named to the council, including Bruno Coppi, a professor of plasma physics and astrophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Others include: Father Jose Tolentino De Mendonca, a Portuguese theologian and poet; Santiago Calatrava, a Spanish architect; Piero Benvenuti, an Italian astrophysicist; Wolf Joachim Singer, a professor of neurology and head of the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Germany; Marguerite Peeters, a Belgian journalist; and Micol Forti, the curator of the Vatican Museums’ collection of contemporary art.

Blessed John Paul II created the Pontifical Council for Culture in 1982 with the aim of helping the world’s cultures encounter the message of the Gospel. In 1993, the late pope united the council with the council for dialogue with nonbelievers thus paving the way for using culture as a bridge for dialogue between people of faith and those who profess no religious beliefs.

Seattle University’s highly acclaimed chapel, has garnered the American Institute of Architects’ 2012 Gold Medal for architect Steven Holl. The medal is one of the most prestigious awards given to architects, with its previous recipients including Frank Gehry, Santiago Calatrava, Ieoh Ming Pei and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Built in 1997, the Chapel of St. Ignatius was immediately welcomed as Seattle University’s spiritual heart and has come to be a popular destination for visitors interested in joining the campus community in worship or simply marveling at its beauty.

Jesuit Father Jerry Cobb, currently provincial assistant for formation and the provincial assistant for higher education for the Oregon Province, chaired the planning committee that hired Holl and supervised the design and construction of the chapel. As the chapel celebrated its 10-year anniversary in 2007, Father Cobb shared his thoughts with Broadway & Madison, the printed faculty and staff newsletter that preceded the University’s current publication, The Commons. Excerpts from the interview follow.

Broadway & Madison:  What’s something the average faculty or staff member might not know about the chapel?

Father Cobb:  Non-Catholics might be consoled to know that in 1995 we asked Steven Holl to design a chapel that would be “engaging for people of all faiths or no faith or faith-under-crisis.” The poet Rilke once advised that when people disappoint you, you should turn to nature because nature will not disappoint you, and I feel something similar about the Catholic Church. When it disappoints you, which is likely to be every day, you can turn to places such as the chapel where God’s saving presence seems tangible and life-giving.

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Jesuit Father Bob Fabing, an internationally known liturgical music composer and author, has written a Mass setting for Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, known by many as Mother Teresa. The setting, complies with changes to the Roman Missal, and is now available exclusively online.

“The inspiration for this Mass came from my 70 meetings with Mother Teresa and my many, many, many meetings with her Sisters. I wanted a melody that all of those who Mother Teresa reached out to—the poor: physically, emotionally, and spiritually—could relate to and which would bring them all to Christ at his Eucharistic Liturgy,” said Fr. Fabing. “I wanted a melody that all of those who Mother Teresa reached out to—the poor: physically, emotionally, and spiritually—could relate to and which would bring them all to Christ at his Eucharistic Liturgy.”

Father Fabing is the founder of the Jesuit Institute for Family Life Network, which includes 44 marriage counseling and family therapy centers in California and Oregon. He is the director of the 36-Day Program in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius at the Jesuit Retreat House in Los Altos, California, where he lives. The deep spirituality of his music is the fruit of his many years directing these counseling and spirituality centers.

He has also ministered in China for many years, teaching, promoting liturgical music and spreading the Good News of the Gospel.

For more information about the Mass of Teresa of Calcutta, please visit the Oregon Catholic Press website.

Jesuit Father Henry Garnet was tried and hanged in 1606 for his knowledge of the previous year’s Gunpowder Plot, in which Robert Catesby and other influential English Catholics nearly blew up Parliament and King James I of England. Witnesses said spectators pulled the priest’s legs as he writhed in the air to give him a speedy death and spare him more prolonged attention from the executioner.

In Jesuit Father Bill Cain’s play “Equivocation,” the man pulling on Garnet’s legs is William Shakespeare, the playwright for the theatrical company The King’s Men. He is commissioned by Robert Cecil, a power-player behind King James I, to write a play declaring the government version of the events of the plot. The King himself wrote the first draft.

“We don’t do politics,” Shakespeare says. “We do histories. True histories of the past.”

The play revolves around the cost of a government lie and how politics can become personal. Presented in modern language and dress, Equivocation presents a dilemma: tell the truth and lose your head or write propaganda and lose your soul? This political thriller reveals the complexities of the truth, the perils of compromise, and the terrible consequences of equivocation.

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s production of Equivocation will be playing at the Arena Stage in Washington DC starting on November 18, 2011. For tickets, visit the Arena Stage’s box office online.