Monthly Archives: November 2009

Bonaventure’s Complete Works Online

You may know from viewing the persons in my blog’s sidebar that I am a fan of the Seraphic Doctor, St. Bonaventure. You may not know that his complete works (his opera omnia, if you will) has been scanned by Google and placed online in Google books and on the new Hathi Trust Digital Library where you can download PDF’s of the full non-critical Quaracchi Latin edition of his works. These books are very expensive and hard to find and it is an absolute joy to me that they are now online and freely available to all. Of course, if you don’t read Latin, you’ll still have to buy a translation, but perhaps, Google translate will come out with a Latin-English function. 🙂 We can all hope.

Bonaventure published several commentaries on Scripture. Recently, the very diligent friars at St. Bonaventure College in Pennsylvania, the Franciscan Institute of St. Bonaventure University have been translating Bonaventure’s scripture commentaries and his other works into English. They are up to 14 volumes now!

[Updated 9/1/14]

Ratzinger on Classical Music

I was amused by Ratzinger’s comment on classical music and I thought you would be too:

  • “Modern so-called ‘classical music’ has maneuvered itself, with some exceptions, into an elitist ghetto, which only specialists may enter–and even they do so with what may sometimes be mixed feelings.”

-Joseph Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2000) 147.

If you have ever sat through an entire performance of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring or a Bartok String Quartet (as I have) or even the ridiculous “composition” 4’33 by John Cage, you know exactly what he’s talking about.

Kasemann on the Root Sin

I came across an interesting thought from Ernst Käsemann in my reading today:

  • “To undertake to preserve independence over against God is the root sin…”

Ernst Käsemann, “‘The Righteousness of God’ in Paul” in New Testament Questions of Today (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1969) 180.

How true!