Saturday, January 30, 2016

A New Essay by Shawn Tribe

Some of our readers will have no doubt heard of The Dorchester Review here on NLM and elsewhere. For those who haven’t, it is a bi-annual, small-c conservative journal coming from Canada which focuses on history, politics, arts and culture, Western civilization and more. A good sense of that journal’s focus and sympathies can be found in its manifesto, which, among other things, makes reference to Hilaire Belloc and comments that the review “is founded on the belief that leisure is the basis of culture” (an obvious reference to German Catholic philosopher, Josef Pieper, whose most well known work is an essay by the same name).

In the current Fall/Winter issue, NLM readers will be interested to know that our founder and former editor, Shawn Tribe, has contributed an article on the matter of the politics of tradition. It is a two part piece, the second part of which is written by Bernard Pothier, author of a history of the FSSP parish in Ottawa, St. Clement’s.

In the first part, Shawn aproaches the question of the importance of the liturgical tradition of the church as part of a broader discussion of why this tradition should matter to Catholics and non-Catholic alike. To accomplish this, the Catholic liturgical tradition is looked at from a Burkean perspective on the one hand and and as a cultural and artistic treasure of Western civilization on the other. In the second part of the piece, Bernard Pothier gives his first hand account of the liturgical reforms as they occurred within the context of Catholic Quebec, setting the scene for what happened before, during and after.

NLM is pleased to be able to bring our readers a preview of this piece. Those who are interested in reading it in its entirety, as well as the other articles in this excellent journal, may wish to consider purchasing a copy of it here. (Click the images to enlarge and read.) You can also follow Shawn on Facebook and Twitter.



Winter/Autumn 2015: EDITOR’S NOTES

... The pursuit of beauty, truth, and goodness is not a universal aspiration today. Perhaps little appreciated is a form of religious worship that in the past inspired great art, music, and architecture: the traditional Mass of the Roman Church, the subject of Shawn Tribe and Bernard Pothier’s essays under the title “Wasteland” (p. 65). It is small wonder that a group of the most distinguished secular liberals living in 1971 appealed to Pope Paul VI not to allow this rite, as a treasure belonging to “universal culture,” to be destroyed (p. 69).

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