The Human Figure in Art: Watch Now!

Escape into the Real with the Saints

Charity Hill

You may wonder, do we really need another saint book? Didn’t the good Fr. Lovasik say everything in his 101 titles of the Saint Joseph Picture Book Series?

Too often images of saints for young and very young children are “flat and friendly,” digitally produced and barely differentiated. Many illustrations of saints simply lack technical skill and demonstrate a failure to apply the elements of art to their creation. After all, depictions of the saints must, in written and artistic form, invite children to “escape into the real.”

Saints: A Family Story, written by John and Catherine Cavadini (a father-daughter author team) and illustrated by Anastassia Cassady, offers a uniquely excellent response.

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The Problem of Drugs

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger

I recall a debate I had with some friends in Ernst Bloch’s house. Our conversation chanced to hit on the problem of drugs, which at that time—in the late 1960s—was just beginning to arise. We wondered how this temptation could spread so suddenly now, and why, for example, it had apparently not existed at all in the Middle Ages. All were agreed in rejecting as insufficient the answer that at that period the areas where drugs were cultivated were too far away. Phenomena like the appearance of drugs are not to be explained by means of such external conditions; they come from deeper needs or lacks, while dealing with the concrete problems of procurement follows later.

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