Arts News

EDMONTON - While theology professor Paul Flaman has received positive feedback to his new book Homosexuality and Following Jesus, he expects the ultimate reaction will be mixed.

A priest-psychologist once told him, “It’s practically impossible to say anything significant about homosexuality without getting somebody mad at you.”

Nevertheless, Flaman is out to sow understanding, not division, all the while making the Catholic teaching clear to his readers.

TORONTO - Musician Susan HooKong-Taylor is doing everything she can in her music ministry to build up the body of Christ.

One way is through a Catholic arts initiative called The Beads.

“The Beads is an initiative that allows people to connect and then to express, to experience and to share a culture of life through the arts,” HooKong-Taylor told The Catholic Register.

WASHINGTON - Just when you might have forgotten about the family-friendly television series Touched by an Angel, series star Roma Downey is tweaking the concept.

Downey, a Catholic, has created a DVD animated series called Little Angels. The premise is that twin siblings are visited by eight child-size angels who are ordinarily stuck on the walls of their bedroom but who come to life after the twins' mother tucks the kids in for the night. The angels take the children on life-lesson-learning adventures. Downey provides the voice of the children's mother.

Creating a sculpture is like playing a game of chess, said sculptor Tim Schmalz of his expanding clay Nativity scene. 

"Your opponent does one move and that will determine your move," said Schmalz. "And with doing a multi-figured sculptural scene like this, I have to react with the central piece… I have to monitor what person plays what role within this drama."

Schmalz worked on his sculpture of baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph at the sixth annual Friends of the Crèche International Convention in November and is currently working on adding the three wise men, shepherds, an angel and animals to the scene. He hopes to have the sculpture completed by Christmas.

TORONTO - For Andrea Rebello, singing sacred hymns is a way to express her love for God.

“(Singing) is an expression of how I like to pray,” said Rebello, cantor and music director at St. Clement Church. “Through the arts, we can really communicate our prayer and love of God, and our faith and devotion.”

Rebello has been doing plenty of praying lately, as she has just recorded a CD, Venite Adoremus, with some of those songs on the playlist at a Christmas concert she was to perform Dec. 17 at St. Clement Church. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to the parish.

TORONTO - For Toronto Deacon Anthony Pignataro, penning poems is merely a form of prayer and service to others.

Writing poetry is “another way of serving others as you disseminate the work and share it,” he said.

Drawing from his ministry as a deacon and 20 years of “inspirational walks through his garden,” Pignataro has just published his first book of poetry, personal essays and meditations, From Under a Linden Tree, published by Sarum House.

TORONTO - Singers, dancers, musicians and artists lent their talents to raise about $4,000 to support the pro-life charity Aid to Women at a Dec. 8 fundraiser at the El Mocambo nightclub.

The event was held on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.

“The owner of El Mocambo is a Marian devotee and he loves Mary and so he loves to donate his club on Marian feast days to causes that understand those feast days,” said Elena Repka, event organizer and vice-president of Aid to Women’s volunteer board of directors. She asked that the club owner not be named to respect his privacy.

This Christmas season, the stories of five diverse people and their journey to the Holy Land to discover the season’s true meaning is airing on CTS’s Journey to Christmas.

The goal of the four-part documentary series was to discover if there was more to Christmas than is typically experienced in North America, said producer Karen Pascal.

“We’re so caught up in the commercialism and the busyness and the gift-giving and I think the true meaning of Christmas has become something really distant,” said Pascal.

GATINEAU - A new exhibit at the Canadian Museum of Civilization manages to explore the diversity of religious belief without falling prey to moral relativism.

God(s): A User’s Guide also conveys through artifacts from a wide range of faiths and multi-media presentations the amazing diversity of religious expression.

The exhibit, which opened Dec. 2 and will run until Sept. 3, 2012, invites people to contemplate the ultimate questions about meaning that underlie all religious faiths, such as the existence of God, the creation of the universe and life after death.

VATICAN CITY - There is "little doubt" that William Shakespeare was a Catholic who was forced to hide his faith in Protestant England while leaving hints about his faith throughout his vast body of work, said an opinion piece in the Vatican newspaper.

Taking a cue from renewed speculation about Shakespeare's true identity sparked by the film "Anonymous," L'Osservatore Romano wrote, "There may be questions regarding his identity, but not his religious faith."