Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

  I learned after I had been married that Andree, my wife, had spent some time in retreat at the The Benedictine Abbey of Regina Laudis  in Bethlehem, Connecticut. Her time there had left a deep impression upon her. She spoke often of the nuns she heard rather than saw. Occasionally, one would catch glimpses of them through wooden gratings, but their singing drifted out into the chapel, and from there plunged a dagger of beauty into the heart. The Gregorian chant of the nuns is a prayer sung. Plainsong, the official music of the Catholic Church, predates both harmony and polyphony. Andree, I should mention, was a singer, and music for her even now sets her soul aflame. And so, here was this cleansing wave of beauty washing over her, the poetry of the texts in Latin informed with the inexhaustible and numinous mysteries of Christ’s birth, passion, death and resurrection. Later, we visited The Abbey of Regina Laudis together. No doubt Mother Delores Hart was...