New York Cultural Center
HUMAN AFFAIRS
Dialogues on events
that shape our world
MEMORY AND
IDENTITYExploring our
heritage
Testing our tradition
BEAUTY WILL SAVE
THE WORLD
Discovering the world
of arts: performances
and presentations
MEETINGS AT
THE CROSSROADS
Face to face with...
A place where roads meet. A time of change.
"If thou among the
eternal
Ideas art numbered,
which the eternal
mind
Deigns not should
e'er be clothed in
fleshly form,
And in frail human
frames
Learn with what ills
our mortal life doth
swarm;
Or if some other
earth be mine of
those
Innumerable worlds
wherewith heav'n
flames,
And, brighter than
the Sun, the nearest
star
Through kinder
atmosphere above
thee glows:
From here, where
days are brief and
skies soon darken,
To this, an unknown
lover's hymn, oh
hearken"

Giacomo Leopardi
"To my lady"
Crossroads Cultural Center in collaboration with
The Department of Art History and Music and
Radius FCLC
present:

Peguy and the
Cathedral of Chartres
A LOVE STORY





An art presentation by
Francis GREENE
art historian

Special guests:

Tony HENDRA
writer and actor, reading Peguy
and
THE CHOIR OF
COMMUNION AND LIBERATION

Wednesday, December 17, 2008 at 7:00pm

Pope Auditorium at Fordham University
60th St. & Columbus Avenue
New York

READ THE TRANSCRIPT

PHOTO GALLERY

DOWNLOAD THE INVITATION
ABOUT THIS EVENT

It is interesting to be in the company of
Charles Peguy a few days before Christmas.
Because it is impossible to approach the
figure of Peguy without being immediately
reminded in the most carnal, direct way of
what Christmas is about: “this marvellous,
unique, extraordinary, unbelievable, eternal
temporal eternal, divine human divine story,
that point of intersection, that unique,
marvelous encounter of the temporal in the
eternal, and reciprocally of the eternal in the
temporal, of the divine in the human, and
mutually of the human in the divine... Here is
Christianity. Everything else, my friend...let's
say that everything else is very good for the
history of religions...” For Peguy truly
Christianity was never an intellectual system
or a moral code: it was a dramatic event, a
new life breaking through into the fallen
world. At Crossroads we have always looked
at him as a witness and an example of  how a
Catholic should look at the world, and in
particular at culture.  Because this
“involvement of the temporal in the eternal
and of the eternal in the temporal” has taken
place, it is possible to value and to save
whatever is good in everything and in
everybody. There is no need to be afraid.
There is no need to be like those whom
Peguy called the “clerics,” those who try to
reverse this “involvement of the eternal in
the temporal” by turning Christianity into a
separate reality, uncontaminated by any
contact with the sinful world.  The Christian
method , on the contrary is the one that
Jesus used: “...Jesus came. He had to spend
three years. He did his three years. But he
did not waste his three years, he did not use
them to whine and to denounce the evils of
the age. Although the evils of the time were
there, of his time.... He cut short. Oh, in a
very simple way. By making Christianity. By
inserting the Christian world in the middle of
things. He did not indict, he did not accuse
anybody. He saved. He did not indict the
world. He saved the world.”

We will be accompanied in this event by Prof.
Francis Greene, and our special guests Mr.
Tony Hendra and the Choir of Communion
and Liberation under the direction of
Maestro Chris Vath.

Dr. Greene began teaching at St. Francis
College in September, 1968 in the
department of Fine Arts and Foreign
Languages. Over the past 30 years he has
taught courses in French language and
literature, fine Arts, and International studies.
Since 1980 he has served as Chair of the
department which now includes a major in
International Cultural Studies, which he has
establish almost a decade ago. In Fall 1999,
Dr. Greene was named outstanding
professor in New York State by the Carnegie
foundation. He is frequent speaker at
academic conferences throughout the US
and has published extensively in the areas of
history, architecture, and French literature

The choir of Communion and Liberation
directed by Christopher Vath. The Choir is
composed of high school and university
students and adults. Their a cappella
repertoire extends from Gregorian chant to
the 20th century and spans countries and
languages. Formed in 1994, the choir has
performed both its Christmas Lessons and
Carols and its Lenten choral meditation
around the New York metropolitan area.
They perform yearly at the Way of the Cross
over the Brooklyn Bridge on Good Friday.

Christopher Vath was born in New Orleans.
He attended North Texas State University,
where he received a Bachelor of Music
Degree in Piano Performance with Joseph
Banowetz. He has worked as composer,
arranger, and pianist in the field of
commercial music. Since 1996, he has been
“Talking Music”, a lecture concert series,
which attempts to lead the listener to the
ultimate questions of humanity through great
works of music. In 2005, in addition to his
Weill Hall debut, he gave a private
performance for Pope Benedict XVI at the
papal summer residence.

Mr. Tony Hendra, born in England, was a
member of the Cambridge University
Footlights revue in 1962, alongside the likes
of John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Tim
Brooke-Taylor, and moved to America a few
years later, where he became one of the
founding editors of National Lampoon
magazine in 1970. In the early 1980s Hendra
helped create the British television puppet
show Spitting Image. Hendra also edited Spy
Magazine for a period in the 1990s. His most
notable acting role was in This Is Spinal Tap,
as the band's manager, Ian Faith. Hendra
received acclaim for his 2004 memoir Father
Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul.
Peguy 11