Punditry

Finally got to watch this movie last night on Blu-Ray via Netflix.

This is a French movie based on a true story of a monastery in Algiers and the men of the monastery and their working with the local Muslim village.  This movie is based on John Kiser’s prize winning book, The Monks of Tibhirine: Faith, Love and Terror in Algeria ( St Martin’s Press)

I had read great reviews of this movie and was not disappointed in any way.  Just pitch perfect – maybe the best movie addressing Catholic themes ever.  The pace of the story in not forced and it gradually unfolds as you see the day to day life of the monks and their interactions in caring for the local folks.  Ora et Labora (Pray and Work) has never been illustrated this well outside of the documentary “Into Great Silence.”

The intrusion of Radical Islam into their lives is what sets the counterbalance to their lives.  Their silence is interrupted by the gong of violence.  There are so many wonderful scenes that illustrate this as first a disquiet is found in the monastery which is later replaced by the Peace of Christ.  One scene which is an obvious parallel to the Last Supper is just superb and not overdone.  A story of martyrdom in the St. Thomas More vein since neither More or these monks looked for martyrdom, but just wanted to be faithful.

The acting was excellent and each monk was a character of his own – especially the elderly monk.  This is just filming at its finest with all the art of the professional.  If only Christian filmmaking could learn a lesson from this film and it should make many Christian filmmakers blush in comparison.  When I see the phrase “From the producers of Fireproof” I cringe knowing that here comes another movie with good intentions, Christian worldview, and horrible art.

I do wonder how this movie ever got made and the force behind it.  The movie was just profound on several levels and a great presentation of the Catholic faith that got so many things right and certainly induced a tear to two from me.

Bravo!

Review from Decentfilms.com

There are many words and phrases I have come to despise or at least dislike to some degree.  Some phrases though have a rather pleasant exterior but not always the best of consequences.

The phrase lately to have annoyed me is “Soul Mates.”  This is rather a nicely romantic term and on the surface not much more than that.  A term used by a lot of people, though it does tickle my metaphysical funny bone when atheists talk of soul mates.  This is also a term used within Catholic circles and I am certainly not condemning those who use it.

What annoys me about the term is the thinking behind it.  When taken as sort of a romantic idea it certainly has it’s appeal.  It is just amazing that so many people find their soul mates within distance of where they work, go out, etc.  Luckily for us our soul mates seems to be rarely on the other side of the world from us. It also seems to me to have a bit of Calvinistic tinge to it in predetermination of people who are to be  soul mates.  God outside of time  who sees time as the eternal now sees who our spouses are to be, but we still have total free will as to that.

But what if you are married and are having difficulties and buy the idea of soul mates.  Do you then go in searching for your soul mate since things haven’t worked out?  Or go through a string of marriages in pursuit of that soul mate?  We already have a culture of when things get difficult, try and try again – but with somebody else of course.  Or what if your soul mate dies?  Can you have multiple soul mates?

Maybe what annoys me most is that love is an act of the will not some predestined bonding.  There are certainly issues concerning compatibility and other points,  But even romantic love is an act of the will, an act of the will that must be repeated.  Nobody really falls out of love,  they have fallen in their will to love.  For those with a vocation to marriage who they marry will be determined by multiple factors including accidental ones along with things like personality, etc.

On the other hand at least soul mate includes an understanding beyond just materialism that we indeed do have a soul.  The term also signals the exclusivity of the natural law understanding of marriage.  The term as a romantic idea and not metaphysical one  is probably harmless – but thinking the idea through just annoys me.  Maybe also the idea of soul mates annoys me since after my grandfather died my grandmother later remarried to another good man.  Her second husband was one of her high school boyfriends and she often joked about getting to marry both of her high school sweethearts.  Wow two soul mates in one high school class. Again though, I am probably overacting and people just use the term in the romantic sense – but as a blogger I am duty-bound to write out my annoyances.  Just part of the contract.

Sometime you just got to let a story breath first before commenting.

A new and intriguing prospect for the Crystal Cathedral emerged Wednesday when the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange said it was considering buying the bankrupt church in Garden Grove and converting it to a Catholic cathedral.

The announcement by Orange Bishop Tod Brown came one day after Chapman University made a $46-million bid for the 40-acre site. The Crystal Cathedral had earlier reached a tentative agreement for a sale and lease-back deal with a real estate developer, subject to approval by U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Robert Kwan. [Source]

Obviously Bishop Tod Brown in his last year as bishop has wondered just what he could get for the incoming bishop.  Though I can imagine the incoming bishop saying “Thank you, but you shouldn’t have. I mean you really shouldn’t have”  I guess Bishop Brown was just having crystal envy from Oakland’s Cathedral.  Though pursuing Robert Shuller sounds more like an idea conceived using crystal meth.

The Cathedral of Christ the Light come under the direction of Bishop John Cummins and dedicated under Bishop Vigneron and I really feel for Bishop Salvatore J. Cordileone who is stuck with it today.

Though I guess there is an upside if the they acquire the Crystal Cathedral.  There could advertise hour blocks of Eucharistic Adoration as  the “Hour of Power” – well maybe not.   It does though have one of the largest piper organs in the world – which I am sure the bishop would strip out and replace with a piano.

I have it on good authority that the Crystal Cathedral is not the only building they are pursuing to use as a Cathedral.  In fact I hear there are talks with Superman to acquire the Fortress of Solitude if it happens to be within the geographical bounds of the Diocese of Orange California.

Oh well, as a palette cleanser look at the propose new Cathedral of Pristina – now that is more like it.

I believe Mark Shea has said in the past something to the effect that for now the Church is (rightly) attacked for cover up of pedophiles and later she will be attacked for condemning pedophilia.

Well in the first step of normalizing pedophilia.

Torchwood: Miracle Day will include a pedophile character whom audiences are supposed to like.

No, I am not kidding.

Yes, we should tar and feather every BBC writer and executive and actor who goes along with this. And I don’t mean that figuratively, since they apparently think they should literally rape our childhoods and our children. [Via Aliens in this World]

I’ve been meaning to post this video having seen it around and most recently at Happy Catholic.

It would have been more enjoyable without the vulgar language.

The Pertinacious Papist had commented on this.

The most telling thing, of course, is how little either of them actually seem to know about Catholicism, sad to say. For example, Jack White says at one point that person conceived in the Immaculate Conception was Jesus, and Colbert says at another point that the Virgin Mary’s mother was Elizabeth. Ah well … all in the name of entertainment.

And I would add Colbert got the question on instances of Papal Infallibility wrong also. It has not only happened twice, it also happens with canonization of saints. Though many get this wrong.

Now I am a fan of Jack White, musically at least, owning everything he has done – White Stripes, The Raconteurs, The Dead Weather. But cultural Catholicism doesn’t much impress me.

I am late to the game in commenting on the latest development in Corapigate. The official statement made by SOLT seems to make it quite clear that Fr. Corapi indeed was guilty of the accusations made and that he left behind a trail of email, and SMS Sexting messages that pretty much make it quite clear what was going on along with other irregular behavior.

SOLT’s fact-finding team has acquired information from Father Corapi’s emails, various witnesses and public sources that, together, state that, during his years of public ministry:

— He did have sexual relations and years of cohabitation (in California and Montana) with a woman known to him, when the relationship began, as a prostitute.

— He repeatedly abused alcohol and drugs.

— He has recently engaged in “sexting” activity with one or more women in Montana.

— He holds legal title to over $1 million in real estate, numerous luxury vehicles, motorcycles, an ATV, a boat dock, and several motor boats, which is a serious violation of his promise of poverty as a perpetually professed member of the society. [Via Jimmy Akin’s Blog]

Like many I was a bit caught off-guard by this. When it comes to the mystery sin I am seldom surprised when somebody falls. I always saw the possibility that Fr. Corapi was indeed guilty of the charges, but also like many held-out thinking that there was a good likelihood that the charges were false. When he initially left his order I was annoyed that he did not stay to fight it out and to help maybe change the process when it comes to accusations of priests.

This latest revelation does anger me a bit or to be more accurate highly annoyed. Not that he fell. That he fell certainly saddens me and just reminds me to pray for him as we must hold up our of our priests in prayer. What annoyed me is the same thing that annoyed me about Rep. Weiner who kept denying what happened and attacked his accusers even as more and more photographic evidence was coming out. That Fr. Corapi kept maintaining his evidence and blaming the process is a betrayal to his fans. We can understand someone falling into serious sin, but someone of Fr. Corapi stature lying to us in the aftermath is another story. But I won’t let the sun go down on my anger and annoyance.

Phil Lawler asks Why were warning signs ignored?

In many ways it was a recipe for disaster with Fr. Corapi living in isolation in Montana away from his religious order with access to large sums of money that had gone unmonitored. As a convert I certainly realize the dangers of an incomplete conversion or being put into circumstances that can lead to backsliding and falling back into a previous orbit.

I always felt the saying “There but for the grace of God, go I” as being rather trite, but I feel the merit of it in this circumstance. God gives us all the grace we need to persevere and we have to cooperate in that grace.

In the reply of St. Joan of Arc to a question posed as a trap by her ecclesiastical judges: “Asked if she knew that she was in God’s grace, she replied: ‘If I am not, may it please God to put me in it; if I am, may it please God to keep me there.” May it be so for all of us.

When it comes to patriotic anthems I do love “America the Beautiful”, especially the second stanza.

O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare of freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!

A patriotic song that allows for critique concerning flaws hits me just right. And I really like “Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law! ” A message sorely lacking today.

Growing up in the sixties and seventies I wasn’t very patriotic in that I thought there was nothing but flaws. It took joining the military for non-patriotic reasons and seeing the world to finally come to understand my homeland and to see it in a new light. It is always easy to be complacent and not realize what you have until you have something to compare it to.

Spot the “offensive photo” in the picture above. Wow this is much harder than “Where’s Waldo.” Give up? Well it’s the ultrasound photo on the banner of course.

The Jaycees have thrown out the “Palantine Area Catholics Respect Life Group” because of the “offensive photo” on their banner and won’t allow them to march in this years 4th of July Parade.

“They decided that an unborn baby is too offensive,” said Martin Kelley, co-founder of Palatine Area Catholics Respect Life. “It’s an ultrasound photo. It’s not a picture of an aborted baby. [Source Warner Todd Huston]

Also of course the gay and lesbian group will be allowed to be part of the parade since everybody knows these groups show so much restraint.

Well maybe one day we can have an Independence Day for the Unborn when they are allowed to live.

Maureen Down interviews Gov. Cuomo.

I FIGURED I’d get straight to it.

“So, Governor,” I asked, “are you afraid you’re going to hell?”

Andrew Cuomo, inculcated at Immaculate Conception grade school, Archbishop Molloy High School and Fordham University, chuckled. “There are forms of hell, Maureen,” he answered. “The question is, which level?”

Rather funny answer, but really more of an evasion than answer.

“I have a portrait of Saint Thomas More in my office,” the governor said, calling from the statehouse in Albany. It is a picture Mario Cuomo once kept in his office. He gave it to Andrew as a present when he graduated from Albany Law School, and the younger Cuomo has kept it with him for 30 years as he moved from job to job and city to city. “It’s not the first time there is a tension between the teachings of the church and the administration of the law, for my father and for myself.” Dryly, he adds: “I haven’t lost my head yet.”

Before the vote on same-sex marriage I had tweeted “NY Vote reminds me that when it comes to marriage as Sts. John the Baptist and Thomas More learned you can easily lose your head.”  Maybe a prophetic tweet when it comes to Gov. Cuomo.  The Governor I must admit is quite glib.

I wonder what ironic devotions to saints from Catholic politicians we will find about next?

I have long felt that Catholic politicians are often irony deficient. Iron deficiencies lead to nutritional deficiencies, and irony deficiencies lead to theological deficiencies that make you make statements like the above.

Saint Thomas More was a great defender of marriage and of the teaching authority of the Church. He refused to support King Henry VII in his marriage to Anne Boleyn after the Pope refused to grant an annulment. He would not sign the Act of Succession or acknowledge the Kings’ supremacy over the Pope. There is many ways he might have quibbled in this by interpolating the document in generous ways as many people urged him to do. St. Thomas More was certainly no one rushing off to martyrdom, but he would not compromise his faith knowing he would have to answer for his conscience.

Gov. Cuomo on the other hand has no regard for marriage in his private life and in his public life shows his distain of marriage by signing the bill for same-sex marriage. His obedience to the Pope and the teachings of the Church to say the least are somewhat lacking.

Nothing would please me more than if he ever developed a true devotion to St. Thomas More and repented of his actions. For now though that picture on his desk is nothing more than cultural Catholic prop to use in conversations with other cultural Catholics.  St. Thomas Becket was once a man who craved political power over his faith and yet he died a martyr to the faith.  St. Thomas Becket please pray for Gov. Cuomo.

That tension he talks about between the teachings of the Church and administration of the law is not really a tension. The gap between the teaching and his administration of the law is a chasm similar to the one that separated the rich man from Lazurus in Jesus’ parable. More like that tension it is the black hole  gravatic pull of a contradiction and paradox. A tension runs more in the line of prudential actions in applying the faith and the natural law. Approval of same-sex marriage is not only contrary to his faith, but to natural law. He has not administered a law and as St. Thomas Aquinas said “An unjust law does not seem to be a law at all.”

Canonist Ed Peters makes some excellent points.

As does Thomas Peters.