The mainstream newspapers are not even worried about blowback anymore. They just assume that they have so thoroughly won the culture war that they don't even have to hide the condescending loathing for the formerly dominant Christian religion:
Bishop Gerald Dino led the prayers and dedication, asking for their deity to “bless and sanctify this house.” He led a procession through the building, blessing each classroom, before going on the balcony and blessing the parish and the congregation.
"Their deity." Mythical-Place-of-Eternal-Happiness forbid the Las Vegas Review-Journal uses the word "God" to describe the focus of Catholic prayers.
Just another small hint of what the traditional Christian American should by now be very well aware of: These people are opposed to your very existence. They despise what you hold sacred and they do not see fit to offer even the tiniest sliver of respect for the things you cherish.
It's another milestone on the "tolerance" highway. Last stop: outright hostility. As this milemarker shows, we are getting closer and closer to reaching our destination.
Got a new article published on the Crisis Magazine website this week. As it shows, it's summertime and I've got movies on my mind. So without further ado, here are a few moments from films that richly embody Catholic values. These are not the usual suspects, i.e., "A Man For All Seasons," "The Song of Bernadette", etc. but either films that sadly lack the attention they deserve or are not the kind of movies you would expect to appear on a list like this. So here we go:
1. The Hustler - Brick-laying Can Be Great If a Guy Knows
A shining moment in a wonderful film, Eddie Felson's description of how his pool skills felt to him when he was really on is a brilliant exposition on appreciating the talents God gives us. Sure, it was just shooting pool, but Felson, memorably played by Paul Newman, reveals in this scene grateful enjoyment of his talent for what it is, not just for what it can do for him or what he can get from it. Doing something and doing it well can truly be its own reward. How far removed we are these days from such sentiments. Imagine how much better the world would be today if employers and employees alike held such a proper and respectful regard for the talents human beings have to offer.
Unfortunately, could not find a video clip but the dialogue can be found here.
2. The Picture of Dorian Gray - Heaven Forgive Me
Oscar Wilde's classic novel made for an outstanding 1945 Catholic film, starring Hurd Hatfield, George Sanders and Donna Reed. The innocence of young Gray is corrupted by an idle lord, played unforgettably by Sanders, and the grisly end of the film reveals the results of his terrible influence on the younger man. The true horror and repentance evidenced by the carelessly scandalous character makes for a powerful display of the grave danger to be found in casual words and example.
Spoiler alert: If you haven't seen the movie, don't watch this:
3. Ballad of a Soldier - Entire Film
I've always been a fan of war films from earliest childhood and, going back as far as I can remember, I always hoped to see a representation of the true cost of war, of all that untapped potential of all those young lives extinguished before they could really make their mark on the world. It is the essence of Catholicism to prize the individual human being, and the carnage of modern warfare is the most brutally obvious way in which our industrialized world fails to cherish this prize. I always wanted to see that portrayed on film in an honest, non-cloying way. So it shocked me beyond words to discover that such a movie was out there all along, and that it was made in all places in the Soviet Union. This film has such a beautiful soul and gives such a vivid picture of the potential and promise of one young soldier that it is simply amazing that it came out of the same country that literally forced young unarmed conscripts to link arms and charge German machine guns in open field during World War II.
Surely one of the best war films of all time, and one of the most human, and therefore Catholic, in its celebration of individual life, the entire film can be viewed here.
4. Anne of The Thousand Days - I Shall Be Excommunicated
The fact that this film did not become as popular as the equally outstanding "A Man For All Seasons" can be entirely explained by the social changes that overcame (read: destroyed) The West in the 1960s. When "A Man For All Seasons" won multiple Oscars for 1966 there was still an appreciation for traditional theatrical productions. By the 1969 Awards, the edgy, rebel (read: scum) "new" filmmakers were in vogue, and Hollywood laughably made "Midnight Cowboy" the best film of the year ahead of "Anne of the Thousand Days." Just try to watch the horribly dated and flat-out awful "Midnight Cowboy" today; the word "excrement" does not even begin to describe it. Meanwhile, the far superior and lasting film snuck under the radar as the years went by. A great pity, for this film crackles with witty dialogue and strong acting performances, from Richard Burton in the lead to John Colicos as a better Cromwell than the worthy Leo McKern was in "A Man For All Seasons" to Anthony Quayle as a far superior Wolsey than the bloated Orson Welles in "AMFAS". Burton's speech in which Henry VIII truly contemplates the consequences of his move to split from Rome is an all-time classic Catholic moment in film, one that is tragically overlooked today because of the whims of a trend-chasing Hollywood in the late '60s.
Find the film if you can, but you can view an actually quite excellent homage to this gem of a scene here.
5. Ferris Beuller's Day Off - A Man With Priorities So Out of Whack
OK, here's a lighter one for you, but I find this to be one of the best quotes to describe Protestants and the materialistic culture they have inflicted on us today. Saw a bit of this movie the other day. LOVE this scene. What makes it is he's stroking and admiring the car as he delivers that perfect line.
Theologically, one of the all-time great Catholic lines in cinematic history! No joke.
That's the worst thing about it: Protestants (and far too many Catholics today) admire material things to such an extent that they don't even understand the actual purpose of the things themselves and thus they end up ruining these very things that they inordinately love. Unfortunately, they ruin it for us all in the process as well because their actions DO have a profound effect on our society.
6. Auto Focus - Bob Crane and the Color Orange. Gonna post a larger essay on this in the next couple of days. Truly a great contemplation of the high personal cost of grave and persistent sin.
7. Goodbye, Lenin - Entire film. Another movie with a beautiful soul, this 2003 German film is funny, smart and poignant as it portrays a son's love for his mother and the lengths he will go to make her happy. In doing so, we can see how happy it makes him. A touching film on familial bonds and the simple goodness of a son who cares for his mother. Highly recommended.
**Bonus category:
The Single Most Evil Film I Have Ever Watched:
1. Strangers When We Meet (1960)
In contrast to movies that have beautiful souls, this film has the dirtiest soul of any movie I have ever seen. Kirk Douglas and Kim Novak "star" in a disgusting glorification of adultery so heavyset, so long-winded and so "adult" that words fail me in describing how offensive it was. The timing of the film also adds to the outrage, as the divorce culture that is so commonplace to us today was in its very fragile infancy in 1960 and star vehicles such as this no doubt helped nurture it to full malignancy. The most unpleasant, depressing and flat-out demonic film I have had the misfortune to experience.
The 20th century saw the overthrow of the traditional Christian view of existence in the Western World. This phenomenon was best personified in the generation known as the Baby Boomers, who embraced the materialism and selfism of their time more than any generation before or since, but can also be seen by older "children" of the 20th century, even at absurd ages of 80 and above.
It is no surprise that modern Americans are not aging gracefully. The desperation and emptiness of their worldliness comes more and more in focus with every step they take closer to the grave.
An 80-year-old woman on a tandem skydive slipped from her instructor’s harness then held on for life while rocketing toward Earth. An Alabama man busted his ankles trying to ride a bull. A Missouri man smashed his body – and his new motorcycle – minutes after buying the bike.
All were attempting items on their “bucket lists,” those rare experiences that people – particularly Baby Boomers (folks 49 years old and up) – ache to taste before kicking the bucket. But as injuries and close calls from these sacred agendas mount, some emergency workers want the bucket-listers to tone down their chosen adventures – or at least better prepare for such feats.
The startling lack of dignity seems to be lost on these folks, who believe experiencing perceived thrills they have "missed out on" up to this point will somehow make their lives complete:
To celebrate her 80th birthday and notch her bucket list, Laverne Everett went tandem skydivingtwo years ago above Lodi, Calif. After she paused in fear while perched in the plane’s hatch, she went airborne but partially slipped out of her partner’s harness. A fellow jumper filmed the plunge and the video went viral.
“I had watched watched people jump, and it looked like such fun, just sailing in real smooth, you know? It didn’t work out that way,” Everett, 82, said in a phone interview Thursday. “[My partner] kept telling me: ‘Hold on! Hold on!’ That’s where my mind was, just holding on. He was just holding me. I was just barely holding on with my legs.
“I couldn’t see anything. My clothes were rolled up over my face. There was pinhole of light, that’s all I had. So I didn’t know what was what. I’m very thankful I didn’t know,” added Everett, who suffered some “doozy bruises” and a scraped knee when she landed otherwise intact after their chute opened.
It's a warped sense of the purpose of living, almost as if life itself was a can of soda, something sugary and sweet to be downed with a flourish and the can crushed and thrown away. All the usual signs of our Western decline are in evidence here: self-absorption, identity tourism and a lack of consideration for how individual actions will affect others:
“A lot of people identify with the concept of: Geez, I haven’t done this in my life and I’m willing to take the risk. That’s really the guts of this thing. If you look at the movie which the term came from, it gets at: I’m close enough to the end and I’m making the active choice,” Carl Foster, director of the human performance laboratory at the University of Wisconsin, Lacrosse, said.
“By the same token, the people who have to take care of them, who have to bail them out of bad situations, probably wish they prepared or had thought better of it.”
Those who would see something life-affirming in reckless and inappropriate behavior such as this might not understand how such a mindset goes hand-in-hand with this:
It has long held true that elderly people have higher suicide rates than the overall population. But numbers released in May by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show a dramatic spike in suicides among middle-aged people, with the highest increases among men in their 50s, whose rate went up by nearly 50 per cent to 30 per 100,000; and women in their early 60s, whose rate rose by nearly 60 per cent (though it is still relatively low compared with men, at 7 in 100,000).
When you define your life by the fun quotient of your "experiences" you will eventually do the math and realize that your ability to have such "experiences" inevitably declines with age. So, for those no longer able to work on that "bucket list" anymore, there is only one thing left to do: kick that bucket and be done with it.
There are no large-scale studies yet fleshing out the reasons behind the increase in boomer suicides. Part of it is likely tied to the recent economic downturn — financial recessions are in general associated with an uptick in suicides.
But the trend started a decade before the 2008 recession, and psychologists and academics say it likely stems from a complex matrix of issues particular to a generation that vowed not to trust anyone older than 30 and who rocked out to lyrics such as, “I hope I die before I get old.”
“We’ve been a pretty youth-oriented generation,” said Bob Knight, professor of gerontology and psychology at the University of Southern California, who is also a baby boomer. “We haven’t idealized growing up and getting mature in the same way that other cohorts have.”
We have a significantly large generation of older Americans approaching its elderly years which has never "idealized growing up and getting mature" and the results are not going to be pretty.
But when your whole sense of personal meaning comes from the ability to engage in earthly endeavors, this type of attitude is inevitable. We have the generation that mocked traditional religious faith nearing the end and finding nothing at the finishing line. If only our aging modern Americans had not tried so hard to squeeze out all that life-defining "experience" and opened themselves up to something greater than the self-limiting pursuit of individual happiness.
For there's been far too much of this in our culture for the past 100 years or so:
Among the 65 monasteries of fellow cloistered Carmelites around the country, the Brooklyn nuns are sometimes regarded as relics or worse because of their stubborn resistance to change. While reluctant to criticize on the record, several Carmelites interviewed recently said they believed such seclusion and self-denial is unhealthy and unnecessary to keep up a life of prayer. "Some of us say that this 20th century has enough of its own kinds of hairshirts," said Mother Joseph, prioress of a convent in Terre Haute, Ind., that has a fax and a station wagon.
... and not enough of this:
But the nuns' supporters believe prayer is being forgotten in the Catholic Church, and the way to restore its importance and rejuvenate shrinking religious orders is to return to the old ways. "People give me arguments about this, say those nuns are in there wasting their time, but I say that they're in there working," said Pete Brennan, a retired banker who is part of an association of former neighborhood residents who raise money for the monastery. "Prayer is hard work."
Echoing Monsignor Guy J. Puglisi -- [the priest who visits the nuns six days a week] who is fond of saying, "People don't know how powerful a place that monastery is" -- a priest from nearby St. Teresa's Church wrote of the nuns in the summer of 1942: "That which saves society is not that which can be seen upon the surface of things. It is not the power of industry, of war, of genius, of letters or arts. It is what touches its depths in a silence called the silence of good things."
Those who were mocked for "wasting their lives" are approaching the finish line with a dignity and serenity completely lacking in those who were so busy seeking out all that "fulfillment" in their precious worldly "experiences." Perhaps a pursuit of such serenity would be the very best thing to put on a "bucket list" after all. It's never too late to search for and the personal journey one must undertake to find it can be a powerful human experience in and of itself.
This post is not meant in any way to attempt to diminish the tragedy that befell the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings.
That said, the response that was on display in the city over the past weekend is a telling indictment of the shallow times we are living in.
This ABC News report inadvertently hits the nail on the head with its assertion that Fenway Park is a "civic cathedral" for the people of Boston.
And that really sums up where we are now. In the past, the churches would be filled after a horrible catastrophe - the start of a world war, civil war, monster flood, etc. People would bow their heads and solemnly pray to a Just God for mercy.
Nowadays it is the sporting arenas that are filled after every disturbance that can be milked to full emotional effect.
Folks don their Sox gear, wave their American flags in grandstanding style and sing along with a Schmaltzy Neil Diamond for "healing".
It all makes for a bizarre quasi-religious commercial experience as the congregation vows that no act, no matter how horrible, will stop the party from going on.
You have to love the inspiring tag the ABC report closes with:
There's also been plenty of commerce today and that's important because Friday's shutdown really cost this city money. Today money, and good will, have been flowing all day long.
They may bomb our marathon. But they will never break our will to attend overpriced baseball games, eat hot dogs and spend money.
EVEN though Good Friday remains one of the few blanks in the British racing calendar, the nation's biggest bookmaking chains are set to open the doors to the majority of their betting shops tomorrow for the first time in a controversial move which looks set to have major repercussions among staff and also will be met with consternation by the Church of England and other faith groups.
Most shops will be open for business as usual tomorrow after changes in the law mean that for the first time since betting shops were legalised over 40 years ago, cash betting can now take place on Good Friday. Previously, under the Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Act 1963, it was illegal for licensed betting offices to open, or for betting at racecourses to take place on both Good Friday and Christmas Day. However, when the Gambling Act 2005 came into effect in September last year, prohibitions relating to Good Friday were abolished.
SYDNEY - Tabcorp says its punters want to bet on Good Friday, but its outlets will only operate if staff are willing to work.
The decision to open TABs on Good Friday for the first time ever has drawn widespread condemnation from politicians, anti-gambling groups and religious organisations.
Rob Nason, managing director of Tabcorp, told Macquarie Radio they were "last to the market" because gambling was already occurring on Good Friday in pubs, clubs and the casino.
A Limerick judge ruled that the city's 110 pubs can open April 2, because the city is hosting a major Irish rugby match attracting tens of thousands of visitors.
Such a judgment would have been unthinkable in the Ireland of old, where the Catholic Church enjoyed unquestioned authority from the public and deference from the government.
Commentators were quick to suggest that the judgment represented a watershed in the shifting relations between church and state in this country.
"This could be the beginning of the end of Good Friday, because now legislation will have to be changed," said a jubilant David Hickey, one of the Limerick pub owners who successfully sued the state for the right to do business like any other Friday. "The option should be given to let publicans open if they want to and close if they want to. Today was a huge decision in that direction."
With the move, the [Baltimore] Ravens will now become the first defending champion to open on the road since Tampa Bay opened at Philadelphia in 2003. The NFL opener has been held on Thursday night in each season since 2004, except for last season when it was held on Wednesday to avoid conflict with President Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention.
The NFL had previously ruled out moving the game to Wednesday night this season because it conflicts with Rosh Hashanah.
Nine Catholic schools played NCAA Tournament basketball games on Good Friday in 2008. Four Sweet Sixteen games were played this year with not even a ripple of controversy, despite the NCAA Tourney now having reached such a level that it is competing with the Super Bowl as the biggest gambling event in sports.
Four countries that seem to be making a deliberate effort to distract their Christian citizens from solemn observations of the most somber day on the Christian calendar. Meanwhile, the NFL will not even consider playing a game on a religious holiday celebrated by a statistically insignificant portion of American citizens.
One cannot fail to observe how big-time sports is being used to destroy one particular faith and the Western cultures that traditionally embraced it.
A few more thoughts on Pascal and our dying West... The highlight of my university days was European Intellectual History class. Of the dozen or so philosophers and scientists we read up on during the course of the semester, three stood out and the reactions each induced in me remain stark in my memory to this day: Descartes - Ice-cold robot. Instinctively hated him with a passion. Made a god of Reason and Science. Voltaire - Rutting animal, bitchy little critic. If he were alive today he'd be one of those fruity guys on TMZ. Pascal - Sticks of dynamite going off in my brain! Heart and soul, fire, a man who adamantly refused to hide from the unpleasant facts about the human condition. He's painted as this ultra-pessimist but I immediately embraced the warmth of his convictions. A hard truth is a million times more enjoyable to ponder than an effete, self-indulgent lie or some damn "I think therefore I am" machine-like BS. Pascal was so much more brilliant and so much more human than anyone else we learned about in that class. And it wasn't even close. Unfortunately, the world went in the direction of the robots and the perverts. Gee, it's all turned out so well, hasn't it?
The Jesuits were the intellectual vanguard of the Church at the time after the Reformation. They covered themselves in glory for centuries fighting the Protestant heretics and converting the savages of the New World, especially in South America. If you want to read about true heroism read about the English Jesuits who volunteered to leave the safe harbor of Continental Europe and go back to Protestant Elizabethan England and were tortured horribly and executed for being Catholic priests:
Then they produced a warrant for putting me to torture. They had it ready by them and handed it to me to read. (In this prison a special warrant is required for torture.)
I saw that the warrant was properly prepared and signed, and then I answered, 'With God's help I shall never do anything that is unjust or act against my conscience or the Catholic faith. You have me in your power. You can do with me what God allows you to do - more you cannot do.'
The confidence that comes with a reply like that -- totally missing in the Western man of today. All gone.
Being intellectuals, however, they fell for the Modernist heresy at the turn of the 20th century more than any other Catholic order and went from being the Pope's most trusted footsoldiers to being a nest of revolutionary subversives.
All that orthodox Catholics despise they pushed in the Church and society throughout the 20th century. Multiculturalism, feminism, homosexuality, communism, contraception and abortion, the whole rotten ball of wax. The decline of the major U.S. Catholic colleges into complete apostasy is largely their doing. The brilliant French philosopher Blaise Pascal had their number as far back as the 17th century. Even when they were still very good Catholics, their belief in and promotion of casuistry was seen by Pascal as a destructive system of thought that would eventually end in laxity and corruption.
Casuistry is basically situation ethics, I don't care how many theologians say it isn't, that is exactly what it is. The Jesuits would teach that you could commit an evil to serve a greater good as long as you didn't intend to commit the evil you knew you were committing. They didn't say it that way but that is exactly what they stood for. It's a very important theological point that has been lost in the honorless world we inhabit today:
Pascal properly foresaw that someone who could lie to promote a greater good AND convince himself he wasn't really lying at all was capable of doing and justifying any kind of behavior, including grave evil.
Thus, for Pascal, and I agree with him, the betrayal of the Jesuit order centuries later was preordained by their lax moral code.
