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New: "Who Am I to Judge? Responding to Relativism with Logic and Love" by Edward Sri

Who Am I to Judge? Responding to Relativism with Logic and Love

by Edward Sri

"Don't be so judgmental!"

"Why are Christians so intolerant?"

"Why can't we just coexist?"

In an age in which preference has replaced morality, many people find it difficult to speak the truth, afraid of the reactions they will receive if they say something is right or wrong. Using engaging stories and personal experience, Edward Sri helps us understand the classical view of morality and equips us to engage relativism, appealing to both the head and the heart. Learn how Catholic morality is all about love, why making a judgment is not judging a person's soul, and why, in the words of Pope Francis, "relativism wounds people." Topics include:

• Real Freedom, Real Love

• Sharing truth with compassion

• Why "I disagree" doesn't mean "I hate you"

Edward Sri, Ph.D., well-known Catholic speaker and the author of several best-selling books, is a professor of Theology and Scripture at the Augustine Institute, and host of the acclaimed film series, Symbolon. He is also a founding leader of FOCUS (Fellowship of Catholic University Students). He holds a doctorate in theology from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome.

"Too often our culture confuses love with moral relativism, and it is a dangerous misunderstanding. In this much-needed book, Dr. Edward Sri shows us that true compassion can never be separated from moral realities."
— Jennifer Fulwiler, author, Something other than God

"Pope Emeritus Benedict often spoke of the "dictatorship of relativism," and Pope Francis called relativism 'the spiritual poverty of our time.' Edward Sri heeds the clarion call to action and offers practical tools to talk about moral truth with greater conviction, clarity, and compassion in a world saturated by relativism."
— Curtis Martin, founder, FOCUS

Spielberg's enchanting take on Dahl's endearing BFG

Spielberg's enchanting take on Dahl's endearing BFG | Lauren Enk Mann | CWR

While Steven Spielberg apparently couldn’t resist inserting some strange and unnecessary additions, "BFG" is refreshingly free of agenda and is filled with spectacular visual details.

Film adaptations of storyteller Roald Dahl’s work have always been rather hit or miss; his quirky sense of humor, fanciful stories, and typically one-dimensional characters are difficult to translate effectively to the screen. Moreover, Dahl’s original tales are often punctuated by a morbidity akin to Grimm’s fairy tales and foreign to modern children’s stories, and are thus difficult to recreate convincingly as family film fare. Nonetheless, many other quirky geniuses, like Tim Burton and Wes Anderson, have tried their hands at adapting his work, from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory to Matilda to Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Now, The BFG, perhaps the most endearing of Dahl’s tales, gets its turn at the hands of Hollywood’s moguls, in a summer blockbuster directed by Steven Spielberg. And Spielberg’s BFG neither departs wildly from nor adheres slavishly to Dahl’s story, making it about as enjoyable and faithful an adaptation of the book as could possibly have been hoped.

From the start, the film’s obvious crowning achievement is certainly the BFG himself. The homely giant is a masterpiece of animation, with his giant wiggling ears and his gangly legs balancing out his soulful eyes and kindly wrinkled face. His most lovable trait—his mixed up way of speaking—is reproduced here exactly as in the book, voiced to perfection by Mark Rylance. Loping about the London streets at night, hooded and cloaked, with a bag of dreams and a trumpet to blow them into the rooms of sleeping children, the BFG is a combination of mythical creature and homely secret philanthropist. Easily keeping pace with the larger-than-life BFG is Ruby Barnhill, absolutely perfect as the intrepid and practical bookworm orphan named Sophie. Barnhill captures Sophie’s bravery and obvious precociousness (how many ten year olds typically read Nicholas Nickleby?) with innocent and unaffected charm.

Yet it is the chemistry between the appealingly articulate Sophie and the fumbling giant that arguably keeps the film afloat in Dahl’s at times ridiculous plotline. The bravehearted and intelligent little girl is a fitting companion and counterpoint to the misspeaking, kind-hearted Big Friendly Giant; like him, she is something of an outcast, awake alone at night. He treats her with gentleness and kindness, and she in turn gives him respect and encouragement. While at times their relationship may wander into the saccharine, Sophie’s youthful boldness and the BFG’s tender, grandfatherly care for her makes their friendship blossom onscreen, even when threatened by the destructive invasions of the BFG’s home by the oafish, man-eating giants like Bloodbottler and Fleshlumpeater.

In this unlikely friendship, moral themes regarding courage, transgression, and reparation make an appearance.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Signs of the Apocalypse: Dan Brown dumbs down an already dumb novel

by Carl E. Olson | The Dispatch at Catholic World Report

The best-selling novelist, who has made a fortune out of writing pseudo-history for pseudo-readers, wants to spread "the joys of history". Right.

I confess to having a love/hate relationship with Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code. On one hand, I love bashi—er, critiquing it. On the other hand, I hate saying the same things over and over about one of the best-selling, boring, and banal books of all time. As many readers know, I co-authored (with Sandra Miesel) The Da Vinci Hoax back in 2004. At the time, some folks—including not a few Catholics—thought that taking a novel (a novel!) seriously as a pulpy swipe at Christian belief and Church history was simply stupid.

Sandra and I disagreed with that perspective for three basic reasons. First, Brown pointedly and aggressively promoted his book as a historically accurate work that was (he claimed) based on endless hours of research, study, and travel. Secondly, an astounding number of critics and writers took Brown and the novel seriously as a work of alternative history, even lauding it in glowing terms usually reserved for actual works of scholarship. Third, most fans of the novel were enamored, first and foremost, with the historical claims and conspiracy theories posited in the novel, and they were tossing them about as if they had discovered the Holy Grail of Suppressed Historical Knowledge.

This phenomenon was addressed, of course, in our book, and I later write an essay "The 'It's Just Fiction!' Doctrine: Reading Too Little Into The Da Vinci Code" in which I stated:

If the Code, as "just fiction," is merely entertaining, we should ask: How and why do people find it entertaining? In what way, for example, is it entertaining to think that Jesus was married and that the Catholic Church is a violent, nasty, woman-hating institution? If it's because you enjoy the possibility of that being the case, we are back to the question of historical and theological truth. If it's because you enjoy asking "What if?", we are again back to the question of historical and theological truth.

It is, then, a matter of truth. Is truth revealed or defiled in the Code? Since these questions are so important and since twenty-five million copies of the Code have been sold, is it not reasonable to examine the historical and theological claims, questions, and issues contained within the Code? Is it really so ridiculous, or unfair, or unprecedented to critique the style and substance of a novel that makes bold claims–and has so obviously influence many readers?

All of this to preface the news that Brown will soon be releasing a new edition of The Da Vinci Code that is aimed at young adults. Publisher's Weekly reports:

The Da Vinci Code (Young Adult Adaptation) will feature a new cover design and be abridged in length from the original. It will nonetheless, the publisher said, "maintain Brown’s original plot."

A YA edition of the novel is a project that Brown has wanted to do for sometime. Brown, whose parents were teachers and who believes he himself would have been an educator had he not become an author, said his goal with the YA edition is to inspire younger readers about the joys of history. "It is my sincere hope that this adaptation of The Da Vinci Code sparks in young adults the same thrill of discovery that I feel while exploring hidden history and the mysteries of the world we live in.” The changes planned for the new edition will be aimed at making The Da Vinci Code more appropriate for readers in their early teens.

Ah, yes, the "joys of history." Never mind that Brown's most famous novel—which has apparently sold over 80 millions copies so far—is about as historically sound and meaningful as a Disney movie about Peter Pan. No, it based on a scrambled and incoherent mashing together of conspiracy theories yanked from Holy Blood, Holy Grail (to the degree that Brown was sued by the authors of that book), the additional wing-nut theories posited by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince, authors of The Templar Revelation (who acknowledge their own debt to Holy Blood, Holy Grail), and the whacky New Age, feminist notions spun into the cosmos by a former Catholic catechist named Margaret Starbird. And, as I noted in a 2006 essay, Starbird herself was a disciple of the Holy Blood, Holy Grail nuttiness:

Starbird admits that she turned her back on orthodox Catholic teachings after reading Holy Blood, Holy Grail in the 1980s: "The more deeply involved I became with the material, the more obvious it became that there was real substance in the theories set for in reading Holy Blood, Holy Grail. And gradually I found myself won over to the central tenets of the Grail heresy, the very theory I had originally set out to discredit"...

No, this is simply about money and promoting (as PW notes) "the October 28 release of the movie adaptation of the fourth book in Brown's series featuring Robert Langdon, Inferno." 

That said, the reaction to this news has been interesting.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

The Doritos Commercial and the Revival of Voluntarism

Bishop Robert Barron | The Dispatch at CWR

Though the commercial is, of course, playful, it exaggerates something quite real—but NARAL insists the child in the womb should not be "humanized".

I'm sure by now you've heard about the absurd reaction of the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) to the lighthearted Super Bowl commercial produced to advertise Doritos. In the thirty-second clip, a pregnant mother, undergoing an ultra-sound, is annoyed by her husband who is absent-mindedly munching Doritos while their baby's image is displayed on the screen. But as the father moves the corn chip, the baby in the womb moves with it; and when the mother throws the bag across the room, the child reacts so keenly and purposively that he decides this is the moment to be born.

Cute, funny, harmless, right? Oh not according to NARAL, who complained (and one is compelled here to stifle laughter) that the commercial dangerously "humanized" the fetus. We are tempted to ask, "What do you think was gestating in the womb? A monkey? A rabbit?"

It has, of course, long been established scientifically that even a conceptus (a fertilized ovum) is already in full possession of human DNA distinct from that of his parents. Moreover, the developing embryo has a heartbeat and her own circulatory system 22 days after conception; at 20 weeks, the baby in the womb is capable of hearing his mother's voice, and responding to light, music, and other external stimuli. So though the Doritos commercial is, of course, playful, it exaggerates something quite real.
Yet according to NARAL, the child in the womb should not be "humanized," lest the absolute right to murder that child at any stage of its pre-natal development should be denied. And mind you, that right, in our country, extends even to the moment when the baby is emerging from the womb (partial birth abortion), indeed to the time after his birth, since many states place no restrictions on the killing of a newborn who has miraculously survived the abortion procedure (cf. born alive legislation). For many people, the bottom line is this: all objective evidence to the contrary, the unborn are not human because defenders of abortion don't want them to be.

And here, philosophically speaking, is the rub.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

The 15 Most Popular CWR Stories of 2015

Carl E. Olson | The Dispatch at CWR

Articles and commentary about Pope Francis, radical Islam, the Shroud of Turin, France, President Obama, the devil, "50 Shades of Grey", and much more

For the third year in a row the most read article on the CWR site was about radical Islamic attacks on innocents. In 2013 it was the account by nuns in Syria about the violence and bloodshed that was becoming increasingly commonplace in that war-torn country. In 2014 it was the story of slain journalist James Foley, who was killed in, yes, Syria. This year it is the story of Pope Francis' response to the beheading of 21 Egyptian Christians by members of ISIS.

Four of the top 15 articles (#1, 6, 7, and 15) were about the Holy Father, while President Obama featured in two others (#4 and 12). Other top topics include The Shroud of Turin (#2), Catholicism in Francis (#3), Cinderella (#13), the terrorist attack in San Bernardino (#11), and liberal theologians (#9). The devil gets two mentions, both times in pieces about spiritual warfare (#5 and 14).

Here are Catholic World Report's 15 most read articles of 2015:

1. “Their blood confesses Christ”: Pope Francis on the murder of Egyptian Christians by ISIS (February 16) by Catherine Harmon. Pope Francis responds to the news that 21 Egyptian Christians were beheaded by Islamic State militants.

2. The Shroud: Not a Painting, Not a Scorch, Not a Photograph (March 27) by Jim Graves. “One of my favorite testimonials as to the authenticity of the Shroud,” says Barrie Schwortz, an expert on the Shroud of Turin, “actually came from my Jewish mother.” 

3. France’s Catholic Revolution (November 23) by Dr. Samuel Gregg. While Mass-attendance rates have steeply declined over the last 30 years, today France is witnessing the rise of an increasingly self-confident—and dynamically orthodox—Catholicism. 

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

The Reality of Myth and the Force of Star Wars

The Reality of Myth and the Force of Star Wars | Dr. Christopher S. Morrissey | CWR

The deepest lesson of myth cannot be that good and evil are morally and metaphysically equivalent but that peace and justice are realized in the bringing of good out of evil

If I told you that Star Wars: The Force Awakens is the best Star Wars movie ever made, you wouldn’t want to believe me. The original trilogy of films, the first two especially, have become so sacrosanct in the memory of many, nothing could ever rival their definitive status.

But the new Star Wars film from J.J. Abrams is a beautiful achievement, and not just because it returns the saga to perfectly paced, fast-moving fun, propelled by plenty of humor. In a deeper way, it explores the mythology of Star Wars by asking us to consider the meaning of our memories of the original films.

As Fr. Robert J. Spitzer argues in his new book, The Soul’s Upward Yearning: Clues to Our Transcendent Nature from Experience and Reason (Ignatius Press, 2015), Star Wars is technically a myth. Myths, due to the way they address the transcendent nature of human beings, are a unique form of story-telling.

“Though a myth is fictional, it is not fiction,” writes Spitzer. “The objective of myths is to express ultimate truth and meaning … and reveal the source of truth and meaning—that is, ultimate reality. Not only this, but myths must also reveal how and why ultimate reality connects with this world—and the people within it.”

As its title might suggest, The Force Awakens lays claim to definitively showing us how the Force works. It does so by taking the filmmakers’ biggest disadvantage — the fact that Episode VII comes after the hallowed originals — and using this to its advantage.

Thanks to its conscious repetition of the immortal story elements from the best Star Wars movies — a close family member has gone over to the Dark Side, and a planet-destroying technological threat must be resisted by rebel underdogs — we are invited to consider more deeply how the Force actually works in the cycles of history.

If every generation has to contend with an adjacent-generation family member going over to the Dark Side, and if every generation has to defeat an existential threat of Death Star-sized proportions, then either nothing is new under the sun (on Jakku or Tatooine), or else the Force is somehow perpetually able to awaken that which is new and beautiful and good.

People may criticize this new movie on the grounds that it has far too little that is new. The easiest critical remark to make is that it recycles too many beloved plot elements from the first two Star Wars movies. It is a blatantly overindulgent, hugely expensive exercise in nostalgia, they may say, trying to relive what can never be relived. Its repeated acts of homage to the originals overwhelm whatever initially promising innovations it may offer. It is finally crushed beneath the burden of everyone’s impossible expectations. Or so they may say.

If so, then I believe they are missing the point.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

The Unbearable Oppression of Yoga

(us.fotolia.com | DragonImages)

The Unbearable Oppression of Yoga | Dr. Christopher S. Morrissey | CWR

What to make of the current craze of student activists who seek explicit institutional enforcement of “safe spaces” on campus?

Traditional logic is famous for classifying human beings as “rational animals.” What would traditional logicians make of the current craze of student activists who seek explicit institutional enforcement of “safe spaces” on campus?

Student protests have erupted in recent weeks, most notably at Yale University and the University of Missouri. As fascinating demands are made, much tumult has ensued. The president of the University of Missouri has even resigned.

The wave of activism has spread to many campuses besides Yale and Mizzou. Student temperament is perhaps best illustrated by the first demand made by the uprising at Amherst College:

President Martin must issue a statement of apology to students, alumni and former students, faculty, administration and staff who have been victims of several injustices including but not limited to our institutional legacy of white supremacy, colonialism, anti-black racism, anti-Latinx racism, anti-Native American racism, anti-Native/ indigenous racism, anti-Asian racism, anti-Middle Eastern racism, heterosexism, cis-sexism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, ableism, mental health stigma, and classism. Also include that marginalized communities and their allies should feel safe at Amherst College.

If you are wondering where this sort of thing will wind up, perhaps the student leaders at the University of Ottawa, who recently voted to shut down a yoga class, have given us a glimpse of the politically correct reductio ad absurdum. Since Canadians like to congratulate themselves on being more forward thinking and liberally enlightened than their southern neighbors, it might be the shape of progressive things to come in America.

The Ottawa yoga class was to be offered to about 60 students through the university’s Centre for Students with Disabilities. Although apparently no one had complained, the university’s Student Federation president Romeo Ahimakin said the yoga program was suspended in order that students could be consulted about how “to make it better, more accessible and more inclusive to certain groups of people that feel left out in yoga-like spaces.”

Yoga instructor Jennifer Scharf had been offering the course since 2008 through the Centre. On its website, the Centre for Students with Disabilities describes its commitment to “challenge all forms of oppression”, and professes that while “working to dismantle ableism, we also work to challenge all forms of oppression including, but not limited to, heterosexism, cissexism, homophobia, transphobia, biphobia, queerphobia, HIV-phobia, sex negativity, fatphobia, femme-phobia, misogyny, transmisogyny, racism, classism, ableism, xenophobia, sexism, and linguistic discrimination.”

In an email, explaining their new challenge aimed at yoga’s oppressiveness, staff at the Centre said that “while yoga is a really great idea and accessible and great for students ... there are cultural issues of implication involved in the practice... Yoga has been under a lot of controversy lately due to how it is being practiced”; that is, the practice of yoga is apparently an oppressive form of cultural appropriation, since yoga comes from cultures that “have experienced oppression, cultural genocide and diasporas due to colonialism and western supremacy ... we need to be mindful of this and how we express ourselves while practising yoga.”

However, the yoga instructor, who was rebuffed when she had offered to change the name of the class (from “yoga” to something perhaps more palatable to political correctness: “mindful stretching”), summed up her view of the situation by commenting, “People are just looking for a reason to be offended by anything they can find.”

What I find most interesting about this risible episode is the fact that rational animals are the only animals that go looking for reasons. What then has happened with student rationality, bringing it to where it is in this yoga case?

Continue reading on the CWR site.

"Bridge of Spies" and the Path to Virtue

Tom Hanks stars in a scene from the movie "Bridge of Spies." The Catholic News Service classification is A-III -- adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13. (CNS photo/DreamWorks)

"Bridge of Spies" and the Path to Virtue | Bishop Robert Barron | The Dispatch at CWR

In recent years, Steven Spielberg has emerged as a latter-day Frank Capra, a celebrator of core values and the courage required to defend them

My great mentor Msgr. Robert Sokolowski told a class of eager philosophy students many years ago that we should read Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics every year of our lives. As we grew older, he explained, new dimensions of the book would continually present themselves.

I can't say that I've followed Sokolowski's advice perfectly, but I have indeed returned often to Aristotle's great text for inspiration and clarification. One of the Philosopher's principal insights is that the best way to understand virtue is not through abstract study but rather by watching the virtuous man in action. Learning the moral life is, for Aristotle, something like acquiring artistic skill through apprenticeship or like becoming an actor through understudying to an established thespian. Finding a master and striving to imitate him is the key. It seems only fitting, by the way, that I learned the craft of philosophizing largely by watching Sokolowski in action.

I thought of all of this as I watched Steven Spielberg's latest film Bridge of Spies. Especially in recent years, Spielberg has emerged as a latter-day Frank Capra, a celebrator of core values and the courage required to defend them. In this most recent movie, Tom Hanks (the Jimmy Stewart of our time) plays James B. Donovan, a New York insurance lawyer who is pressed into service to provide a defense for Rudolf Abel, a man very credibly accused of spying for the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. Donovan does this, not because he's convinced Abel is innocent, but because he believes in the moral principal that, in a free society, everyone deserves a fair trial. In so doing, he exemplifies the most fundamental of the classical virtues, namely, justice. Plato famously defined justice as "rendering to each his due," and Thomas Aquinas refined that definition as "a constant will to render to another his right." To state it as simply as possible, it is doing the upright thing.

So Donovan defends Abel because Abel is owed this privilege; to give him legal counsel is due to him.

Continue reading at CatholicWorldReport.com.

New: "Subverted: How I Helped the Sexual Revolution Hijack the Women's Movement"

Now available from Ignatius Press:

Subverted: How I Helped the Sexual Revolution Hijack the Women's Movement

by Sue Ellen Browder

Contraception and abortion were not originally part of the 1960s women’s movement. How did the women’s movement, which fought for equal opportunity for women in education and the workplace, and the sexual revolution, which reduced women to ambitious sex objects, become so united?

In Subverted, Sue Ellen Browder documents for the first time how it all happened, in her own life and in the life of an entire country. Trained at the University of Missouri School of Journalism to be an investigative journalist, Browder unwittingly betrayed her true calling and became a propagandist for sexual liberation. As a long-time freelance writer for Cosmopolitan magazine, she wrote pieces meant to soft-sell unmarried sex, contraception, and abortion as the single woman’s path to personal fulfillment. She did not realize until much later that propagandists higher and cleverer than herself were influencing her thinking and her personal choices as they subverted the women’s movement.

The thirst for truth, integrity, and justice for women that led Browder into journalism in the first place eventually led her to find forgiveness and freedom in the place she least expected to find them. Her in-depth research, her probing analysis, and her honest self-reflection set the record straight and illumine a way forward for others who have suffered from the unholy alliance between the women’s movement and the sexual revolution.

Sue Ellen Browder is a freelance writer who has appeared on Oprah, the Today Show, and hundreds of radio talk shows. Her work forCosmopolitan, New Woman, Woman’s Day, and other magazines has given her a lifetime of experience with the women’s movement as it unfolded in the media, both on the public stage and behind the scenes.

"Subverted offers a window into our uniquely disturbed historical era. Generations of readers will turn to Subverted when they want to know what turned the tide." 
— Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D., Founder and President, the Ruth Institute

"Browder combines a compelling personal narrative with piercing observations from her work in women’s media, resulting in a book you can’t put down."
— Jennifer Fulwiler, Author, Something Other Than God

"Subverted is a game changer for our culture, and in particular, for women."
— Abby Johnson, Author, Unplanned

"What a romp—through the offices, the backrooms, and even the personal lives that brought you the sexual revolution!"
— Helen Alvaré, Professor of Family Law, George Mason University

"Here are two books, two stories in one. The first opens your heart, the second opens your eyes."
— Peter Kreeft, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy, Boston College

"Here is the eye-opening account of how the feminist movement got hopelessly off track, and how a one-time Cosmo writer managed to find her way back to God’s reality."
— Steven Mosher, President, Population Research Institute

"This is a courageous book!"
— Vicki Thorn, Founder, Project Rachel

"A gripping story that uncovers the dirty secrets behind the women’s movement. A must-read for Millennials." 
— Kristan Hawkins, President, Students for Life of America 

"Browder’s understanding of the human person, the intrinsic need for relationship, is beautiful and deep." 
— Jeanne Mancini, Director, March for Life

"Sue Ellen Browder is silent no more about her role in promoting a distorted feminism; you will be refreshed by her courage." 
— Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director, Priests for Life

Interview with Sue Ellen Browder:

The Divine Physician and the Doctor

The Divine Physician and the Doctor | John Herreid | IPNovels.com

…for when I am weak, then I am strong.”
—2 Corinthians 12:10

He’s back. My favorite recent incarnation of the alien Time Lord known as the Doctor arrived again this month, sonic screwdriver (or sunglasses) at the ready. Peter Capaldi’s portrayal of the Doctor is prickly, intelligent, standoffish, and alien in ways that harken back to the first decade of Doctor Who. It’s worth pondering that on a series fifty years old, sometimes a return to origins feels fresher than “new” directions, which often end up taking a show in the same direction all the other shows are going. In the opening two-parter The Magician’s Apprentice / The Witch’s Familiar, the Doctor once again faces Davros, the maniacal creator of the Daleks, in what may be the best use of the character since Tom Baker’s Doctor faced him when he was first introduced in Genesis of the Daleks (1975).

In these two opening episodes of the series, the Doctor is facing not only two of his oldest enemies: Davros and the Master (now regenerated into female form as the Mistress)—but also the question of whether his own weaknesses may be his ultimate downfall.

—

What some people call NuWho, the show since it’s revival after a long hiatus, has been hit and miss. But so was the original. The budget has increased vastly since the original run of Doctor Who, which at times had the homespun charm of watching a community theater production. I can remember as a child realizing that various monsters were made of such things as bubble wrap and tape. Unlike slick Hollywood productions, on Doctor Who the seams were all visible: a rampaging robot might brush a “metal” wall and make the whole set wobble. But the actors playing the various incarnations of the Doctor, Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker especially, had a charisma that could make you forget the low budget. As an adult, I began to delve further back into Doctor Who, back to William Hartnell’s crotchety First Doctor and Patrick Troughton’s Chaplinesque Second Doctor.

In the 1980s Doctor Who began to misstep. Stories began to be cynical and dark, and often complicated and confusing. Though Peter Davison, who played the Doctor in the early 80s, was a dashing figure, his replacement was Colin Baker, written as a garishly dressed (even by Who standards) and aggressively unpleasant Doctor. The show never really recovered from this, though Sylvester McCoy, who followed Colin Baker, starred in a series of episodes that showed a great deal of improvement. The television show was suspended in 1989. In the 90s an attempt was made to revive the series with a television movie co-produced by American investors, starring Paul McGann as the Doctor (very good) and Eric Roberts (wait, what?!) as his nemesis, the Master. It failed to jump-start a revival.

It was in 2005 that Doctor Who came back starring Christopher Eccleston and garnered a new generation of fans. Modern Whovians glommed on particularly to David Tennant, the Doctor from 2005 to 2010, whose portrayal of the Doctor was probably the most human of all the incarnations. He was followed by my son’s favorite Doctor, the Eleventh, played by Matt Smith, who departed in 2013. Which brings us back to Peter Capaldi.

My oldest son, who is on the autism spectrum, was upset at first when he heard that Matt Smith would regenerate into a new Doctor. He went so far as to write a letter to Smith, giving him the heads-up that “you will regnrat in to Petr Capaldy.” It was touching then, to see Peter Capaldi take some time to speak to another young fan with autism in the UK, reassuring her that it was okay with Smith that he was the Doctor now. Capaldi also filmed a special message for a nine-year-old boy with autism whose grandmother had just died, helping the boy process his feelings. It made me a bigger fan of his work than ever before.

—

The Doctor values humanity. He sees the rights of the downtrodden and steps in to aid them whenever he can. His gruff or frivolous or snarky behavior (depending on his incarnation) is just a mask for the deep generosity of his character. And it’s here that I want to go a bit deeper.

Continue reading at IPNovels.com.

Sincerity in a Nuns’ Cemetery

 

Sincerity in a Nuns’ Cemetery | James Casper | IPNovels.com

No quality in art and fiction writing is more elusive and perplexing than sincerity.

No cemetery is quieter than one where nuns lie buried.

No school memories are richer or more compelling than those the Sisters left for us.

Insincerity ought to be easy to detect, there being so much of it close at hand in the form of self-deception and self-promotion. It is not easy, though. I first saw its ghostly presence years ago under the watchful eyes of Sister Almeda, SSND. I hear her saying, “Don’t rationalize, James. Don’t make things up!” It was not the first time she said it to me and to others. She would have embroidered those words on a school patrol flag lowered down over a street named Self-serving Excuses.

This is tough love, Sister Almeda, especially for school children and writers and readers of fiction. After all, what do kids and novelists do but make things up?  What do readers want these days but pleasure and escape?

It is almost too easy for a novelist to deceive. When confronted with a few doozies, Dan Brown reminded his critics again and again that The Da Vinci Code was fiction. No matter that readers by the thousands went to Paris and London expecting to see what he saw. More than a few must have scratched their heads as they searched for that huge Opus Dei complex under construction in New York City. For Dan Brown, fact and fiction are as enigmatic as Mona Lisa’s smile.

Sister Almeda would have shaken a finger in his face.

If truth and honesty are not ever-present in fiction, if all that matters is making things up for the sake of selling books, what is wrong with an entire story being a pack of lies? Brown is a talented writer and an accomplished storyteller. His novel is far from a pack of lies, but honesty is especially called for when stories are wrapped in appearances of competent scholarship blurring the line between fact and fiction. (See The Da Vinci Hoax, Ignatius Press 2004).

The Da Vinci Code, Fifty Shades of Grey, and other ‘blockbuster’ novels often hyped as mesmerizing are just that, the works of modern day Svengalis.  Anyone reading George Bousant du Maurier’s Trilby, a nineteenth-century best seller, will know that du Maurier’s Svengali employed a mixture of science, superstition, gullibility, and guile to mesmerize his victim. Svengali was anything but sincere. Brown and E. L. James are not evil geniuses, but they know how to cast spells, and they both strike me as disingenuous.

I suppose there are many ways to distinguish sincerely written novels from those playing tricks on the reader. Certainly the latter seem more at home in the flotsam and jetsam of screaming hype—Mesmerizing! Riveting! Sexy! Five Star! Some so touted seem fit for pitching by the carnival barker on an old-fashioned midway, the sort our parents cautioned us to avoid. Imagine that.

Which novels give us hope and while entertaining, also uplift and inspire? Which ones would you feel comfortable reading near the grave of Sister Almeda or maybe the grave of your mother?

Continue reading at www.IPNovels.com.

Great Catholic Music Debate: “Post-Vatican Folk” vs. “Reformist Retro”

Great Catholic Music Debate: “Post-Vatican Folk” vs. “Reformist Retro” | Bill Kassel | Homiletic & Pastoral Review

A funeral I attended recently illustrates a musical dilemma that fuels the ire of Catholics on Facebook whenever the subject of liturgy comes up.

To set a tone of solemnity, two women chanted a Latin prelude as mourners entered. The casket was wheeled in with family members processing to the opening hymn, “Here I Am, Lord” (by ex-St. Louis Jesuits member, Dan Schutte), a classic of the post-Vatican “folk” musical repertoire.

The offertory song was Michael Joncas’s “On Eagles’ Wings,” another “folk” favorite, and one that has become a staple at funerals in churches of pretty much all denominations.

Two hymns of more traditional pedigree, “Adoro te Devote” and “The Strife Is O’er” were sung during Communion. There was also an instrumental interlude: Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” played on what sounded like a hammered dulcimer.

The final prayers of commendation were followed by another Latin chant. And the recessional hymn was “Be Not Afraid” (by Schutte’s former colleague, Bob Dufford).

The musicians did a fine job, though it can’t be said that these disparate elements fitted together all that well. But the music had been chosen by the family, and the selections demonstrated a basic fact of human nature: At times of emotional intensity and spiritual significance people like to hear familiar songs that comfort, encourage, and, in various ways, uplift them.

This emotional dimension is often not top-of-mind among Catholics who think about liturgy. That’s especially true for those of traditionalist sentiment (amply represented among my Facebook friends).

These people are drawn toward what they would call a more “sanctified” worship experience in which hymn preference skews to the classical and time-honored, if indeed hymns are included at all. Many urge abandoning hymnody altogether in favor of singing the Mass propers.

It goes without saying that the “folk” repertoire is anathema, seen as a flawed product of the worship form referred to contemptuously as “guitar Mass.” Countless Facebook postings (and articles linked to them) are replete with tales of wandering into some parish where the dreaded guitar group still prevails, and having to endure the pain and embarrassment of liturgical desecration.

Facebook traditionalists also comment on the poor quality of this music—poor in both composition and performance. Their complaints are often justified. Who hasn’t sat through at least one teeth-grinding rendition of “I Received the Living God” offered by a slipshod, three-chord guitar ensemble?

What the tradition-minded have difficulty recognizing (and find dispiriting when they do) is that many Catholics like the “folk” stuff. 

Continue reading at www.HPRweb.com.

Mother Nature is One Unreliable Lady

(us.fotolia.com | ValentinValkov)

Mother Nature is One Unreliable Lady | Bishop-elect Robert Barron | CWR

The consistent Biblical message is that this Creator God is not like the arbitrary and capricious gods of the ancient world; rather, he is reliable, rock-like in his steadfast love

Conservation International has sponsored a series of videos that have become YouTube sensations, garnering millions of views. They feature famous actors - Harrison Ford, Kevin Spacey, Robert Redford, and others --voicing different aspects of the natural world, from the ocean, to the rain forest, to redwood trees. The most striking is the one that presents Mother Nature herself, given voice by Julia Roberts.

They all have more or less the same message, namely, that nature finally doesn't give a fig for human beings, that it is far greater than we, and will outlast us. Here are some highlights from the Mother's speech: "I've been here for over four and a half billion years, 22,500 times longer than you; I don't really need people, but people need me." And "I have fed species greater than you; and I have starved species greater than you." And "my oceans, my soil, my flowing streams, my forests-they all can take you or leave you."

I must confess that when I first came across these videos I thought, "just more tree-hugging extremism," but the more I watched and considered them, the more I became convinced that they are fundamentally right and actually serve to make a point of not inconsiderable theological significance.

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

The Pope and the Animator

The Pope and the Animator | John Herreid | IPNovels.com

What the films of Hayao Miyazaki can reveal about Laudato Si’

“The aesthetic of the Pope’s reflections (on the tension between man and nature, the tendency of man to use technology to dominate others and the environment, and the ideal of an integral ecology) remind me of the films of Hayao Miyazaki. I think Miyazaki explores similar themes, although from a very different perspective.”

That’s what my wife Aletheia posted online after starting to read Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’. But how much in common do the views of a Japanese animator and an Argentinian pontiff really have? Let’s take a look.

Who is Hayao Miyazaki?

Japanese animation was regarded in the West for many years as exemplifying cheapness. To cut costs, American animation studios would outsource to Japan. A number of Saturday morning cartoons in the 1970s and 1980s were animated in this way, with fairly uninspiring storylines and pedestrian animation. One of the people who would help change all this was a young animator named Hayao Miyazaki. Cutting his teeth working on different series, he quickly rose to director status. Early work included the first half-dozen episodes of Sherlock Hound, an adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective stories recast with animals, featuring glimpses of what would become Miyazaki’s visual hallmark: inventive depictions of fantastic machinery set against a bucolic environment.

When Hayao Miyazaki was a small child his father ran a factory making parts for war planes, including rudders for the famed Mitsubishi Zero. The contrast between the beauty of flight and the destructive power of such weaponry seems to have made a large impact on Miyazaki’s perception of the world. A recurring theme in his animated films is how men and women are easily seduced into thinking they can control nature via technology. In Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, people try to use a genetically modified giant to eradicate a threat. InPrincess Mononoke, the industrialist Lady Eboshi attempts to kill a forest spirit who threatens her ironworks. In both cases powers beyond man’s control are unleashed.

Another theme is how selfish choices have an impact beyond the individual, and how finding an adult path in life cannot come through acts of rebellion.

Continue reading on the Ignatius Press Novels site.

Pretty Little Lies: The Idolness of Bruce Jenner

"The Adoration of the Golden Calf" (L'Adoration du Veau d'or) by Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) [WikiArt.org]

Pretty Little Lies: On the Idolness of Bruce Jenner | Lauren Enk Mann | CWR 

Both Jenner and the adoring media are falling prey to one of the oldest, gravest sins: idolatry, the worshiping of false gods which we ourselves have crafted

By now, the hubbub over Bruce Jenner's Vanity Fair cover has reached most ears. And eyes. After extensive surgery and hormone treatment, with the aid of heavy makeup and Photoshop, Jenner posed in a corset as "Caitlyn" for Vanity Fair's exclusive 22-page article on his transition from a man to a woman.  

Effusive praise for "Caitlyn" Jenner flooded the internet following the cover's debut—a reaction symptomatic of society's default approach to the human person. The reaction stands squarely on a decades-long foundation of practices that deny the God-given meaning of human sexuality, from divorce and contraception to porn and the social acceptance of gay "marriage". There is no inherent human nature that you could mar or offend by doing these things, says the world. 

But why is our society so gullible in the face of such lies? It is said that the devil can appear as an angel of light—he is, after all, the father of lies. And Bruce Jenner is living a colossal lie. But because he looks glamorous doing it, he is heaped with praise as media echo chambers resound with affirmations of his "courage."

Lies are ugly things, but the point of a lie is to hide its true face; lies don't seem ugly, but attractive and appealing. They steal the looks of something good—beauty, compassion, or happiness—and mimic it, relying on a deceptive veneer to win us over. 

This devilish tactic is one reason the world so easily swallows grave moral errors. 

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

One Weird Trick to Appreciate Art

One Weird Trick to Appreciate Art | John Herreid | IPNovels.com

“Oh, is that an allusion to the Fall?”

“The what?”

“The Fall of Adam and Eve.”

“Uh, no.”

“Is it Persephone in the underworld?”

“Who?”

It was around ten years ago. I was at an open studio event held in a huge old warehouse in the SOMA neighborhood of San Francisco. Several painters and sculptors were exhibiting their work, ranging from intentionally incomprehensible prints of layered graphics to a city made from candy to a number of rather good paintings. I was looking at one depicting a darkened landscape with a figure of a woman accepting a red fruit from a shadowy man in a robe. The artist was standing nearby, so I asked him about it. After a number of back and forth comments he shrugged and told me he had seen something similar in a painting somewhere and decided to riff on it. It wasn’t intended to be Eve’s encounter with Satan or Persephone being tricked by Hades, it was just an image that resonated with him.

Since then I’ve noticed this happening in other mediums: film or literature or music. As more and more people drift from a firm education in the classics, the images live on after their original context is lost. 

Continue reading at IPNovels.com.

"The Avengers" and Friedrich Nietzsche

Robert Downey Jr. stars in a scene from the movie "Avengers: Age of Ultron."

"The Avengers" and Friedrich Nietzsche | Very Rev. Robert Barron | CWR blog

Joss Whedon’s “Avenger” films work as a sort of antidote to Tolkien and Lewis, shaping the imaginations of young people so as to receive a distinctly different message

C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and their colleagues in the Inklings wanted to write fiction that would effectively “evangelize the imagination,” accustoming the minds, especially of young people, to the hearing of the Christian Gospel. Accordingly, Tolkien’s Gandalf is a figure of Jesus the prophet and Lewis’s Aslan a representation of Christ as both sacrificial victim and victorious king. Happily, the film versions of both The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia have proven to be wildly popular all over the world.

Not so happily, Joss Whedon’s “Avenger” films, the second of which has just appeared, work as a sort of antidote to Tolkien and Lewis, shaping the imaginations of young people so as to receive a distinctly different message. It is certainly relevant to my purpose here to note that Whedon, the auteur behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, and many other well-received films and television programs, is a self-avowed atheist and has, on many occasions, signaled his particular dissatisfaction with the Catholic Church.

I won’t rehearse in too much detail the plot of Avengers: Age of Ultron. Suffice it to say that the world is threatened by an artificial intelligence, by the name of Ultron, who has run amok and incarnated himself in a particularly nasty robotic body. Ultron wants to destroy the human race and has produced an army of robots as his posse. Enter the Avengers—Tony Stark (Iron Man), the Hulk, Black Widow, Captain America, Hawkeye, and Thor—to do battle with the dark forces.

There is an awful lot of CGI bumping and banging and blowing things up, but when the rubble settles, we see that the real struggle is over a perfect body—a synthesis of machine and flesh—that Ultron, with the help of brainwashed scientists, is designing for himself.

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

Wolfe, Innocence, Literature, and Rock Monsters

Wolfe, Innocence, Literature, and Rock Monsters | John Herreid | IPNovels.com

In the past week I’ve ended up saving a number of links to read and re-read, and in the hopes that others may also get some enjoyment and interest from them I’m sharing them with you.

First up, there’s a short piece in the New Yorker about science-fiction writer Gene Wolfe, titled Sci-Fi’s Difficult Genius:

Moments [in his books] have turned many of Wolfe’s fans into something like Biblical exegetes, who dig deep into his texts in the hope of finding clues not only to the plots and the characters but to Wolfe’s larger intentions. Partly what readers are excavating is Wolfe’s Catholicism, which he is quick to say figures into his writing. “What is impossible is to keep it out,” he told me. “The author cannot prevent the work being his or hers.”

Continue reading here.

Over at The Catholic Thing, Daniel McInerney writes about Catholic Literature and the discussion about it between writers such as Gregory Wolfe, Paul Elie, and Dana Gioia. I’m not so sure I agree with his take on it, but it’s an interesting contribution to the discussion.

Continue reading at www.IPNovels.com.

Two Approaches To Culture: Evangelistic & Diagnostic

Fr. Robert Barron, author of "Seeds of the Word" (www.WordonFire.org) and Dr. James
A. Patrick, author of "Essays on Modernity and the Permanent Things" (www.TowerPressBooks.com)

Two Approaches To Culture: Evangelistic & Diagnostic | Carl E. Olson | CWR Editorial

New books by Fr. Robert Barron and Dr. James A. Patrick are exceptional guides to the confused and confounding dominant culture

“The best is the betting of one's very life on behalf of Christ, the good, the self-denying and the dangerous.” — Dr. James A. Patrick

"The authentically Christian spiritual itinerary never ends with something as bland as 'self-discovery.' Rather, it ends with the splendid privilege of participating in God's own work in bringing grace into the world." — Fr. Robert Barron

[Robert] Graves really is writing about our own age, not of some remote future: of life in today's United States .... He is saying that culture arises from the cult; and that when belief in the cult has been wretchedly enfeebled, the culture will decay swiftly. The material order rests upon the spiritual order.” — Russell Kirk, “Civilization Without Religion?” 

A friend, having recently read Fr. Robert Barron's review of Kenneth Branagh's movie, “Cinderella”, sent me this quote from Cardinal John Henry Newman:

“With Christians, a poetical view of things is a duty. We are bid to color all things with hues of faith, to see a divine meaning in every event.”

 It's an apt description of a Christian cultural critic, and Fr. Barron is an especially fine commentator on culture, whether it be “high”, “low”, or “pop” culture. His new book Seeds of the Word: Finding God in the Culture (Word on Fire, 2015) is a collection of over 80 of his essays about movies (“Imago Dei: God in Film”), literature (“Take and Read: God in Books”), politics (“City On a Hill”), and culture at large (“Rays of Truth”). It is an exceptional example of an accomplished academic—Fr. Barron is a skilled theologian and the Rector/President of Mundelein Seminary in Chicago—engaging with the good, bad, beautiful, and ugly found throughout American culture.  

It's important to point out that Fr. Barron, who I've had the pleasure of working for on two catechetical series (“Catholicism” and “Priest Prophet King”), is fundamentally motivated by a love for God, truth, and souls. In an homage written a week ago for the late Cardinal Francis George, Fr. Barron highlights the missionary vision and heart of the late Archbishop of Chicago. He notes that Cardinal George was not satisfied with Catholics taking a “counter-cultural” stance only, as “this can suggest a simple animosity, whereas the successful evangelist must love the culture he is endeavoring to address":

But he saw a deeper problem as well, namely, that, strictly speaking, it is impossible to be thoroughly counter-cultural, since such an attitude would set one, finally, against oneself. It would be a bit like a fish adamantly insisting that he swims athwart the ocean. Therefore, the one who would proclaim the Gospel in the contemporary American setting must appreciate that the American culture is sown liberally with semina verbi (seeds of the Word).

This approach, as he explains in his book, is an adaptation of the patristic method of seeking out “seeds of the Word”—“hints and echoes of the Gospel that can be found, often in distorted form, in the high and low contemporary culture.” 

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

The Faith to Move Mountains—And to Make Movies About Faith

Eduardo Verástegui presents a copy of the film "Little Boy" to Pope Francis on Friday, April 17th.

The movie opens in theaters nationwide on April 24th. (Photo: Metanoia Films)

The Faith to Move Mountains—And to Make Movies About Faith  | CWR Staff 

“At the end of the day,” says actor and producer Eduardo Verástegui, “if you take faith out of the equation, you collapse.”

Eduardo Verástegui is a man of many talents: singer, model, actor, producer, pro-life speaker. After a successful career in music as a young man, he began acting in Mexican telenovelas, earning the nickname “the Brad Pitt of Mexico”. After moving to Hollywood to pursue a career in films he returned to the Catholic faith of his youth. He then co-founded Metanoia Films with Alejandro Gomez Monteverde and Leo Severino. In 2006, the company released its first film, “Bella,” which was directed by Monteverde and starred Verástegui; it won the “People's Choice Award” at the prestigious Toronto Film Festival.

Metanoia Films' second film, “Little Boy”, opens tomorrow in theaters nationwide. It stars Jakob Salvati, David Henrie, Kevin James, Emily Watson, Ted Levine, Michael Rapaport, Ali Landry and Ben Chaplin, and is distributed by Open Road Films. (You can read Catholic World Report's review of the movie here.)

Verástegui spoke with Catholic World Report this week about his career, working in Hollywood, the success of “Bella”, the making of “Little Boy”, and the necessity of faith in every aspect of life.

CWR: When “Bella” was released in 2006, you said, "Hollywood doesn’t belong to the studios. Hollywood belongs to God.” How would you describe “Hollywood”? And what have you learned about it over the years?

Verástegui: Hollywood is a great platform that gives you an opportunity to send a message through art to the whole world; it's like a megaphone—when you speak through a megaphone, like the megaphone of Hollywood, the whole world listens to you. But at the same time that can be very dangerous because anyone can go there and say whatever they want, but it does not mean that any message that comes forward is truth.

In my opinion, a high percentage of what is coming out of Hollywood is very disconnected from the reality of who we are in this country and what families are—and that can poison the minds of the youth. At the same time Hollywood can be a great platform to do something good, and that's what I am trying to do—to be involved in projects that are rich. My goal is to produce movies that have potential to make a difference in society. My hope as a filmmaker is that as people leave the theater they will be moved, touched, and inspired to do the right thing.

In particular, with “Little Boy”, I hope that people will leave theaters full of hope, faith, and love. I believe art has the power to heal and bring people together. All of that exists in “Little Boy”. It surpasses those elements that are important for me to share with the audience. I am doing this not just to make movies, but to spark a movement of love, a movement of hope through the expression of art. Through art we can elevate the intellect toward what is good, beautiful, and true.

CWR: You've also indicated that “Bella” wasn’t meant to be a “religious film” but a film with universal themes appealing to a wide range of people. Did the success of “Bella” confirm the need for such an approach? And was the same approach taken with “Little Boy”?

Verástegui: Yes, Metanoia Films produces films for everyone, not just one group. 

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.