Month: Aug 2021
“Learn to do thy part and leave the rest to heaven.” (St John Henry Newman)
Sunday 22 Ordinary Time
Populus hic labiis me honorat, cor autem eorum longe est a me.
UK university refuses to recognize Catholic priest as chaplain over social media posts
It is to be hoped all Catholic priests oppose medically assisted suicide and abortion.
It is to be hoped that the Bishop of Nottingham declines to nominate another priest as chaplain to Nottingham University.
St Augustine
The sting operation that came apart
Fr Frank Brennan SJ is convinced of the innocence of Cardinal Pell.
https://www.catholicweekly.com.au/the-sting-operation-that-came-apart/
He once rescued 14,000 refugees – now could he intercede in Afghanistan’s crisis?
Venerable Fulton Sheen ‘should be made a saint’, says Peoria Catholic coadjutor bishop
Hopefully this will sort itself out soon.
St Monica
New Wave, New Hollywood, New Morality
https://www.ncregister.com/commentaries/new-wave-new-hollywood-new-morality
The vulgarity and ignorance and just plain silliness of this piece is quite unusual.
When I was at uni most English courses had a compulsory film studies unit. Bonnie and Clyde was obviously on the list of films.
Sex? What sex? In the film Clyde is impotent – he is unable to perform the sexual act. This impotence signifies his impotence to control events as they happen around him.
This is the society of Collapsed Greed (the Great Depression). Farmers cannot get a fair and reasonable price for their harvests. Townspeople cannot get jobs. And yet the banks prosper and flourish. This is anything but a society of law and order.
We are shown in the dialogue that Clyde was repeatedly abused while in juvenile detention by officers of the state.
The only people the gang kill are those who seek to kill them. (Shades of the Kelly gang.) In one scene they rob a bank and there is a man at the teller’s window with some cash. He is asked whether the money is his or the bank’s. He answers that it is his. He is told to keep it – the gang rob banks, not ordinary, decent people.
The death of Bonnie and Clyde in a hail of machine gun fire is shown as unnecessary and excessive force by a gang of rednecks in uniform.
A Man for all Seasons is a film I must’ve seen a dozen times and enjoyed a dozen times. I dare say, given the chance, I’d watch it a dozen more times, and enjoy it a dozen more. But since a teenager it has troubled me that St Thomas More is presented as a legalistic prig – a sort of Polonius. We know that More was nothing of the sort.
I note that Robert Bolt was a communist.
seamasodalaigh 