The children of wrath?

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters1 Comment

What is it about the anti-God brigade that makes them so hate-filled and, well, just downright unpleasant. They truly seem to be the children of wrath. The genuine children of light – as opposed to the faux variety – do at times let themselves down and indulge in rants which border on or cross the line of human decency. But by and large they are restrained by that essential ingredient of their cultural heritage – the charity of Christ.

Take a random comment thread from any faith story on the internet and what are you likely to find? You find yourself wading into a quagmire of irrational contempt, animosity and downright hatred towards anyone professing faith. You don’t even have to go anywhere near the more extreme end of this spectrum, the Dawkins Quarter, to get this. Scroll through any of these stories and you will find yourself not a little depressed by the experience. If you don’t encounter mockery then it will be sterile cynicism or worse.  But you will hardly ever encounter an attempt at a real engagement of minds. It is seriously sad.

Over the past few years the secularist/religion debate was frequently pitched in terms of one motion: The Catholic Church is (is not) a force for good in the world. Sometimes it was broader and put in terms of “Religion is (is not) a force for good in the world”, a Christopher Hitchens-style generalisation. Hitchens’ book, God is not Great, underlined the problem of debating the question in those terms. Its subtitle, “How religion poisons everything”, said it all. Hitchens’ “religion”,  by his definition, is really no religion. The opponent of any and every faith has the faithful at his mercy on this platform. Hitchens’ generalisation of faith allows him to bundle together, for the purposes of confusion, every kind of lunacy which men have for millennia described as religion.

The only meaningful debate on this topic will be one where religion is defended and professed on the basis of the specific doctrines it teaches and the way of life it proposes for its followers – regardless even of how faithfully its followers succeed in living up to those teachings and that way of life.

In many of those debates over the past few years the defenders of the mainstream Christian Churches – and for the most part it was the Catholic Church which was put in the dock – were on the losing side. This was primarily because they failed to demand that the teaching of their church, and not the motley collection of red herrings thrown at them, be made the focus of debate. If that were done, and if the cumulative effect of the effort of millions of Christians across the world to live according to the authentic Christian principles of their church, taking account of the development of its teaching down through the ages – and its influence on our civilization as it did so – then there would be no contest.

Leave aside the red herrings of issues generated by the inherent weakness, folly and sinfulness of mankind and you will find in the teaching of the Catholic Church, enshrined in its moral and social doctrines, a guide second to none for mankind’s flourishing. Examine all of these as closely as you like and you will not fail to find in them an understanding of our human condition which if acted on universally would be the greatest imaginable force for good in the world, bar none. Just do it, and see.

The argument against religion on the basis of the ignorance, weakness or malice of those who profess to follow Christ’s teaching while in fact following some aberrant concoction of their own, is no argument against the truth and value of this teaching. We might use an analogy. Great art is not diminished in its value to mankind, nor in its power to move our race, when confronted by the ignorant, even when they collect it and hoard it as a marketable commodity.  The sense of loss felt after the recent burning of some priceless works of art by some crazed woman underlines our appreciation of the value and power to do good of the world’s great literature, music and art.

Ignorance is ever a threat to beauty. Ignorance, culpable or otherwise, has also always been a threat to goodness an truth. That the truth of the Christian religion has historically and contemporaneously been held hostage by the misguided, the ignorant, and even evil people (like vicious slavers in the New World), is inadmissible as evidence against it.

A gem of moral wisdom encountered recently in a book of moral questions and answers compiled in the last century – with resonances very pertinent for our own times – might illustrate how much of the misery we inflict on each other globally might be alleviated if we were more attentive to the teaching of Christ’s Church.

The question, from a person with an eye on Irish history, was asked:

 Suppose a person is in possession of land by ancestral right –  land confiscated in the time of Cromwell, and given to one of his ancestors. Legally, he owns the land. Is it the teaching of the Cathoiic Church that he morally owns it or does the land rightly belong to the descendants of the original owner?

 The answer, from a renowned moral theologian of his day[i], was this:

 The confiscation was unjust, and the newcomer held the land on a title that no moral law could sanction. But time heals many wounds. Some of his successors were better than himself; they became bona fide holders of the proceeds of his robbery. The best moral instructors of mankind – and among them the Catholic Church takes the prominent place – have come to the conclusion that to safeguard public order and the rights of the community as a whole, the claims of these successors must be maintained, even in conscience, when a long period of peaceful possession has elapsed.

 The principle is termed “prescription,” and is universally acknowledged. The period varies in the different countries, but the time since CromweIl is long enough to satisfy the most exacting reading. The present holder may keep what he has without being troubled in conscience.

 If a person questions that conclusion, he must meet certain difficulties. The real owner in the days of Cromwell held the land from an ancestor who disturbed the previous owners in the days of a previous invasion. So through the days of the Milesians, the Firbolgs, and the countless other regimes of which history knows nothing. If we reject the principle of “prescription” we must face the suggestion that no human being on the globe at the present moment owns a single particle of anything he holds.

 Another question was asked. This was probably some time early in the last century. It’s clarity is uncompromising.

 Should the right of conquest be always recognized?

 The “right of conquest” , he answered, has been asserted by bellicose invaders and by their “scientific” supporters. It is no better than the right of the highway robber to seize all he can on a night-raid.

 Can we see anything but wisdom and a force for good in a world view which enshrines principles of common sense and justice like these? This is just a glimpse of the patrimony of the authentic Christian Church, passed from generation to generation in the manner eluciadated in the first encyclical letter from the current incumbent of the See of Peter, “Lumen Fidei.”

 The Church, like every family, passes on to her children the whole store of her memories. But how does this come about in a way that nothing is lost, but rather everything in the patrimony of faith comes to be more deeply understood? It is through the apostolic Tradition preserved in the Church with the assistance of the Holy Spirit that we enjoy a living contact with the foundational memory. What was handed down by the apostles — as the Second Vatican Council states — “comprises everything that serves to make the people of God live their lives in holiness and increase their faith. In this way the Church, in her doctrine, life and worship, perpetuates and transmits to every generation all that she herself is, all that she believes.

 The often flawed striving and rough hewing of mankind to implement this patrimony should not be the measure of the value or goodness of the Foundation itself. What is frightening in the contemporary debate – and it is often hard to recognise it as a debate – is the flight from reasonableness in failing to recognize this distinction, a flight accompanied by what appears to be a visceral hatred of the very idea that underlying our existence there might just be that benign “divinity that shapes our end” and that this Divinity subsists in the Catholic Church.

 

[i] Dr. Michael J. O’Donnell, Professor of Moral Theology in st. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, Ireland, in the early decades of the twentieth century.

Reflections on jihad

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture MattersLeave a comment

Is the Muslim world and its bonding substance, Islam, in the throes of its own self-destruction or is it just in the early stages of a dramatic conflict which will ultimately end with its defeat of the civilization it has been at war with since it first emerged from the Arabian Desert in the 7th century?

The third option is of course that it is simply in another phase of that war and that this one, like all the others, will end in a tacit stalemate. Will its core states will once again barricade themselves behind new borders and slumber on until the next phase of this seemingly eternal struggle begins again?

If one were to draw a map of the world today and identify on it all the significant human conflicts currently in progress and further identify the source of each of those one would notice that some expression of Islamic jihad is at the heart of the majority of them – from Nigeria in the west of the African continent to the horn of Africa in the east, from the southern shores of the Mediterranean through the middle east over to the subcontinent itself, the Muslim world is either tearing itself apart or is tearing into its bordering territories, giving new life to that sad geo-political reality, the “bloody borders of Islam”.

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A world at war

 What does all this signify? Does it not justify the question of Manuel II Palaiologos, one of the last Christian rulers before the Fall of Constantinople to the Muslim Ottoman Empire, which he put to his Islamic interlocutor in a conversation dealing with such issues as forced conversion, holy war, and the relationship between faith and reason in Islam? This of course was the question quoted by Pope Benedict XVI when he alluded to this same problem in his famous Regensburg address, provoking an Islamic response which clearly underlined with pathetic accuracy the very problem he pointed to. The Emperor said, “show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

But need Islam have been this way? Robert R. Reilly in his book, The Closing of the Muslim Mind, sees a pattern of events in history which suggests that it might have been otherwise. Had that process of development which Benedict XVI saw as such a pivitol and providential factor in the development of Christianity, its enculturation with the thought and traditions of the Greek world, been allowed to work in Islam then its history might have been very different. It almost did but in the end the power of the contrary forces which eventually triumphed in Islam’s internal conflicts thwarted it. Islam is what it is today, Reilly asserts, because reason was vanquished in the crucial battle for the minds and hearts of Muslims which took place between the ninth and eleventh centuries.

Muslims today are to be found in every country in the world. The vast majority of them are at peace with the world but a crucial element within that international religious community is not. It is crucial because it is the segment of Sunni Islam which is true to the essential theological tenets of the religion which were set in stone for its adherents by the end of the 11th century and which kept it imprisoned there until the late modern age. That peace is the reason for the war which is being waged in so many parts of the world. It is this peace, perceived as a deadly threat to Islamic orthodoxy, which ultimately gives rise to the rage which is driving the Sunni jihad wherever it is found. That peace is seen as a virus which will ultimately undermine the central tenet of Islam’s 11th century theology. This tenet is that reason is the enemy of Islam, that reason is alien to God himself and the man who dabbles in reason as a guide for his life is rejecting the principle of unquestioning submission to the will of Allah. For the jihadists the battle is the battle to preserve and defend to the death this doctrine and to do all in their power to destroy the peace that is corrupting faithful Muslims throughout the world.

In the early years of Marxist Communism the great internal struggle was between those who compromised their cause by accepting the principle of the practicality of communism in one country as a stepping stone to world domination and those who saw this as folly. They argued that Communism could only succeed ultimately if the struggle was global. Peaceful co-existence was a formula for disaster and accepting it was going to lead to failure. They were right. Communism could not compete with freedom and only by extinguishing freedom and all memory and experience of human freedom could Communism dominate the world. “Communism Limited” ultimately spelled the death knell of Communism. It is still in its death throes and is still inflicting suffering on millions of human beings but the end is inevitable.

The Islamic jihadist knows the same. Islam sealed itself off from the world that it could not invade and conquer for the best part of nine centuries. Then in the 19th century, as its major power-house, the sclerotic Ottoman Empire, was dying it began to reach out for help. Help came but with it came the price of contamination. This contamination by an alien culture has ultimately provoked the backlash which is the modern jihad. That jihad knows that unless it can destroy the sources of all those influences which are corrupting the pure Islamic product, as defined by the theologians of the ninth and tenth centuries then their cause is dead. Unless they are victorious then Islam will succumb to reason. Reason is their enemy. If and when reason is allowed its rightful place it will be their undoing. Reason will reveal the truth about man which will ultimately bring about the unraveling of the flawed fabric of Islam which was woven in the early middle ages by the desert tribes who spread east and west from Arabia creating one of the greatest empires which the world had seen.

Historian Tom Holland has put his life on the line by questioning the very provenance of the Koran in his book, In the Shadow of the Sword: The Battle for Global Empire and the End of the Ancient World (2012). The religion of Islam, as it emerged from the desert into the light of history in the eighth century, in his view may be little more than the initial bonding element adopted by the conquerors of the Middle East in those centuries to cement their conquests into an empire. It then took on a life of its own and its rules and regulations acquired their later theological identity and force to become what we know it is today. But whatever its origins, by the ninth century it had become a powerful religious force. It was then that its theology became the subject of the bitter disputes and bloody warfare described by Reilly in his book.

Tom Holland

For a period in the ninth century the embryo of Islam was moving towards the Hellenic world and Hellenic influences. Had it continued to do so its understanding of the Divine would have been different and history might well have witnessed a great ecumenical movement which would have brought together two great religious movements of the time, Islam and Christianity, which had common roots in Judaism. But something happened in the tenth century which was to fatally thwart this development. An Iman, Al-Ghazali, rose to prominence in the Ash’arite sect of Islam.

As we know the Arabs of the early Islamic era are responsible for the preservation of extensive  elements of Greek culture and philosophy. To them we owe the preservation of the works of Aristotle. Two Islamic scholars, Avicena and Averroes, are giants in the history of philosophy. Al-Ghazali was a brilliant philosopher but he was also a mystic and like many mystics he found it hard to stay rooted in reality. In the end he turned his back on philosophy and in a celebrated book, The Incoherence of the Philosophers, he rejected Plato, Aristotle and all their works and pomps, proclaiming that they lead to nothing but darkness and confusion. Averroes was his contemporary and he responded with his book, The Incoherence of the Incoherence. But it was too late. The leaders of Sunni Islam espoused the Ash’arite doctrines of al-Ghazali  and persecuted and murdered all who denied them. The Ash’arite faction triumphed over the Mu’tazalite faction which had followed a Hellenic approach. The battle between them might be seen as a foreshadowing of the Protestant/Catholic divide of the 16th century – with one vital distinction: the Ash’arites triumphed totally over their rivals and the Mu’tazalite tradition died for all intents and purposes.

Reilly quotes the verdict of a twentieth century Muslim scholar, Fazlur Rahman, on the outcome of the battle: “A people that deprives itself of philosophy necessarily exposes itself to starvation in terms of fresh ideas – in fact, it commits intellectual suicide.” Reilly argues that the flight from the hellinization of Islam began with a particular idea of God which took definitive shape in the ninth century. When this idea began to encounter Greek philosophy the confusions inherent in the Koran began to demand explanations and the explanations which eventually triumphed proved incompatible with the rational approach of Greek thought. Then the battle royal began and the As’arites prevailed.

Today they still prevail in the heart of every jihadist. There is no doubt but the sword of Islam is lethally unsheathed again in today’s world as it was in the early middle ages. The question now is whether it will prevail again in the wider world as it did in the medieval world or whether the hellinization of Islam will eventually be allowed to resume, triumph and reap consequences which might bring a peace to the world which it has not know since the days of the Pax Romana.

Breaking bad, breaking good

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters2 Comments

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Imagine there’s no heaven,
It’s easy if you try.
No hell below us…
And no religion too…

Well, we have tried. Not only have we tried. We’ve been there, done that, and the results were pretty hellish.

Man’s inhumanity to man has a long track record and down through the millennia of recorded time there have been some grim epochs. But it is difficult to find any prolonged episodes of bloody mayhem and cruelty to match those which the twentieth century produced. And what is the common denominator linking the worst that this terrible epoch has left to haunt our collective memory? It is the very thing which John Lennon’s superficial and puerile anthem eulogies – an imagination devoid of God, religion and our sense of the eternal.

Power hungry men and cadres of men – mostly men – in the twentieth century tried like no other to imagine not just a world without religion, they actually tried to recreate the world in this image. What did we get as a result? We got tyrannies on a scale never seen by mankind before.

The horrors began with the Mexican Revolution in 1915. By 1917 that adventure had degenerated into an orgy of killing, accompanied by a raft of laws proscribing religion of all denominations, which cost Mexico something in the region of two million lives. Then came the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. Up to the death of Stalin 20 million souls paid for that monster’s atheistic fantasies with their lives. The virulently anti-religious Nazi epoch and its attendant consequences accounted for 65 million lives worldwide while the figment of Mao’s utopian and godless imagination wiped out about 40 million Chinese.

And whose were the fertile imaginations which bore the seeds of all these atrocities? Karl Marx, for whom religion was nothing more than another dangerous narcotic, and Frederic Nietzsche who had worked out in his wisdom that God had actually died.

That covers what we might call the macro-atrocity dimension of a godless world. There is also the micro-atrocity dimension, that of the daily drip-drip murder which goes on under most people’s radar but is no less horrifying.

This morning I read a report on the BBC website which included the following:

The hospital said there was an “extremely rigorous procedure” in place before any patient was put to death. “When we have a case which is… complicated, we ask ourselves more questions in order to be certain about the diagnosis,” Dr Jean-Michel Thomas said.

Thank you Dr. Thomas. Very reassuring. This was a report on the “euthanizing” – that means “killing”, in case the modern world’s euphemisms for the previously unthinkable are bewildering you – of a disturbed 44 year-old transvestite man/woman whose search for what he/she thought might be a true identity ended in despair. The Belgian doctors caring for him/her complied with the poor creature’s last desperate wish to be “put to death”.

This is not science fiction. This is happening every day – and the malady is spreading by the hour. This is the inevitable legacy of the world envisaged in John Lennon’s Imagine.

But there is another world we can imagine. It also is “easy if you try”. Imagine this, and see what it might promise us – and actually deliver. We have also been there, done that – but we just haven’t done it as well as we might have. Nevertheless, it seems fair to say that the Twelve chosen by Jesus Christ to be the first bishops of the Church which he founded did not just listen to him talking. They also walked the talk – with one exception. Look what happened to the world when they did, and when they gathered enough men and women, families and communities around them who were prepared to do the same. They transformed a cruel, murderous and euthanizing pagan Roman world.

Then look at what happened at different stages in the history of the Christian civilization which emanated from this foundation when its peoples lost the plot for one reason or another – leadership faltering, hedonism becoming rampant again: chaos returned and wars ensued.

But unlike John Lennon’s imagined universe, devoid as it is of any element of the sense of a meaningful destiny which resides somewhere in the heart of all men and women, the values at the core of the Christian vision speak volumes to mankind. When men and women rediscovered these again – and often it was the women who heard them first – Christian civilization was reinvigorated. It can be so reinvigorated again.

Imagine this, dream this: that the words of Pope Francis today, echoing truly as they do, the words of he whose vicar on earth he is, be taken to head and heart by every bishop in the world and be taken to heart and head by every co-worker priest serving with each of those bishops, – a somewhat more challenging hope – and be transmitted faithfully and energetically to all the faithful whom each of these has been ordained to serve. Imagine then that each member of that faithful community of Christians resolved to live by the spirit of these words.

Imagine this – a far better dream than that of poor John Lennon: That Pope Francis’ words on twitter over the past few weeks, words which reflect the very essence of the Christian vision, might have a fraction of the influence and penetration that much of the poisonous content of pop culture pouring out through the entertainment industry has.

Some samples to help your imagination:

Christ’s love and friendship are no illusion. On the Cross Jesus showed how real they are.

Jesus is more than a friend. He is a teacher of truth and life who shows us the way that leads to happiness.

We must not be afraid of solidarity; rather let us make all we have and are available to God.

We are all jars of clay, fragile and poor, yet we carry within us an immense treasure.

If we have found in Jesus meaning for our own lives, we cannot be indifferent to those who are suffering and sad.

Are we ready to be Christians full-time, showing our commitment by word and deed.

Charity, patience and tenderness are very beautiful gifts. If you have them, you want to share them with others.

Jesus didn’t save us with an idea. He humbled himself and became a man. The Word became Flesh.

Let’s learn to lose our lives for Christ, like a gift or a sacrifice. With Christ we lose nothing.

A Christian is never bored or sad. Rather, the one who loves Christ is full of joy and radiates joy.

With the “culture of waste”, human life is no longer considered the primary value to be respected and protected.

Add to this sample the distilled wisdom of the Christian message contained in the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church</em> and the Compendium of its social teaching, imagine it being taught and accepted as a standard to live by. Now that’s worth imagining and with that vision we can comfortably join in with John Lennon’s refrain,

You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And all the world will live as one.

“I do not like to use the word optimism” the Pope says in his now famous America interview, “because that is about a psychological attitude….I like to use the word hope instead, according to what we read in the Letter to the Hebrews, … The fathers of the faith kept walking, facing difficulties. And hope does not disappoint….Christian hope is not a ghost and it does not deceive. It is a theological virtue and therefore, ultimately, a gift from God that cannot be reduced to optimism, which is only human. God does not mislead hope; God cannot deny himself. God is all promise.”

The shallowness, the shallowness…

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters1 Comment

This, courtesy of a column in the Washington Post sums it – and him – up.

“Obama warned the General Assembly on Tuesday that “the danger for the world is that the United States, after a decade of war . . . may disengage, creating a vacuum of leadership that no other nation can fill.” Sadly, it is not just a danger. It was the message of his speech — and the tangible result of his presidency.”

Next up: show trials?

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture MattersLeave a comment

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Roger Scruton, apart from his extensive academic and literary achievements, worked to found underground free universities in several Central European countries during Soviet rule. He knows what he is talking about. He says this in the context of the latest dangerous foolishness from Italy: “You can’t imprison thought with law,” he said. The proposed law “is the criminalization of intellectual criticism on the subject of gay marriage. It’s a new intellectual, ideological crime, as was anti-communism during the cold war.”

“To me, this Bill on homophobia is reminiscent of the Moscow trials, and those of Maoist China, where victims confessed their crimes enthusiastically before being executed.

When political activists accuse opponents of “hate,” he said, there is a “moral inversion”. “If you oppose the normalization of homosexuality you are a ‘homophobe’. If you believe in Western culture, you are an ‘elitist’. Accusations of ‘homophobia’ means the end of a career, especially for those who work at a University.”

He compared this process of political manipulation to the process described by George Orwell in his classic political satire 1984. The “Newspeak” of the bill is an example of the use of langauge to create a “spell”.

Read more here:
http://www.ilfoglio.it/soloqui/19923
And here:
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/italian-anti-homophobia-bill-reminiscent-of-maoist-stalinist-politics?utm_source=LifeSiteNews.com+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=29697157a3-LifeSiteNews_com_Intl_Headlines_06_19_2013&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0caba610ac-29697157a3-397480385

Goodness, Truth, Beauty in the Cinema

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture MattersLeave a comment

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At the end of September, Pope Francis, addressing the annual plenary assembly of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications meeting in Rome, said “The challenge is to rediscover, through the means of social communication as well as by personal contact, the beauty that is at the heart of our existence and our journey, the beauty of faith and of the encounter with Christ.”

It is not a totally neglected challenge. The website, Impact Culture (http://www.impactingculture.com) recently published a list of films made in the last decade (in chronological order) – to celebrate the good movies that are still being made.

The Passion, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, and The Chronicles of Narnia are not on this list. That’s just because they’re explicitly Christian. These others are not.

“The cinema,” Pope John Paul II said, “with its vast possibilities, could become a powerful means of evangelization.” These movies undoubtedly tell some of the “good news”. If you haven’t seen all of them, we must issue a SPOILER ALERT. A lot of them are chosen because of the way they end, so… beware, you’re going to be told how how they end.

Spider-Man (2002)
I remember reading an article by a seminarian when this movie was in theaters, and what he said has stuck with me ever since. He compared Peter Parker to a priest. In the film, Peter’s Uncle Ben tells him, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Peter takes the words to heart – his superpowers are meant for something great, and he has a responsibility to use them for the good of society. What’s more, the weight of this responsibility (this is where the priest bit comes in) means that he must sacrifice his desire to be with Mary Jane, the girl of his dreams. Being Spider-Man is Peter’s vocation.

Finding Nemo (2003)
If you read Uninterested, you probably already know where I’m going with this one. In fact, a few of these films were selected on the basis of this same theme: the theme of fatherhood. It’s a theme that I think resonates with a very broad audience because fatherhood in our culture is so broken. Nemo’s father, Marlin, overcomes all his fears and character flaws, faces death and danger, all for love of his son. The film beautifully explores the meaning and power of friendship as well. The love of friends helps all the characters grow in one way or another to become better people (er… fish).
Also, you should know that I originally had a lot of other Pixar films on this list, but I figured that was a little unfair – Pixar is not the only studio making great movies (although they are probably the only one that consistently makes great movies). So Finding Nemo is basically representing all Pixar films on this list – it just happens to be my favorite one.

Cinderella Man (2005)
This movie, like Finding Nemo, was chosen mainly because of its portrayal of fatherhood, but also because of its broader theme of family. Few films show us a stable, nuclear family anymore. Despite all the obstacles this Depression-era family faces, the audience never worries that Jim Braddock will leave his wife and kids or that his wife will leave him because he can’t provide for them. The family is a source of strength and motivation for Jim Braddock – he does everything he does in the film for the sake of his family, and his family, in turn, is always there to support him.

I Am Legend (2007)
This film actually took me by surprise. The symbolism, especially at the end of the movie, is very obviously Christian. At least it was obvious to me when Will Smith literally gives his blood to save the zombies – his blood is pure, untainted, immune to the disease that has turned the rest of the human population into monsters, and he has spent his years of solitude searching for a way to use his blood to cure them, to make them human again. But as soon as he finds the cure, the monsters are closing in. He sacrifices his life to give a woman and her son a chance to get away, but not before he gives them a vial of his blood – the cure. A man pouring out his blood and giving his life to save humanity from their own depravity… sound familiar?

Lars and the Real Girl (2007)
Far too few people have seen this movie, and when I tell you what it’s about, you might think I’m crazy for putting it on this list. Lars is a reclusive young man whose only real companion is a sex doll he ordered on the internet. But trust me, this movie is not what you think. It’s actually a very sweet story about community. When Lars orders this doll, he succumbs to the delusion that she’s a real person, and we soon find out that this delusion – this illness – is a manifestation of Lars’ fear for his pregnant sister-in-law’s life. The love and compassion of the small town community around Lars helps him to overcome his illness and his fears.

3:10 to Yuma (2007)
This is another father one. Christian Bale’s character is, in a lot of ways, similar to Marlin. He starts out afraid. A coward. But by movie’s end, he’s stepping in front of bullets for his son. There’s also something beautiful here about Russell Crowe’s character. He’s evil through and through for almost the entire movie. But by the end, we see the flicker of mercy and nobility.

The Dark Knight (2008)
Like I Am Legend, I think the Christian symbolism in this one is hard to miss. Batman chooses to take on the sins of another. Putting his physical life on the line for others is nothing new – he’s always done that. But this time around, he’s willing to be counted among sinners and thieves for the sake of Gotham City.

The Blind Side (2009)
This one’s almost too easy – I debated putting this one in the same category with LOTR and The Passion. I really don’t think the filmmakers realized what they had on their hands, though, so I’m putting it on the list. This movie shows us what it really means to put our money where our mouth is as Christians. The themes of family, honesty, integrity, and courage are all explored in this little gem.

The King’s Speech (2010)
There’s nothing obviously Christian about this film, but I love it for its portrayal of marriage. The king has a strong, happy marriage as does his speech therapist. The husbands love their wives, and the wives support their husbands. It strikes me now that I’m writing this that the films I’ve chosen for their portrayal of marriage and family are period pieces… interesting. Anyway, there’s also a lot here about duty and courage and patriotism too.

Tangled (2010)
Okay, this is my one cheat. I chose this movie more for what it’s not than for what it is. I want to draw a comparison here between this movie and The Princess and the Frog. I was a little disturbed by the latter, and it really put me in doubt about Disney’s ability to deliver quality children’s movies. The prominence of voodoo and the assertion that voodoo can be good just really rubbed me the wrong way – probably because I know that the voodoo culture actually exists and thrives in some regions. Tangled, on the other hand, is purely fairytale. It’s set in an imaginary place, and the “magic” in it is not rooted in reality in any way. Plus, Rapunzel is one of the better heroines I’ve seen in recent times – a strong, driving protagonist, but still completely feminine.

So who is obsessed then?

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture MattersLeave a comment

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The real story revealed by the brouhaha over “that” interview is what it tells us about much of the international secularist media and it’s take on the Christian message. The interview is a moving and penetrating reflection on that message, our response to it, and ways in which we might be transmitting it to each other. For the media, deaf and blind to the spirit which moves the man who gave it, it was about obsession with sex.

In 12,000 words, about 18 pages printed out, the Pope mentions abortion and homosexuality a total of three times. As has been pointed out, a search for other buzzwords shows that Pope Francis referred to God 37 times, Jesus 26 times and St. Ignatius 15 times. As Word On Fire’s Fr. Steve Grunow said on American radio, “Pope Francis referred to Italian and German opera more than he did abortion and homosexuality.”

Wake up! There is no obsession with sex in the teaching of the Catholic Church. What there is, however, is an obsession by the media with the teachng of the Catholic Church on human sexual behaviour. This is plainly because the consensus on this realm of human behaviour within the media generally is deeply resentful of the Christian understanding and teaching on the nature and purpose of human sexuality.

The media pursues this obsession by reporting incessantly on every utterance from the Church on the subject, every sign of any rebellion or resistance to it inside the Church, to the exclusion of the rest of the entire corpus of its teaching on the Decalogue. It would be unfair if the Pope were to blame his bishops for an obsession just because the media grossly distorts the balance of everything they teach, from pastoral letter to pastoral letter, from homily to homily, day after day, year after year. He hasn’t, and they are adding to their distortion by putting words into his mouth. If anyone has a case to answer about obsessions, it is the media.

Kathryn Jean Lopez – in a rare exception in the flood of coverage on the Pops’s interview – points out in a piece she wrote for Fox News that not everything in the world is about sex and politics. That message may take the Irish Times, The New York Times, the BBC, among many more media prganizations, a few more homilies and interviews with Pope Francis to understand. As Shelia Liaugminas concludes on her blog on MercatorNet, “The Catholic Church – or at least those preachers and teachers who are outspoken on matters concerning human sexuality, especially when catechetical discussions are turned into clashes in the public square for political or cultural reasons – is often accused of being obsessed with sex. But the obsession might just be the media’s.” I dont think there is any “might” about it.

A letter in today’s Irish Independent

On By Michael KirkeIn Culture Matters1 Comment

A letter in today’s Irish Independent tells us that “there is insufficient moral consensus in Ireland to ground consideration of the country’s future.”

“The clash of antagonistic wills,” Philip O’Neill writes, “evident in the abortion debate and in current discussion of what to do in Syria or with our economy, often parades as rational debate, leaving us with little more than intensified divisions.” So far so good. Certainly, a lot of parading, a good deal of intensity and deep, deep division. Parading is clearly a sham but intensity and division are no bad things in themselves. Fear and loathing of both, which O’Neill seems to harbor, may well be harmful if they lead you to some of his conclusions.

“The continuing drift away from the church”, he writes, “is perhaps the most telling change. However, this is not indicative of a new paganism but a justifiable expression of dissatisfaction with a form of religion that had become radically focused on itself. Even the priests express unease at the church’s sometimes neurotic fear of the slightest shift from fidelity to its programme.”

I think we are dealing with more than the “slightest” shifts in contemporary Irish Catholicism here. If the utterances emerging from some of the followers and sympathesiers of the Ascociation of Catholic Priests are anything to go by, a good few Protestants are more in tune with orthodox Catholicism than with this kind of “fidelity”.

Who ever said morality was about consensus? Well, sadly, a lot of people did – and that is where the radical divide lies. The Catholic Church’s teaching will never be developed or defined by consensus. It is a given – by God – or it is nothing. Otherwise we will just be indulging in another bit of democratic groping for the truth. Mankind in human society deepens in its understanding of the revealed truth down through the ages. That is very different from a process of consensus.

There is no doubt but that a search is involved if we are to know the Truth. But is is not to be found in consensus. It will be found in the way and in the spirit which Pope Francis’ encyclical, Lumen Fidei, suggests when he quotes Saint Irenaeus of Lyons who tells how Abraham, before hearing God’s voice, had already sought him “in the ardent desire of his heart” and “went throughout the whole world, asking himself where God was to be found”, until “God had pity on him who, all alone, had sought him in silence”.