I only found this out recently, and it’s great news. Radio Maria is carrying a series of broadcasts discussing The Divine Comedy canto by canto. The commentator is Fr. Joseph Koterski, one of my professors at Fordham, who is an expert in Dante. Not only did he co-teach our class in this subject, I had earlier been part of his informal Dante discussion group. He is a really great teacher and this series is a delight to listen to.
Radio Maria is at 620 AM on the radio dial in New York. You can hear the broadcasts at 11:00 p.m. ET Wednesday nights, or listen on the internet here. Right now he is starting Canto 6 of the Purgatorio. The previous broadcasts are available as podcasts here.
Learn why there is more to Dante than the Inferno!
Manalive is the upcoming movie based on the delightful and suspenseful comic novel by G. K. Chesterton. it tells the story of a jolly and exuberant man named Innocent Smith, whose passion for life rejuvenates the inhabitants of a sleepy, small-town boarding house — until a police inspector shws up with the claim that Smith is actually a criminal — that he is a thief, an adulterer and possibly a murderer! Naturally he is put on trial — with completely unexpected results.
The sneak preview scene does give away a major linchpin of the plot, but it’s a great scene in itself. The stars are Catholic stage actor Kevin O’Brien and Catholic blogger-extraordinaire-with-a-stage-background, Mark Shea, who is the perfect Innocent Smith.
I’ll put in updates as the film gets closer to release.
The trailer for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader has finally appeared. I’ve been waiting for a long time to see what the adaption of my favorite of the Narnia books would be like. It looks exciting but one big mystery: Where are Eustace and the dragon?
If you read the book (and I’ll try to avoid spoiling it if you haven’t), the character of Eustace and his adventures with a monstrous dragon form one of the story’s major (almost) explicit Christian threads. But Eustace barely appears in the trailer. He has a line or two at the beginning, and — I think — a voice-over line later on, but more important there is no CGI dragon in sight. So are the book’s Christian themes once again being censored or dumbed-down for secular audiences? I think Prince Caspian was hurt by this, especially by its muddling the theme of following Aslan even when you can’t see him.
Of course, the trailer might not mean much; after all the movie is six months or so away, and this is the teaser; the advertising is bound to focus on the familiar characters; and the CGI dragon work might not be completed yet.
Also, there are some teasing dragon-hints right at the trailer’s very close. I was tipped off to this by an observant viewer who commented on the American Papist blog (second comment down as of this posting).
Today has been a bit frustrating; it was off to the library to finally convert Brad’s files from his camera’s format to something I can use. I needed iMovie on the Mac, but the library’s Macs don’t have the proper plugin. 2-3 hours of frustration. I did some more research, but really need to work on the documentary.
Back home to find that I’d missed Catholic TV’s broadcast of the Memorial Mass in New York for Bishop Fulton Sheen 30 years after his death. That was a shame, since while I was too young to have seen much of his show on TV, when it originally aired, I’ve read and admired his books. And of course, watched him on video. Last year, the cause for his canonization was opened. If he makes it, St. Clare will have herself some competition for the spot of patron saint of television!
I’m still waiting for the video-on-demand. In the meantime, here’s a nice retrospective, also from Catholic TV:
I’ll put the Mass here as son as it appears. And of course, there is always quite a bit of Bishop Sheen to watch on YouTube.
Update:
And here is an awesome funny video of Bishop Sheen’s appearance on What’s my Line? Particularly delightful is the way he tried to disguise his voice by speaking French.
And some classic stuff from early in his Life is Worth Living Series.
Spirituality, intellect, wit and humor — and could that man wear a cape well!
Check out his take on anti-Catholicism in the media, which he originally sent in as an op-ed piece to the New York Times — which refused to publish it:
Here’s hoping he’ll soon join the list of cardinals who have blogs (No, I have no idea how many there are).
Pausing to look at all the sights on our way to Jerusalem. . . Mainly about faith, the Church, film, writing, famous Christian authors, and anything else I'm interested in at the moment.
The photo above was taken at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome in March 2007.
Quote of the Month
"The conviction that there is a Creator God is what gave rise to the idea of human rights, the idea of the equality of all people before the law, the recognition of the inviolability of human dignity in every single person and the awareness of people’s responsibility for their actions. Our cultural memory is shaped by these rational insights. To ignore it or dismiss it as a thing of the past would be to dismember our culture totally and to rob it of its completeness. The culture of Europe arose from the encounter between Jerusalem, Athens and Rome – from the encounter between Israel’s monotheism, the philosophical reason of the Greeks and Roman law. This three-way encounter has shaped the inner identity of Europe. In the awareness of man’s responsibility before God and in the acknowledgment of the inviolable dignity of every single human person, it has established criteria of law: it is these criteria that we are called to defend at this moment in our history."
Pope Benedict XVI to the German Parliament, Sept 22, 2011.
