I knew I needed to do something to get back into regular blogging, and this is news I can’t not report: Our archbishop has just been named a cardinal!
At the end of his celebration of Mass for the Feast of the Epiphany, Pope Benedict XVI announced that he will be elevating 22 cardinals in a concistory on February 18. Among them is Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York! Abp. Dolan accepted in his usual folksy and humble fashion.
And just a bit more:
It’s delightful news, but really no surprise. The Archbishop of New York is always traditionally a cardinal, but Dolan hasn’t been made one in his almost three years in New York because he predecessor, Edward Cardinal Egan, is still under 80, the age at which cardinal usually “retires,” at least in the sense of losing his voting rights in a conclave. It’s not thought good to have two cardinals with voting rights from the same diocese. Abp. Dolan is rising to the rank of cardinal just a little before Egan’s 80th birthday in April, so Pope Benedict raised him the minute he was able to do so. Cardinal Dolan will now have the chance to advise the Pope in one or more of the Vatican’s congregrations and will almost certainly vote in the conclave to elect Pope Benedict’s successor.
Just another piece of Catholic history being made.
I have been somewhat absent in the last weeks while the final push is on for the St. Elizabeth documentary. Just yesterday I was able to send an DVD that was almost complete (except for the final sound editing and music) to a Franciscan sister in Italy who is going to show it to a large formation group on May 21. It will be great publicity, I hope.
This means that I neglected to write anything about an events of great interest in the Catholic world — the first ever confab between the Vatican and bloggers! It was held in the afternoon of Monday May 2 (my birthday!), after the thanksgiving Mass for the beaitifcation of John Paul II. In all, 150 bloggers from all over the world attended. May of those I like reading most including The American Papist (Thomas Peters), The Anchoress (Elizabeth Scalia) and Rocco Palmo of Whispers in the Loggia were in attendence.
This was a get-together in which the bloggers spoke first and the Vatican responded. Thomas Peters urged the Vatican to give accredidation to bloggers and to offer them advance information about developments in the Church so they can comment before the mainstream media has a chance to mangle the story. The Vatican put forward some plans for its new website and imporovements to its media communication. Then there is the question of the need for Christian charity among bloggers (a sore point), well handled by Scalia, who quoted Pope Benedict. There is more, much more.
The Ancoress has put up a lot of links. Reading them is an inspiration! A really good example of taking Christ to the marketplace of modern culture, one of the reasons I started my blog to begin with.
Of coure, I feel left out, but maybe i’ll be invited to the next one. . .
Marco Frisina, composer and Director of Liturgy for the diocese of Rome, has written a hymn called Aprite le Porte a Cristo” (Open the Doors to Christ) that will be sung at John Paul II’s beatification. i tried hard to listen at Frisina’s own site, to which everyone is linking, unfortunately the Flash player refuses to work in my browser. Fortunately some kind soul has already posted a YouTube video! (What would we do without Youtube?)
CDF Official: Ecumenism’s Goal Is Union With Pope; Lutheran Ordinariate In Works?
In an interview with The Portal– a new publication devoted to the ordinariate of Anglican communities received into the Catholic Church– an official of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith emphasized that the goal of ecumenical dialogue is the restoration of full communion between non-Catholic Christians and the Pope.
“The ordinariate is very important to the Holy Father,” said Father Hermann Geissler, the Austrian priest who leads the Congregation’s doctrinal office. “The ordinariate promotes unity and is a powerful instrument for unity, it will help Christians to be evangelists.” Noting that “we must cooperate and grow together,” the priest said that the Church will be enriched by the Anglican patrimony of music.
“The goal of the ecumenical movement is complete visible union with one Christ and with Peter in one Church,” Father Geissler emphasized.
The Portal also reported that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has begun to receive requests from Lutherans to establish a similar canonical structure that would allow them to enter the Catholic Church while retaining aspects of the Lutheran heritage. “The Holy Father will do all he can to bring other Christians into unity,” Father Geissler commented.
(EWTN)
Zowie! Reunion with Rome for descendants of the original Reformation! Is Martin Luther rolling over in his grave or what? This may turn out to be a big story, so stay tuned.
In the last two years, busy as I’ve been with my own film, I’ve written very little about film and nothing at all about the Oscar race last year, which means I also missed out commenting on the big change - raising the number of nominated fims from 5 to 10. This year, I have seen only 3 of the nominated films, which happens to be a much smaller percentage of the honored films than last time I wrote about the awards.
However, I still have something to write about, since it’s widely agreed that it’s going to be a close 2-way race - between The Social Network and The King’s Speech. I could see either winning. I can’t see Toy-Story 3 winning, unfortunately, though I really loved it; for though animated films can be nominated for Best Picture, they never win, especially since they have their own category.
Well, for the top spot, we have a race between two wildly different films. One is an old-fashioned, rousing, crowd-pleasing story with a strong emotional rooting interest in the main character (The King’s Speech). It’s even old-fashioned enough to be about the British monarchy! The other is highly modern, cool and cynical in tone, and focuses on the young people who made Facebook what it is today (The Social Network). A film for youth. The Academy loves youth, perhaps because so many of its older members are chasing it in one way or another. But the films are alike in one way - they are both very unusual tales of friendship, as well as the power of the media, in whatever form it takes.
In The Social Network, the tale of friendship is symbolic of the larger culture. It’s the story of how Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), a skinny, self-absorbed Harvard undergraduate computer geek, invented Facebook, which has become the way most young people now connect. The story is also a tale of Mark’s own social connections — and disconnections. It all begins when Mark’s girlfriend Erica (Rooney Mara), having had enough of his arrogance, summarily dumps him, and in revenge, he hacks into the university computer and starts a contest, using Harvard’s online student directory, or “facebook”, to have her rated among the most unattractive girls on campus. When this stunt makes him notorious, Mark is hired by two super-rich frat boys, the Winkelvoss twins, to write some code for their social networking site. Then Mark gets his business major best friend, Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield, a young actor to watch), to stake him to a $1,900.00 investment to create a very similar site. The web of connections and deceptions grows. The Winkelvosses grow suspicious. Facebook takes off. Then Sean Parker, the former student geek creator of Napster, now an ultra-sophisticated millionaire, arrives on the scene, tempting Mark with some much grander ideas, and creating tension between Mark and Eduardo. Then things really get complicated. The intricate story is told in an equally intricate way, bouncing between dramatic scenes and hearings for the lawsuits that the various principals brought against Zuckerberg.
The movie hinges on the huge irony of the guy who invented “friending” literally ending up friendless in the process. It dissects the driven nature of the creative genius, who is both ruthless and strangely innocent, supremely confident in his powers, and tremendously surprised when people complain about his arrogance (Jesse Eisenberg handles these complicated nuances superbly, better than anyone since Tom Hulce in Amadeus, and he does an even better job of being really unlikeable). The rest of the cast is also terrific, especially Garfield and Justin Timberlake, who is amusingly slick as the hipster devil. The movie is smartly written by Aaron Sorkin, and very enjoyable. But in the end it’’s not as fulfilling an experience as I hoped. Apart from its grand ironies, the movie never really provides much insight into why the computer social networking culture became what it is; more importantly it doesn’t give us an idea of what central relationship, Mark and Eduardo’s friendship, was about, or what made them friends in the first place. Which is in itself ironic, isn’t it?
The King’s Speech is in a wonderful grand tradition of patriotic biopics, as it tells the emotion-laden story of King George VI who stepped into office after his brother abdicated the throne and inspired his nation during World War II. At the same time it takes a mischievous view of the foibles of royalty. In this respect, it seems like an inspired cross between The Queen and The Madness of King George. The madness of King George III (his actual madness, not the film) is even referenced in the script. And Queen Elizabeth herself appears in it as a little girl. So the tradition and family bloodline are out in full force.
George VI started out in life as Albert (”Bertie”), the second son of King George V (Colin Firth), who, in spite of his exalted birth, seems destined never to be very much in life. His older brother, David (Guy Pearce), is set to succeed their father on the throne, and the shy Bertie seems incapable of even the few public duties that “spare” royal sons are asked to engage in, because of his debilitating stutter. He simply cannot give a public speech, much to his father’s (Michael Gambon) frustration and his own. He even has to struggle to tell a bedtime story to his two little daughers, Margaret and Elizabeth (the future queen). Bertie is ready to give up. But his devoted and determined wife Lady Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter) continues to search for the right speech therapist and finally runs across Lionel Logue, an eccentric Australian (Geoffrey Rush) who operates out of a very shabby basement office, and insists on seeing his patient only in that office — even after he learns who his patient is.
Bertie agrees to this proposition with the greatest reluctance, and he is immediately appalled when Lionel insists on addressing him by his first name. The future King George, isn’t exactly a genius, but he does have a touch of royal arrogance, which, along with his shame over his affliction, has up to now made it difficult for anyone but his wife to approach him emotionally. Unlike most speech therapists at the time, Lionel understands that a stutter is emotional and psychological in origin, and knows that his patient will have to trust him so that emotional core can be reached. And in the beautifully written scenes, Bertie is eventually dragged across that barrier - but gives and good as he gets all the way. The eventual revelations about Bertie’s family and his childhood make his emotional problems, rage and finally his stutter easy to understand. In the meantime, the flighty David, who has assumed the throne as Edward VIII, decides to abandon it in favor of “the woman I love,” and Bertie is asked to step up to the plate, and face everything that Hitler is about to throw at England. And of course, he is asked to give a rousing speech to the nation over the radio.
The film is dramatic, but just as often unexpectedly funny - as the frequent appreciative laughter in my theater demonstrated. Admittedly, it isn’t too difficult to get laughs when you put actors like Geoffrey Rush and Colin Firth in a room and let them react to one another. But the drama is subtle and beautifully nuanced. Firth in particular gives an tremendous, emotionally raw performance, without ever overdoing it. Another huge ingredient in the film’s success is that the screenwriter, David Seidler, is a lifelong stutterer himself, and treats the matter with an insider’s knowledge, as well as great honesty and sympathy. The crowning glory, in a way, is Helena Bonham Carter, who takes the ordinary and frequently dull supportive wife role and lends it wit and sparkle as well as the expected tenderness. The twinkle in her eye matches that of her co-stars and gives the emotions of the story variety and depth. The story of Bertie and Lionel’s friendship goes in some unexpected places and hits unexpected snags and even betrayals and what happens seems very real, and much deeper than anything in The Social Network. The story reminds what it is like to be really taken out of yourself and your narrow world by a friend - and just what the limits and barriers to that journey are. While the trajectory of this film may seem trite and obvious, it’s the simple and obvious that’s so often hard to get right. They certainly got it right here.
The behind-the scenes royal drama about the succession seems choppy and sags in a few places. The film was shot on a very tight budget, and it shows; there isn’t the cinematographic sweep you might hope for. But the drama itself and the performances are more than compensation enough. The King’s Speech is my Oscar pick for Best Picture. It’s been nominated for a total of 12 awards, including Best Screenplay, Best Director, and acting nods not only for Firth as lead, but Rush and Bonham Carter for their supporting roles. It’s up against The Social Network with 8 noms, including Best Actor for Eisenberg, Best Screenplay Adaptation (Aaron Sorkin), and Best Director (David Fincher).
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.
