The Mass: FSSP Father Fryar Explains It All to You (Video)

Last updated on: June 29, 2015 at 10:08 pm By Kate O'Hare

Everything’s so much better when you understand it. Taped last week in a schoolyard adjacent to St. Victor Church, between Santa Monica Boulevard and Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, California, FSSP priest Father James Fryar — the FSSP (Fraternitas Sacerdotalis Sancti Petri, or the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter) offers the Tridentine or Latin Mass daily at St. Victor and sporadically at other L.A.-area parishes — goes through the theology of the Mass. First of a planned series of talks. Enjoy:... Read more

Variety’s Purpose to Celebrate Faith & Family Programming (Part 1)

Last updated on: June 30, 2015 at 11:28 pm By Kate O'Hare

You might think that Hollywood is wholly devoid of people of faith, and that journalism as a profession is entirely hostile to Christianity. But you’d be wrong on both points. On Thursday, June 25, the venerable trade publication Variety –– for which I freelance, but I didn’t cover this Summit for it — is sponsoring Purpose: Family Entertainment + Faith-Based Summit, in association with the PR firm Rogers & Cowan, at the Four Seasons Beverly Hills. It’s the fourth year of... Read more

What HBO’s ‘Ballers’ Has to Teach Us All

Last updated on: June 22, 2015 at 6:47 pm By Kate O'Hare

This day comes for everyone, but for some, it arrives in the blink of an eye. On Sunday, June 21, HBO premiered its latest half-hour show (I hesitate to say “comedy,” because while there were humorous bits, it wasn’t played for laughs), called “Ballers.” Described as “Entourage” in the NFL — and sharing the same producer, former wild child and now devout Catholic Mark Wahlberg — “Ballers” stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as Spencer Strassmore, who was a star linebacker... Read more

Brian Williams Said a Lot — But Not the One Word That Mattered

Last updated on: June 22, 2015 at 11:20 am By Kate O'Hare

Over at my other home, CatholicVote, I had my say about “NBC Nightly News” anchor and managing editor Brian Williams, who survived revelations of his long history of public lies and exaggerations, only to fall very, very far … into a news-reporting chair on MSNBC. How many aspiring or out-of-work journalists — who haven’t told self-aggrandizing falsehoods about themselves and news events on latenight TV and the lecture circuit– would have liked that spot? Well, sorry guys, you don’t have whatever pixie dust Williams —... Read more

Charleston’s Mother Emanuel Opens Her Arms — Say Amen

Last updated on: June 21, 2015 at 5:30 pm By Kate O'Hare

I just caught the ending of the Washington Post‘s livestream of the first Sunday service at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina — known in the area as “Mother Emanuel” — since the horrific shooting on Wednesday night that claimed the lives of nine innocent people, including the pastor, Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was also a state senator. The building is lovely, with dark-wood pews and a wraparound balcony, stained-glass windows and an elaborate raised pulpit (the... Read more

‘Deadliest Catch’: Crab Captain (And Dad) Phil Harris Tops Reality-TV Poll

Last updated on: June 20, 2015 at 4:40 am By Kate O'Hare

Voters in Yahoo! TV’s poll for have picked the late Phil Harris of Discovery’s “Deadliest Catch” as the “Greatest Reality TV Personality of All Time,” and I happen to agree. The captain of the F/V Cornelia Marie was a larger-than-life legend of the Bering Sea crab fleet, with a swashbuckling style and a soft spot for his boys, Jake (at left above) and Josh (right). An absent father for most of their lives, he bonded with them at sea, becoming... Read more

Rob Lowe: He’s an Actor Playing an Actor Playing a Lawyer … and a Priest

Last updated on: June 19, 2015 at 7:04 pm By Kate O'Hare

Rob Lowe is hot — a hot TV property, that is. He’s got two shows coming up, a Fox comedy and an NBC drama, playing an actor playing a lawyer, who tries to actually be a lawyer, and a possibly-Catholic priest. This fall, Lowe (“The West Wing,” “Parks and Rec”) stars in “The Grinder,” a comedy (the title for which is uncomfortably close to a gay dating app) set to air on Tuesdays on Fox (no premiere date yet). Lowe showed off... Read more

Laudato Si: Reading Francis Through Francis

Last updated on: June 18, 2015 at 11:36 am By Kate O'Hare

I haven’t yet read through all of Pope Francis’ new encyclical Laudato Si (and I may wait until my partner in unmasking bad Vatican English translations, Joe Garcia, gets a gander at it), but since a lot of people will undoubtedly lose their collective minds over this … again … here are a few things to remember. First, this has happened before, and it will happen again. The Left will say he’s the patron saint of climate change (whatever that nebulous... Read more

Are Enyclicals (on the Environment or Otherwise) Infallible Documents?

Last updated on: June 16, 2015 at 12:54 pm By Kate O'Hare

My normal beat is pop culture, but I have covered more general Church topics, including the papacy. Back when I was writing about the Church (and other things), for Breitbart.com, Pope Francis released his first encyclical, Lumen Fidei. Told that the Breitbart readership leaned heavily in the direction of non-religious Libertarians and Southern Evangelicals, I set out to explain the basics of encyclicals to them — by first explaining it to myself. Here’s the story from July 2013, called “Is... Read more

I told my daughter-in-law to uncover a man's feet and lie down at the threshing floor. Who am I?