This is a silly story about a sad story. In January of 2005, American troops opened fire on a car that turned out to be carrying an Iraqi family. Both parents were killed outright, the sons was badly injured. Getty Images photographer Chris Hondros snapped an image of the daughter standing in the blood spatter. Half-blanketed by darkness, she is reduced to pairs of tiny feet and hands, and a wide-open, screaming mouth. The New York Times has tracked the... Read more
Don’t tell my sainted mother, but tomorrow I plan to blog a tribute to her. For now, here are some articles of more general interest. Here, my Patheos colleageue Pat Gohn discusses, the psychological, moral and spiritual transformation that goes with becoming a mother: The sacrificial side of motherhood first becomes evident during a pregnancy. A woman yields her body and wellbeing that a child may take shape and develop, as it changes her shape and her calendar forever. While... Read more
Put it down to my tender Jewish heart, but I’m glad to hear that Mel Gibson’s stricken career, like the man said in Holy Grail, isn’t quite dead, and may even pull through. The Beaver, Gibson’s new film, in which he stars opposite Jodie Foster, opened today to mixed, but mainly positive, reviews. Many of the sympathetic critics think Gibson is the best thing about it. In Rolling Stone, Peter Travers gives him credit for “a high-wire performance of the... Read more
In The Four Stages of Cruelty, William Hogarth depicts the body of Tom Nero, a fictitious murderer, being dissected during an anatomy class. From the ceiling hang the skeletons of Burke and Hare, the infamous grave-robbers. Tom Nero might never have existed, but the fate of his mortal remains was entirely plausible: in 1752, the British Parliament had passed a law, permitting the authorities to donate the bodies of executed criminals, as it were, to science. Hogarth was preaching a... Read more
Pneumonia. Hack. Hack. Seems I picked up pneumonia on the airplane, or in the airports, or whatever. No wonder I can’t collect my thoughts, or stop coughing. Will be taking it easy for the weekend, and writing little-to-nothing. I am very, very grateful to Max for keeping the show going! Take it away, Max! Read more
First, The Cardinal, Otto Preminger’s 1963 adaptation of Henry Morton Robinson’s novel. Tom Tryon plays Stephen Fermoyle, an Irish boy from Boston who rises from callow seminarian to prince of the Church in just two short decades. Along the way, he battles racism, fascism and even partial-birth abortion. In portraying one of his first bosses, Cardinal Glennon, John Huston takes only the occasional modest bite out of the scenery. I’ve always wanted to read the novel, but it seems to... Read more
Today, on the Deacon’s Bench, Deacon Greg Kandra shares the story of Christopher Klusman, a Milwaukee seminarian who is, in his own words, “Deaf with a capital D”. From the oringal Catholic Herald article: I told children and other people that if you put your heart into it, you can be anybody you want to be, but for some weird reason, I saw that I could become anybody, any job except being a priest,” he said. That was until his... Read more
Salon reports that Canadian blogger Derek Miller died shortly after blogging his own death. Miller, first diagnosed with colorectal cancer in 2007, had been using his blog as a platform for his meditations on illness and death, longing and loss. His final post begins: Here it is. I’m dead, and this is my last post to my blog. In advance, I asked that once my body finally shut down from the punishments of my cancer, then my family and friends... Read more
I’m out until later in the afternoon. This is from the loggia in St. Peter’s Basilica, as the sun is rising — just so beautiful! Through the columns! I wrote about some of this here. More later… Read more
Looks like I’m good and busted, for breaking Godwin’s Law. Last night, I published blog post, arguing that pundits and Americans in general would do well not to police too closely one another’s gut-level reactions to bin Laden’s death. It’s big; people’s feelings are bound to be strong, strongly mixed, or both. Titling the piece “Down with Reaction Nazis,” I cited among the guilty Joan Walsh; for a piece she published in Salon; Jim Geraghty, for his rebuttal in his... Read more
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