May 2016
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I recently rewatched this 2007 film when I was in the mood one night for some sort of mystery or thriller and didn’t have anything new at hand. I don’t have the internet at home, and it was a bit late for a library or video store run. Looking through my small DVD collection, I…
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I'm sorry, but these remarks from Pope Francis just sound silly and/or naive to me: “It is true that the idea of conquest is inherent in the soul of Islam," he said. "However, it is also possible to interpret the objective in Matthew’s Gospel, where Jesus sends his disciples to all nations, in terms of the same…
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UPDATE, April 2025: if you have arrived at this page from a search, please have a look at this post, written after having read the Esolen and Longfellow translations. Consider Longfellow, if you can handle his more antique manner. I've read the Inferno twice over the years, but not gone any further. I decided I really…
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But here is a bit of eccentricity of which I was unaware: I knew that as children they had written long involved stories about an imaginary country, but I didn't know that Charlotte and Branwell, at least, had written these stories in script so small as to be unreadable for most people without a magnifying…
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I saw this movie in uptown New York when it first came out in 1969, with my mother and a friend of hers. For weeks before I went to see it, our shop girls had been doing impersonations of Newman and Redford’s funniest lines in the movie. Even so, it did not disappoint, and afterwards…
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I saw that remark on Facebook not long ago, and it struck me as true. The reference is to John Courtney Murray, S.J. I have not read Murray, but my understanding is that he articulated the idea that American institutions, particularly religious freedom, and Catholicism are fundamentally compatible. He is said to have been influential…
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(Since there's nothing else on hand for this week, I'm re-posting this, slightly updated, from October 2007.) When I decided to re-acquaint myself with the Bergman films I had seen and loved many years ago, and to see those I hadn’t, this was my first step, and as it turned out a very good place to begin.…
Light On Dark Water 