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Do you remember the childhood story “Stone Soup”? It’s an old folk tale about a couple of hungry travelers who creatively entice hesitant villagers to fill their large cooking pot with delicious soup ingredients.
After the initial refusal of the villagers to feed the hungry travelers, the two men fill their pot with stream water, light a fire under it, and then add a large stone to the water.
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I knew that The Shape of Water would win the Academy Award for Best Picture. It checked three of the major Hollywood boxes: celebration of oppressed people, valorization of complete sexual freedom, and a Christian villain. It used to be that a black hat or shifty eyes or a foreign accent would give someone away as the bad guy, but now, it is the quoting of the Bible.
Of course, this shouldn’t surprise us in regard to The Shape of Water, for the auteur behind the film is the Mexican director Guillermo del Toro, who has gone on record many times as a despiser of religion, especially Catholicism.
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I gratefully recall the evening when Dad and I sat on our front lawn and studied the farmer’s green field across the road.
The sun like a beautiful orange-red host sank slowly into the chalice of God’s good earth. It was a heavenly moment of harmony between God, nature, Dad, and me.
Dad broke the sacred silence by saying, “You know, we don’t really own anything!”
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John Joy |
Continuing on with our series on the Creed of the People of God, in honor of its 50th anniversary this year, the next two sections are about the Holy Spirit and the Blessed Virgin Mary.
This creed of Pope Paul VI is based on the Nicene Creed we say at Mass, but it goes into greater detail about what Catholics are required to believe in order to be “practicing Catholics” and (more importantly) in order have that faith without which we cannot be saved. |
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Spoiler Alert! This column reveals details of a newly released film.
I went to see A Quiet Place, John Krasinski’s new thriller, with absolutely no anticipation of finding theological or spiritual themes. I just wanted a fun evening at the movies. How wonderful when a film surprises you!
I don’t know if I can find the golden thread that draws all of these themes together into a coherent message, but I think one would have to be blind not to see a number of religious motifs in this absorbing film.|
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Word on Fire
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Editor’s note: Following is a slightly edited version of a homily given by Msgr. Kevin Holmes, pastor of the Cathedral Parish in Madison, on Good Friday, March 30.
As many of you know, I was privileged to spend the first two weeks of this Lent on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
After I got back, Marc Laudonio — on the parish staff — asked me an interesting question, namely: “Rome or Jerusalem? If you could visit only one, which would you choose?”
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Word on Fire
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“She hears, upon that water without a sound, a voice that cries, ‘The tomb in Palestine is not the porch of spirits lingering. It is the grave of Jesus where he lay . . .'”
Somber words. One should say, inappropriate words for Easter Sunday.
They come from the American poet Wallace Stevens, an excerpt from his poem, Sunday Morning.
Recently the sun shone gently on the slopes of the river bank as my four children ran alongside it, shouting and laughing at their stick boats they’d sent downriver.
“Here comes mine!” they shouted excitedly as their sticks bobbed over the ripples in the water.
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This article is the second in a two-part series.
In Grammar of Assent, John Henry Newman reminded us that truth is brought home to the mind, becoming convincing and persuasive, when it is represented, not through abstractions, but through something particular, colorful, and imaginable.
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A boy returned from Catechism class where he learned about Jesus’ resurrection.
During his walk home, he stopped by a religious goods store to study a window display of a huge cross with an image of the crucified Jesus nailed to it. An elderly man who walked with crutches joined him. The man seemed confused as he stared at the crucifix.
