Sunday Best: Election Novena 2024

 

As we draw nearer to the election I have noticed that tensions are running high on both sides of the political aisle.

It is important that we remember that no matter who wins, our loyalty is not to the princes of this world but to our God in Heaven.

America is the greatest country that the world has ever seen.  But we cannot be so without the grace of God.  We are ever in need of His providence.

Perhaps I am just getting older, but it seems like the divide between the county around election time is getting bigger.  Not only that, but the amount of angst and acrimony has increased.  I am not denying that this election has incredibly consequences.  But moreso than ever, I see the rush of fear and anxiety that grips people when the election does not turn out the way they had hoped.

The Knights of Columbus have published a novena to Mary of the Immaculate Conception, the Patroness of our country.  With Americans going to the polls and deciding our nation's course and destiny for the next four years, it is more important than ever to put that choice into the hands of our Lord and our Lady.

I will be praying this novena every day from now through election day, but the Knights particularly ask that it be prayed from October 28-November 5.  And I invite all of you to pray with me.

God Bless America!

Prayer to Mary, the Immaculate Conception, Patroness of the United States

Most Holy Trinity: Our Father in Heaven, who chose Mary as the fairest of your daughters; Holy Spirit, who chose Mary as your Spouse; God the Son, who chose Mary as your Mother, in union with Mary we adore your majesty and acknowledge your supreme, eternal dominion and authority.

Most Holy Trinity, we put the United States of America into the hands of Mary Immaculate in order that she may present the country to you. Through her we wish to thank you for the great resources of this land and for the freedom which has been its heritage.

Through the intercession of Mary, have mercy on the Catholic Church in America. Grant us peace. Have mercy on our president and on all the officers of our government. Grant us a fruitful economy, born of justice and charity. Have mercy on capital and industry and labor. Protect the family life of the nation. Guard the precious gift of many religious vocations. Through the intercession of our Mother, have mercy on the sick, the tempted, sinners – on all who are in need.

Mary, Immaculate Virgin, our Mother, Patroness of our land, we praise you and honor you and give ourselves to you. Protect us from every harm. Pray for us,that acting always according to your will and the will of your divine Son, we may live and die pleasing to God.  Amen.

Film Review: Saturday Night

 

Sexuality/Nudity Mature

Violence Acceptable

Vulgarity Objectionable

Anti-Catholic Philosophy Objectionable

I don't think that this will be a traditional film review.  This will be more of a rant.

My experience watching this movie may be very different from yours, dear viewer.  But I had such a viscerally negative emotional reaction to this movie that it may blind me to its artistic merits.

But first, let us talk about the plot: Saturday Night is a movie that takes place in real time in the 90 minutes leading up to the premiere of the now-iconic show Saturday Night Live.  The film centers around showrunner and creator Lauren Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) as he juggles incompetent crew members, egotistical stars, stifling network executives.  All of this occurs as the clock keeps ticking and the show is not ready.  The pressure mounts and what occurs will either be monstrous or magic.

Director Jason Reitman keeps things tense and claustrophobic in the tight halls of Studio 8H.  As the time gets closer, it feels like the walls are literally closing in.  There are a lot steadicam shots throughout so it makes you feel like you are backstage for all of the insanity.  People walk and talk with the frenetic energy of The West Wing.  Reitman is very good at transporting us to that specific place and time with the look and the feel of the era.

The performances are also top notch.  LaBelle does a fantastically understated job as Michaels as he does his best to keep his cool while clearly screaming on the inside.  The people playing the famous comedy icons like Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith), Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O'Brien), Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt), Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris), and the rest do a fantastic job.  Not only to the behave like them and sound uncannily similar, but they do a great job of doing more than simple impersonations: they give us fleshed out characters.  This all the more impressive when you see how little actual screentime they have to accomplish this.

All of this is positive.  I am also a fan of entertainment history and a fan of SNL.  

So why do I hate this movie?

Because this movie hates me.

In the movie, writer Michael O'Donoghue (Tommy Dewey) is upset that the network censor, who is a Christian, is cutting the vulgarity from the live broadcast.  When they confront each other, he says, "Hey you want to hear a joke?"  He then proceeds to say the most blasphemous joke I have ever heard in a film (which I will not repeat on this blog).

I want to say a few things about this.  The joke was not targeted at the Christian woman's uptightness or judgmentality.  It was not directed at her being out of date or close-minded.  If it had been either case, I may not have liked the joke, but it wouldn't have felt offended.

The joke was directed directly at God and said of Him things so horrid that it made my stomach turn.  We Christians are just as fallible and full of foibles as anyone else.  We are fair targets for mockery over our shortcomings.  But this joke was not targeted us,  It was targeted at Him.

I also want to be clear that this joke was not told with any kind of jovialness or friendly leg-pulling.  One of the advantages to being a comedian is that you can make fun of sacred cows and people will laugh along.  I find Monty Python's The Life of Brian to be blasphemous, which is why I will not watch it again.  But even here, I felt like they were taking aim at the faith not with a particular axe to grind, but instead treated the religious subject like they treat anything else.  It is the same with the blasphemous humor of South Park.  I think it is wrong, but I don't bear any ill will towards the creators because they treat everyone with their irreverent satire.

You can even say this about more pointed anti-religious humor as with Ricky Gervais.  Granted I haven't listened to all of his stand up, but he clearly goes after Christianity with jokes like, "Unlike Jesus, I actually showed up."  I bristle at how this joke insults the love of God.  But for some reason I don't get angry at Gervais.  The joke comes off not as an attack.  Instead, he is putting out his atheist point-of-view in a tongue-in-cheek way.  You may disagree with me and I respect that.  But while Gervais speaks things I disagree with, I never felt like he wanted to be my enemy.

Saturday Night wants to be my enemy.

That joke was done in the most mean-spirited way imaginable.  And it was done with the tone of the cool kids bullying the one who is not of their group.  The joke was a line in the sand where they said: "Do you believe in Jesus?  Then stay on your side of the line.  We don't want you over here.  We hate you."  It was done specifically to injure, not enlighten.  It was done to cause pain, not laughter (except maybe the haughty laughter of the bully).

And there was no narrative balance, no introspection that a line had been crossed.  This is something done in other parts of the film.  In the first half of the movie, Aykroyd is constantly hitting on the female members of the cast and crew in clearly objectifying ways.  But later in the movie, he rehearses as skit where the tables are turned and he is made to feel uncomfortable.  This gives narrative and thematic balance and resolution to the events of the movie in a way that the blasphemous joke did not.

And that mean-spirited tone is directed at beloved icons like Jim Henson (Nicholas Braun), who is relentlessly bullied by the cast and crew or Johnny Carson (Jeff Witzke) who is portrayed as a vulgar narcissist.  

Now, I know I did not give the specifics of the joke and you are free to think that I am a super zealous Catholic who is overreacting to a bit of humor.  I will leave that up to you.  All I can do is give you my honest reaction to what I was presented with.

From that point on in the movie, I was sour on everyone.  While I could understand the characters' dreams and frustrations, their horrid morality remained on full display.  

Throughout the movie, Michaels kept talking about wanting to start a cultural revolution on television.  They were revolting from all the traditions that came before.

I don't know if this movie captures a revolution.  But it certainly was revolting.

Film Flash: Transformers One

 

15 words or less film review (full review to follow soon)

Best Transformers movie since 1986.  Silly comedy/adventure that turns into a slow tragedy

New Evangelizers Post: We Are Saved By Grace Alone

    

I have a new article up at NewEvangelizers.com.  

“I can earn my way to heaven.”

This statement may not be something that any of us would say out loud. And yet, I bet that if I did a little questioning, I would find this assumption laying underneath my thoughts on salvation. Sometimes I hear it phrased this way: “I haven’t done anything bad enough to go to hell.” The hidden assumption is that Heaven is owed to us as long as we don’t screw up too badly.

But this is not at all what the Catholic Church teaches.

One of the early heresies in the Church was Pelagianism. I wrote in an early essay: “Back in the 4th century, a man named Pelagius taught that human beings could earn their way to salvation. If we are only good enough, we can achieve heaven. The good will outweigh the bad.” And I may have it in the back of my own mind that if I just follow God’s commands and give to charity, then I will be given salvation as my just reward.

But St. Augustine showed us why Pelagius is wrong. We are too broken by original sin to save ourselves. I remember when I broke my back and I couldn’t walk. I was powerless to fix the problem. I need my surgeon to fix me. In the same way, our broken nature requires a Savior.

And we need to take that title “Savior” very seriously. Jesus is not my co-equal partner in my salvation. He is the One who saves me. He pays the price for my sins on the cross and rises to give me new life in Him. That is His free gift to me. And this is grace.

Grace is God’s completely gratuitous gift of His love and His goodness. I can do nothing to earn it. It is completely a gift.

I think about my wife and how she is way out of my league. And yet for some reason, she has graced me with her affection. My whole life I know that I can never be good enough to be her husband and there is no way I could “earn” her love.

It is the same with God’s grace. We can never earn it by any good deed. Why? Because even the ability to do those good deeds are gifts of His grace. If I give money to charity, it is only because He has blessed me with wealth or income. If I use my mind to write Christian essays, it is only because God has given me an intellect to use for His service. There is nothing I can point to that is good in me that is not also a gift from God.

Even my ability to say “yes” to Him is grace. For Augustine, I could not even say “yes” to God unless God gave me the grace to do so.

In all this talk of grace, it would understandable to make the mistake of thinking that grace is some “thing” that God gives us apart from Himself. But grace IS the encounter we have with our God and how it affects us. It is His presence in us to make us more like Jesus. In His presence He transforms us and re-orients our hearts. As Augustine says, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” CS Lewis puts it another way in Mere Christianity: “God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.”

The gift of grace is the gift of God Himself.

You can read the whole article here.

Film Flash: Saturday Night

 

15 words or less film review (full review to follow soon)

West Wing-style biopic that repelled me with the most blasphemous joke I've ever heard.

Wednesday Comics: DC All-In and Absolute Batman

 

For years, DC has tried to capture the magic of the Marvel's Ultimate line from the early 2000's.  Their first real attempt was with their "All-Star" imprint.  This led to the critic and fan favorite All-Star Superman, but it also gave us the attrocious All-Star Batman and Robin.  

In the years since, they have tried again and again with things like the "First Wave" line or the "Earth One" graphic novels.  None of these have quite caught on, but that hasn't stopped DC from trying.

And once again they are swinging for the fences with their new "Absolute" line that is introduced in the "All-In" storyline.

And this time, DC may have actually done it.

DC All-In was a fun read.  It is an oversized flip book where you read one half and then flip the comic over and read it from a different view from the other side.  The main story involves the Justice League rebuilding after the Absolute Power storyline.  

One of the things I really liked about this book was that it brought into the DC continuity the Justice League Unlimited concept: expand the JL to include as many heroes as possible.  This not only creates a stronger army of heroes, but it gives you the ability to diversify your storytelling about the League adventures, just as it did on the cartoon show.  

However, things go wrong immeadiately when Darkseid shows up in a way they have never encountered him before.  I will not spoil the details here.  But this encounter leads to a new universe that is known to us as the "Absolute Universe."

Writers Joshual Williamson and Scott Snyder have set up an epic story that will hopefully pay off.  I also enjoyed the different artistic styles employed in the book by Dan Mora, Wes Craig, and Daniel Sampere.

But this takes us to Absolute Batman #1.

There has been a lot of buzz around this book and I have to tell you it was a very fun read.

The idea behind teh "Absolute" universe is that these stories will find our heroes fighting against more impossible odds.  Their world is rougher, more violent, and darker.  This aspect alone is not necessarily a big selling point.  But the way they tell the story feels like something fresh.

Scott Snyder writes a much gritter Batman than I have seen.  This Bruce Wayne is no longer a billionaire.  He has all of his brains, brawn, and drive, but he is a working-class hero, lurking in the shadows.  When the designs by artist Nick Dragotta were first released, many people made fun of it.  This Batman is a gigantic mountain of muscle, reminiscent of Rob Liefeld's work on Captain America.  But Snyder and Dragotta make it work.  This is a Batman who is there to scare the heck out of everyone by his sheer size.  On top of that, he is brutal and precise in his tactics.

Reading this book reminded me of something out of Frank Miller.  There is a rawness to it that has been lacking in Batman's stories lately.  Part of the fun is that this is a story mainly told from the outside.  You get to see how other people see Batman, so it adds to the mystery and intrigue.  

Snyder could still drop the ball with this.  And I don't know how Absolute Superman and Absolute Wonder Woman will be.  But based on how much I enjoyed these two books, I will be there for the rest of the story.

In fact you might say (forgive the pun) that I am all in.

Lack of Updates - October 2024

 Hello Dear Reader,

My apologies for the lack of updates in the last week or so.

As is common this time of year, I have a lot of time-sensitive projects and responsibilites that are all converging at this time.  These include doing a research paper for my Diaconate class, re-writing a screenplay, running class retreat, in addition to my parish assignment work and my job.

Thank you for your patience.

We should be back to our regularly scheduled program in the next week or so.

God bless!

Catholic Skywalker