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China is often in the news—for finance, international business, cuisine, and more recently, the Wuhan coronavirus. But the 800-pound panda bear is the fact that China invented totalitarianism centuries before Christ, a collective reality of self-understanding that was tailor-made for the Communist revolution when it arrived.
China expert Dr. Steven Mosher has both a historical and religious context. As a historian, he knows the pattern of oppression and bondage under Communism. As a Catholic convert, he knows how critical China is to the mission of the Church.
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China is often in the news—for finance, international business, cuisine, and more recently, the Wuhan coronavirus. But the 800-pound panda bear is the fact that China invented totalitarianism centuries before Christ, a collective reality of self-understanding that was tailor-made for the Communist revolution when it arrived.
China expert Dr. Steven Mosher has both a historical and religious context. As a historian, he knows the pattern of oppression and bondage under Communism. As a Catholic convert, he knows how critical China is to the mission of the Church.
For the rest of show notes, watch this episode at www.patrickcoffin.media/show
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He speaks German, Russian, Portuguese, Spanish, English, French and Italian, and he reads Latin and Ancient Greek. His parents were exiled in Ural Mountains gulag under Stalin where they helped the underground Church. He is one of the Catholic Church’s most outspoken prelates, a supporter of the Viganò letters and critic of the Amoris Laetitia ambiguities, who speaks with refreshing frankness about Church corruption and the infiltration of evils in her ranks.
He is Bishop Athanasius Schneider, author (with interviewer Diane Montagna) of Christus Vincit: Christ’s Triumph Over the Darkness of the Age. And His Excellency is this week’s guest.
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Dan Burke lives life literally on the edge of life. The author and former COO of EWTN News (and founder-director of the Avila Institute for Spiritual Formation) has suffered many life-threatening maladies resulting in hospital trips, surgeries, and sundry set-backs.
He teaches the art and science of spiritual direction and appreciation of the Catholic mystical tradition for ordinary Catholics, including seminarians and priests. In a sense, Burke is on a mission to help people understand that the spiritual battle is real, and rages daily in and around us. How equipped are you for this battle?
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Chastity speaker and author Jason Evert has been charged with an EWC (Existing While Catholic) by the ruling elites in Ireland. The boyish father of eight has spoken to millions of young people around the world to great acclaim. But a recent speaking tour to some Irish schools, including its largest college, University College of Dublin, was canceled.
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Chastity speaker and author Jason Evert has been charged with an EWC (Existing While Catholic) by the ruling elites in Ireland. The boyish father of eight has spoken to millions of young people around the world to great acclaim. But a recent speaking tour to some Irish schools, including its largest college, University College of Dublin, was canceled.
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Here is my review for the new Sam Mendes World War 1 drama, 1917.
The movie showcases a wise blend of newcomers and veterans. Director Sam Mendes has decades of experience in the theater and went on to direct movies like American Beauty, Skyfall, and Road to Perdition
I just read that he directed Dame Judi Dench on the stage in England at the age of 24.
The Director of Photography is Academy Award winner, Roger Deakins, whose credits include Kundun, The Shawshank Redemption, Oh Brother Where Art Thou, and the underrated movie “The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford” based on a book by Deacon Ron Hanson.
1917 blends together all that experience to deliver a quiet wallop. While the subject matter is harrowing and mostly terrifying, one has to use the word beautiful to describe the visuals throughout.
More on that in a moment.
Two very well-known actors have small but critical roles as military commanders, Benedict Cumberbatch—who has one of the most magnificent speaking voices in the world—and Colin Firth.
Both of these great actors seem born to play characters from the past.
On the other hand, Mendes’ co-writer is a relative newcomer Krysty Wilson-Cairns, who has written a few short films and a TV series. There’s nothing green showing here, though. The dialogue is pithy and rings true to the context and the period.
Almost unknowns in the two lead roles:
Dean-Charles Chapman as Lance Corporal Blake and George MacKay as Lance Corporal Schofield.
These are fine young actors who are mostly unknown to American audiences. and this is a good thing because, from the opening scene, they are a blank slate.
The fact that both characters are a bit on the bland side is also a plus because they become “everyman” making it easier to vicariously follow their mission behind enemy lines and alert a British general to halt an invasion that intelligence has discovered is a German trap.
The emotional stakes have to do with the fact that Lance Corporal Blake's brother is set to be unleashed into this trap along with 1600 other British soldiers.
And this is where 1917 draws an easy comparison with “Saving Private Ryan.”
The brutal depiction of what was called The War to End All Wars coupled with the emotional impact of saving a brother makes for a very watchable movie.
But 1917 in its basic story components it's much more similar to Gallipoli, the 1981 World War One drama that proved to the world that Mel Gibson could you more as an actor than motorbike to the desert a black leather outfit and bad hair.
Gallipoli and 1917 share the same trope of gung ho soldiers maybe or maybe not being stopped before going over the top into enemy fire. No spoiler alerts, so I’ll stop right there on that.
1917 opens and closes with bookend images that show how many physical and emotional miles the characters have undergone. Again, simple and unadorned.
Everyone's talking about the single continuous shot which of course is not literally true, as was the case with the Oscar-winning Birdman, directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu.
It WAS the case with the 2002 movie Russian Ark, directed by Alexander Sokurov, and LITERALLY a 90-minute continuous steadicam shot.
With 1917, Mendes and Deakins have pulled off a two-hour magic trick by seamlessly blending the cuts along the way to give the uncanny appearance of one single camera perspective, mostly handheld and mostly traveling backward which adds to the sense of disorientation.
If you're wondering where they spent the estimated 100 million dollar budget, this is it. cameras mounted on dollies, on cranes, on steady-cam operators, and even on motorcycles, all to take the viewer on a dangerous and unpredictable adventure into hell.
Unlike with most war stories that introduce the characters’ backstories, 1917 jumps right into the mission, we don't know who these men are, we're not sure where they came from, we're only half sure of where they're going, And we certainly don't know if they'll live through it.
1917 does not have the same explicit blood and guts visuals of a “Saving Private Ryan.” The obstacles met and the dangers faced by the two leads is more Hitchcock than Spielberg.
The non-stop action includes a few stops for breathers, one of which is a beautiful scene involving a young French woman and a baby in the middle of a German-controlled village.
I'll mention one more. Special mention here goes to a haunting rendition of a 19th-century gospel ballad called “Wayfaring Stranger,” which has been covered by Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, Ed Sheeran, and Jack White.
In 1917, we are treated to an angelic acapella version by actor Jos Slovick, who, standing in the middle of the clearing in the forest in front of absolutely exhausted sitting men—many of them teenagers—sings the song like a liturgical hymn.
It's one of those memorable movie moments that provides a consoling elixir for both the characters and the audience. For a few moments, a war-torn forest becomes a cathedral.
It reminded me of the montage scene with Jose Feliciano haunting version of “California Dreamin’” smack in the middle of Quentin Tarantino's Masterpiece black comedy, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.”
All this to say that 1917 is going to clean up at Oscar time.
Finally, an Academy Award win that makes sense!
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In this candid and wide-ranging interview, Princess Gloria describes her German upbringing, her beloved aunt who was a Benedictine nun, her now-famous jet-set life in the United States (Vanity Fair dubbed her the “Punk Princess”), the loss of her husband Johannes I, and the trials involved in raising three young children alone with massive debt.
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His official title was Honorary Chaplain to the Queen (QHC), kind of a big deal for any Anglican clergyman. Then Rt. Rev Gavin Ashenden held the position from 2008 until 2017, when he left following, inter alia, a public liturgical reading in a Glasgow cathedral from the Quran that denied the divinity of Christ.
A good Protestant, he protested. And then he parted ways with the established church.
The rest of the story is told in this interview with England’s highest-profile Catholic convert, received into the Catholic Church in December 2019.
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Despite teaching at prestigious universities, René Girard (1923—2015) was an outsider to the world of academe. The French philosopher and social critic began teaching literature because he needed a job. This venture set up his discovery of just how similar the various novels and classics were that he was lecturing on. He realized over time that, primarily, people want what other people want, a dynamic he called mimetic desire.
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Christmas is a season, so, Merry Christmas!
In this video, I dive into some word origins and Bible verses that have to do with the brevity of life. Natura is the Latin root for nativity and nature and natural — and it has to do with things coming into being.
We often treat life like a giant game of dodgeball and we hear about someone dying we think “Oh, that’s too bad they got hit with the ball” as if we’re never going to get hit. We’ll be the last man standing forever.
The word of God teaches us otherwise. you and I will spend a brain-fracturing long amount of time in eternity in the life to come, whether in heaven or in hell, compared to the short decades we spend here in this life.
With each 52-week unit of time known as one year that we experience the subsequent 52-week units of time seem to go by faster with each passing year.
Isn’t that true?
Didn’t Christmas seem to come around every 10 years or so when you were a little kid?
So here are seven Bible verses on the brevity of life:
1. Psalms 90:10
2. Psalms 144:4
3. Job 9:25-26
4. 1 Chronicles 29:15
5. Luke 12:20
6. James 4:14
7. Hebrews 2: 14-15
The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ have changed death from a black pit into a well-lit door.
The great playwright and Catholic convert Tennessee Williams wrote something fascinating and very practical about the brevity of life. I’ll close with this:
“In the time of your life–live!” That time is short and it doesn’t return again. It is slipping away while I write this and while you read it, the monosyllable of the clock is Loss, loss, loss, unless you devote your heart to its opposition.”
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This episode debuted exactly two years ago, and I could think of no better show this year to honor my all-time favorite movie, Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1947) through the eyes of two women with close ties to its creation.
If Mr. Capra didn’t write it, why do I call it “Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life? It’s because that’s how the movie was marketed, which helps explain why the film got only a so-so reception when it was first released. Most of Mr. Capra’s pre-World War II movies were so sweet-hearted that they later earned the moniker “Capracorn,” not meant as a compliment.
It’s a Wonderful Life is one of the most critically acclaimed films ever made. Nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Picture, recognized by the American Film Institute as one of the 100 best American films ever made, and placed number 11 on its initial 1998 greatest movie list, it also ranked number one on its list of the most inspirational American films of all time.
Think about that. In light of the fact that hundreds of thousands of movies have been made, this is a jaw-dropping achievement.
By the end of the Second World War, though, the mood of the movie-going public had shifted, as I wrote about the making of the movie in National Review a few years ago HERE.
The next day after it was published, an appreciative email from a woman named Mary Owen arrived in my inbox. Turns out, Mary is the daughter of actress Donna Reed, who played Mary Bailey, the wife of James Stewart’s George Bailey.
I thanked her for the lovely email and we had a few back-and-forths. After my podcast was up on two feet and spreading around the world (110 countries and counting), I thought it would be fun to have her on the show to talk about her mother’s role in this now-international favorite Christmas movie and to learn some back story to her mother’s career and her commitment to writing back to the G.I’s who wrote to her from the trenches and the gun turrets of World War II.
The interview segues nicely into the next one, a rich conversation with actress Karolyn Grimes who played Zuzu, one of the four Bailey kids. Remember Zuzu’s petals? This was a real treat for me who loves the movie so well, and I know it will be for you as well.
I learned, among other things, how much Mrs. Grimes suffered as a teen when her mother died and then the next year her father was killed and she became a ward of the state—then “rescued” by an aunt and uncle in Missouri, which was an unhappy home situation. Karolyn also played Debbie, the daughter of David Niven and Loretta Young in another Christmas favorite, The Bishop’s Wife.
For those of us who can’t gobble up enough trivia and true stories about It’s a Wonderful Life, Mrs. Grimes is a treasure trove of first-hand memories and insights!
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In this Christmas video, I cite a writer writing about Christmas.
Without Googling, can you guess who wrote it?
The mystery writer starts according to John’s Gospel:
“And the Word was made flesh, and came to dwell among us; and we had sight of His glory, glory such as belongs to the Father’s only-begotten Son, full of grace and truth.” – John 1:14
I’ll give you a major hint: the writer is a Christian.
Leave your guess in the comment box below.
A merry and blessed and peaceful Christmas to you and your family!
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Do you find yourself distracted all day by the pings and dings of your smartphone, by the lure of that Amazon Prime movie, or hilarious kitten videos on YouTube, or your favorite news commentary, or the funny pages, or making a hot coffee before you “really get down to work”?
Stop me if this sounds like you, because it certainly sounds like me.
Fortunately for the distracted brethren of this world, a practical guide to distract-proofing your brain is now available. New York best-selling author Nir Eyal has put 5 years of research into one place. It's called Indistractible: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.
Nir does not spout platitudes or make generalizations. He provides practical tools that build the kind of habits that enable you to stay on task and to use your time wisely and deliberately. Lots of objective data to back it all up as well.
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In this video, I describe what these three classic Christmas movies are must-watches. (NB, Die Hard has some potty words, so it's not for kids.)
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Two months ago, Alexander Tschugguel (chu-goo-gle) was almost a complete unknown, apart from pro-life activism in his native Vienna, Austria. All that changed when he released the video his removal of five Pachamama idols that sat at the side altar of the church of Santa Maria of Transpontina in Rome marching them on the ancient Ponte Sant'Angelo over the Tiber River and knocked them, one by one, into the drink.
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In this video, I summarize the story so far of the sudden postponement of the Bishop Fulton Sheen beatification, which had been slated for December 21, 2019.
I also provide some important context for the lead up to the "Sheen Cause Pause," and give you the lowdown on WHY it was halted, as well as give a short introduction to the great man himself.
In his day Bishop Sheen was a household name.
Every aspect of his very public life has undergone extraordinary scrutiny already. The miraculous raising of the dead of young James Fulton Engstrom is a certified bona fide miracle (see my interview with his mother Bonnie in the link below), and Pope Francis himself authorized Bishop Sheen as worthy of beatification.
But...the Diocese of Rochester confirmed last Thursday that it had requested a delay of the beatification of Archbishop Fulton Sheen, which had been scheduled for Dec. 21 until it was postponed indefinitely earlier this week.
The Diocese of Peoria says the Rochester Diocese has left out key facts as to WHY.
This is what this video addresses.
The bottomline is, Fulton J Sheen is clean. The screeching halt to his Cause, was orchestrated by Bishop Salvatore Matano of Rochester (Rome sources say he was abetted by Cardinals Cupich of Chicago and Dolan of New York—no surprise there). It's a sham.
Does Cardinal Dolan's silence in particular have something, maybe, possibly something to do with the fact that he lost in four different legal Appeals in a row—costing the faithful of New York hundreds of thousands of dollars for high-priced attorneys to keep Bishop Sheen’s body in Saint Pat’s Cathedral?
Will no US bishops stand up in defense of their brother bishop and sainthood candidate?
In the end, Catholics should be glad the Cause was halted. I explain why in this video.
Venerable Fulton J Sheen, Ora Pro Nobis.
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If you think George Cardinal Pell is innocent, and you happen to be a Catholic, you’re open to the charge of protecting your a hero from your tribe or—worse—disbelieving victims. Andrew Bolt is a top TV journalist, and host of “The Bolt Report” on Sky News in Melbourne, Australia, and he is firmly convinced that the guilty verdict, when the facts of the case are closely analyzed, is dead wrong.
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Is there a more urgent, vital question than what happens to you after you die? Despite misunderstandings about what purgatory or limbo are, the Catholic Church, following Scripture and Tradition, teaches with highest authority that there are only two eternal destinies: heaven and hell.
If you read the Gospels and pay attention to what Jesus says about hell, you’ll be surprised how often and how seriously He warns us about it. But are these merely “warnings”? Is Jesus bluffing to teach a lesson? Could hell, in fact, be empty?
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Suicide is a pandemic today. Most people are inclined to disbelieve how bad the problem is. Father Chris Alar, MIC, can relate. He didn’t give suicide too much thought.
Until his beloved grandmother killed herself at home.
That traumatic loss, after many years of confusion and grief, led by God’s providence, to his call to the priesthood. The author and preacher wrote a kind of handbook for friends and loved ones of those who have taken their own lives. It’s titled After Suicide: There’s Hope for Them and For You.
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The U.S. Bishops met this past week in Baltimore and it was two days of fairly procedural discussions and long speeches and talk of preparing documents that very few people outside that that ballroom will read.
But a few things struck me watching the footage of the proceedings and from the transcript of what was said.
The first thing I noticed was how many of the interventions expressed viewpoints that are not in fact the teachings of the Catholic Church.
To take one example, the bishop of Venice Florida, Bishop Frank Dewane—apparently speaking to previous USCCB statements—supported the idea that civilians should have virtually no access to handguns.
Erm, what?
The Second Amendment should go?
The question of violence in our society is an important one but taking guns away from EVERYONE is worse than putting a Band-Aid on a broken leg, because it ignores the root problems:
…the breakdown of the family, the fallout of failed sexual revolution, the skyrocketing divorce rate, the epidemic of depression and suicide.
…the exodus out of the Church and away from Jesus Christ.
…the secularist media machine hell-bent on selling fear, relativism, and despair.
But the real clash of happened on the second day between Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego and Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia.
Bishop McElroy does not like the idea of non-negotiables for Catholic voters, Including please sing abortion and euthanasia as more important than the urgent them things like the environment and care for the poor. Full stop.
In his address to the Bishops, the Bishop of San Diego expressed displeasure with the phrase “preeminent concern given to the weakest members of society,” a reference to the killing of innocent unborn human beings through abortion.
This line appears in a 2015 USCCB document that very few people read called “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship.” The Bishop’s at this week’s meeting are set to publish another letter that contained the line, “the threat of abortion remains our preeminent priority because it directly attacks life itself.”
Well, Bishop McElroy objected to the line as being “at least discordant” with the pope’s teachings.
He didn’t say why this is, since Pope Francis has referred to abortionists as “hitmen.”
Among other things, McElroy said:
“It is not Catholic that abortion is the preeminent issue that we face as a world in Catholic social teaching. It is not. For us to say that, particularly when we omit the pope’s articulation of this question, I think is a grave disservice of our people…so either we shouldn’t have “preeminent” in there, or we should have the pope’s full paragraph where he lays out his vision of this same question, delicately balancing all of it in the words he does,”
Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler Texas said that he thought preeminent should stay.
Next up was Archbishop Chaput wasn’t having any of the reasoning proffered by is brother Bishop McElroy.
Archbishop Chaput replied:
“I am against anyone stating that our saying [abortion] is ‘preeminent’ is contrary to the teaching of the pope. Because that isn’t true. It sets an artificial battle between the bishops’ conference of the United States and the Holy Father which isn’t true.
So I don’t like the argument Bishop McElroy used. It isn’t true.
In an unusual break with protocol, the bishop’s broke into applause.
This clash right here is a microcosm of the civil war going on right now inside the Catholic Church between those who go along with the word salad and the weaponized ambiguities of Pope Francis, and those who want continuity with the previous 265 popes and sacred Tradition especially in the area of moral theology.
First, is this disagreement imaginable under John Paul II or really any previous Pope?
Second, many people are beginning to ask why the bishops have to meet in lavish hotels in big cities? Wouldn’t any of the unused or abandoned retreat houses or monasteries across the country provide a more fitting setting?
Third, then Cardinal Ratzinger has explained that National Bishops conferences do not have magisterial authority and their pronouncements per se—especially in matters political or prudential—are not binding on the faithful.
Not including retirees, there are 433 Bishops in the United States. The airfare alone comes to over $130,000 for this 48 hour event, not including the army of staffers, not including hotel, Ubers, meals ,and other costs.
The annual budget of the USCCB is 180 million dollars, and not all of it is funded by donations. For the Catholic Relief Services alone, federal monies accounted for 64.70 percent of its total annual budget.
It’s getting harder to know where the Church ends and where the State begins.
Somehow the Church in America managed to preach the gospel, celebrate the sacraments, and teach the Faith before then for over 300 years, before the US Conference of Catholic Bishops began in 1966.
All things considered, with six adults leaving the Catholic Church for every convert who joins, maybe it’s time to streamline and get back to basics, and seriously consider putting the USCCB out of its misery.
Yes? No?
Let me know in the comments.