Why Do Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Defend Abortion?

This is why they want to allay fears over whether or not a 24 week unborn child feels pain during an abortion procedure - because they are advocates of eugenics.

The dreadful and unabating attack on the unborn, in this particular instance known as the 'War on Downs Syndrome Babies and Unborn Babies with Other Abnormalities' is going to intensify.

There will be a lot more abortions in future for 'medical' or even 'cosmetic' purposes. Read this article to find out why. Somehow The Telegraph article makes it all sound so innocent.

We are not stupid. We know why this research is being conducted. We know why these blood tests are wanted by both sections of the public and the medical authorities. We know that this is about the 'screening out' of imperfect babies. We know that this is Nazism through the back door of the local hospital. This article says nothing about abortion, or even 'termination' and yet it is so obvious that abortion is exactly what the article is about!

Read John Smeaton's analysis. The press coverage of this news is sickening.

Could This Be What the England Team Are Lacking?

Talent. It is a vital quality for any successful World Cup campaign. Above is Lionel Messi scoring a sumptuous goal against Mexico a few years ago. He has improved since then. It is worth mentioning that Brazillian and Argentinian players, more often than not, make the Sign of the Cross at several key moments in the game and regularly give glory to God when they score.

They also pray to Our Blessed Lady that she will help them and so receive a shower of both talent and maternally bestowed footballing blessings from Heaven whenever they play. You can tell that when Brazil or Argentina believe, the team not only believe in themselves and each other, but believe in God and God, quite clearly, believes in them. There is no other explanation for it. Three lions? Give me strength! If ever a group of men needed throwing to three lions it is the England team!

With regard to England's display against Germany, a display so bad that St Paul would advise us never even to discuss it, I have had an idea. Instead of cutting incapacity benefit and hitting the weakest in society, like we all knew the Conservatives would, I think that the time is ripe to 'hand over' our national team to 'the secular arm' and use their millions of pounds to fund the NHS. Cuts. That's what we need. When do we need them? Now! We could start with £6 million-a-year Fabio "I like being England manager" Capello and work our way down from the top, through to Wayne 'Wake me up when the World Cup starts, boys...Oh, did I miss it, again?' Rooney and Co. Ltd. "I like being England manager", said Capello! Yes, of course you do, mate! You get paid £6 million pound for making the national team look quite miraculously worse than they did four years ago and with a defense so leaky that even BP are horrified! I bet you're being paid an extra £4 million by the Italians! Talk about falling on your feet!

Maybe, we could cut abortions as well, which cost the country quite a bit in terms of human life and money, maybe cut the transgender cuts and make similar incisions into IVF treatments, too. I mean, desperate times call for desperate measures. We're going to have to seriously cut back on the luxuries of child murder, bodily mutilation and embryo harvesting? What do you think guys? David? Nick? George? No? Well, I guessed not. Safer to just hit the poor in the nads and tell them to move to Bristol, eh?

I got back to my car today and the England flag that I had naively bought for 99p from a petrol station in an inexplicable fit of England World Cup hysteria was gone. Clearly some 'Angle' (or was it an 'Angel'?) ripped it off my car in an inexplicable fit of World Cup humiliation and alcohol-fuelled vandalism. I wasn't sad to see it had disappeared.

Mr Messi in younger days. Who would have thought he would make such a great footballer?

The great G. K. Chesterton famously said, "When people stop believing in God they don't believe in nothing...they believe in anything". That really does nail our country's transcendant and mysterious faith in the qualities and attributes of the England team quite nicely.

At every World Cup we appear to all begin believing in something that really does not exist, while the teams that actually win the World Cup, invariably believe in Someone who does.

Toy Story 3

If, like me, you grew up watching and loving the Toy Story films, you will probably enjoy the third and final installment of Pixar's trilogy. However, Toy Story 3 is surprisingly full of sadness and sentimentality, which makes it a difficult film to judge.

Andy (John Morris) is going off to college, and his old toys are afraid for their future. Andy decides to send most of his toys to the attic, while taking Woody (Tom Hanks) with him. However, a misunderstanding leads to the toys being donated to a day care center. The toys are initially happy, but they find themselves badly treated by rampaging toddlers - and ruled over by the tyrannical teddy bear Lotso (Ned Beatty), whose thugs reprogram Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) to serve them. Woody arrives to try and save his old friends, remaining loyal to Andy through all adversity.

Personal feelings aside (having watched the first two films a million times as a kid, and played Buzz Lightyear in an elementary school play), the original Toy Story was groundbreaking. CGI was already being used in live action movies, and films like The Lion King employed it in a supporting role, but the idea of a completely computer-generated movie seemed ridiculous. However, Pixar's combination of simple but endearing story and wonderfully creative animation was a huge winner, providing a whimsical, original film like nothing ever seen. I don't much like that computer-generated films have almost completely driven out hand-drawn animation, but it's hard not to give Toy Story its due: for better or worse, it completely revolutionized animation.

Toy Story 3 gets a lot of mileage out of the audience's good will. It's nice to see our old friends again, ten years after their latest adventure. The movie drives home the nostalgia theme: Andy has grown up, things have changed, and even the characters have developed: Buzz and cowgirl Jessie (Joan Cusack) have a thing for each other, many other characters have been thrown away. The movie does have its share of creative sequences, particularly Buzz's transformation into "Spanish mode" and a Barbie (Jodi Benson) and Ken (Michael Keaton) subplot, which make it worthwhile. And the poignant, bittersweet finale would have been a perfect note for the series to end on, if it weren't for the interminable credits sequence.

However, Toy Story 3 doesn't measure up to its predecessors. It plays the sentimentality and recognition card a bit too heavily: I can imagine a neophyte at loss for an entry point. To its credit, the film manages a semi-original plot, but it ultimately seems almost incidental to the movie's overall content. The schizophrenic tone is off-putting, too. It's a surprisngly dreary and heavy film without the courage of its convictions: it can't settle for being just a kid's movie, but doesn't have the guts to go the other direction either. And as mentioned before, the "happy ending" during the credits is overlong and worthless, undermining much of what came before.

If you enjoyed the first two Toy Story films, and have some degree of empathy for Woody, Buzz and Co., then by all means go see Toy Story 3. However, for others it may prove a middling, overly-sentimental effort that doesn't match up to Pixar's best work (Finding Nemo, Wall-E). To each their own, however.

Vatican Slams Belgian Cathedral Raids

The Belgian police raid on St Rambout's Cathedral is quite unprecedented and very worrying. I understand that the Church is being persecuted for all of the wrong reasons, but it does appear that the State in Belgian has gone way over the top in their methods of investigating the child abuse scandal there. Drilling into tombs and violating the dead is, well, uncalled for. Exactly what on earth did they hope or expect to find in the tombs of two dead Cardinals?! "We got the evidence! We found the papers documenting child abuse in his decaying hands! Talk about taking secrets to the grave. This stuff is dynamite!"

Courtesy of BBC

The Vatican has stepped up its criticism of raids by Belgian police investigating alleged child sex abuse, calling the detention of priests "serious and unbelievable". Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican Secretary of State, said "there are no precedents, not even under the old communist regimes". He claimed the priests were held for nine hours without eating or drinking. Several buildings of the Belgium Church were searched on Thursday. Bishops holding a meeting there were barred from leaving the premises for several hours. "It was sequestration, a serious and unbelievable act," said Cardinal Bertone.

Police in Leuven seized nearly 500 files and a computer from the offices of a Church commission investigating allegations of sex abuse. They also searched the Church's headquarters, the Brussels archdiocese in Mechelen, north of the Belgian capital. Prosecutors have said the raids were over alleged "abuse of minors committed by a certain number of Church figures".

On Friday, the Vatican voiced "astonishment" at how the raids have been carried out, saying police had drilled holes in two archbishops' tombs. The Vatican said the raids had led to the "violation of confidentiality of precisely those victims for whom the raids were carried out". The Vatican has summoned the Belgian ambassador to the Holy See to voice their anger at the incident. The Catholic Church in Belgium has apologised for its silence on abuse cases in the past.

I sincerely hope this isn't the beginning of the 'best excuse for persecuting the Catholic Church since there was a big fire in Rome' being used for a good old Communist-era hounding, persecuting and crushing of the Church by an increasingly arrogant and strong-armed State. We know how many laws are made in Europe which affect all of us.

Bishops Plan for the Papal Visit Revealed

H/T Catholic and Loving It

Mengele Backs Royal College

The SPUC's John Smeaton's blog has published an excellent response to the Royal College's announcement yesterday. Here it is...

SPUC has responded to claims made today about foetal pain and disability by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG).

Paul Tully, SPUC's general secretary, told the media earlier this morning:

"The RCOG supports the killing of 570 babies every day in Britain, at all stages of pregnancy, through the abortion policies it pursues and the lucrative activities of its members.

"The RCOG knows better than most people how marvellous, sensitive, complex and beautiful these babies are at every stage of development from conception onwards. Life does not start halfway through a pregnancy, it starts at conception.

"The RCOG suggests that its doctors don’t inflict pain on the babies they kill, but this is just a way of denying that what they are doing is evil and they know it. The RCOG is trying to find a comfort zone for its members. It is not concerned about the rights and the lives of the babies killed.

"The issue of the 24-week time-limit on social abortions is a red herring. The RCOG’s claim about babies not feeling pain before 24 weeks begs the question: Why do abortion doctors keep making this point when they support the abortion of babies up till birth?

"The government should act to recognise the rights of children at all stages before birth. It could begin today by asking why the Department of Health actively promotes abortion, which has no proven health benefits."

A Moral Minefield

Courtesy of Life Site News

'A man who caused great turmoil in the Catholic Church in Canada has been shown kindness and forgiveness by the very bishop against whom he launched a human rights complaint. 

In June 2009, Jim Corcoran, a man who self-identifies as 'gay', launched a complaint seeking $25,000 in damages from Peterborough Bishop Nicola De Angelis, after he and his homosexual partner were forbidden from continuing as altar servers at St. Michael's Church in Cobourg.

It is believed that this was the first case in Canada to be accepted by a human rights tribunal relating to the internal governance of the Catholic Church. The case led to fears of serious repercussions for the Church's freedom in Canada. Throughout the public scrutiny of the case, which gained international attention, the bishop remained firm in his resolve not to permit the human rights mechanism to interfere in Church matters.

But in May, Corcoran dropped the complaint without terms or conditions after meeting with the Bishop and praying with him. Last Sunday, Bishop De Angelis said Mass in the troubled Cobourg parish and afterward went to the home of Jim Corcoran where he had supper with Corcoran and his mother.

In previous conversations with LifeSiteNews, Corcoran explained that he felt the situation at the parish was uncharitable toward him. He noted that while he did live with his long-time homosexual partner, they maintained celibacy and his mother lived with them in the home.

In his homily at the Mass, Bishop De Angelis spoke of the "sad and avoidable division" in the parish. He recalled the Church's teaching against slander and spoke about respecting "the dignity of each person, regardless of our differences in language, colour of our skin, religious belief, sex, sexual orientation, marital status."

However, the Bishop also preached on the Church's teachings on "faith and morals" coming from the authority of Christ. "The Church proposes it doesn't impose," he said. "Nobody is forced to be a Catholic. If you choose to be one, you cannot pick and choose what to believe."

Both Corcoran and the bishop have decided not to speak to the media about the case. However, the bishop's office provided LifeSiteNews with a copy of the notes from the homily. Corcoran and his partner, who were originally asked to serve at the altar by parish priest Fr. Allan Hood, are no longer permitted to serve in that capacity as the bishop previously explained it was causing scandal in the community. However, at the Mass on Sunday, Corcoran and his mother were asked to bring the gifts (the bread and wine used) up to the altar.

In the final analysis, the alarming aspect of the controversy was seen to be the possible involvement of the Human Rights Tribunal, rather than Corcoran's attempts for a satisfactory resolution to what he believed was an injustice suffered by his partner and himself.

Suresh Dominic of Campaign Life Catholic told LifeSiteNews last month, "We're very thankful for the resolution of this case." Dominic added: "From the outset it had much less to do with Jim Corcoran than with the Human Rights Tribunal thinking it could tell the Catholic Church how it should run itself. I pray we don't see more of that, but given the direction these Tribunals have been going, I would not be surprised to see it again."'

A moral minefield indeed. What a bizarre fiasco. My main concerns are:

1. Why did the layman/laymen 'come out' as gay 'partners', with all the connotations that that brings, to the whole congregation, if they are indeed chaste friends while being Altar Servers? Do they have an 'agenda'? If they are chaste then surely they are just ' very good friends'. Don't 'rock the Barque' boys!

2. Why did the Priest walk into this minefield and assume that just because the two men are 'gay' that they are sexually active? Our Blessed Lord warned us to beware the 'yeast of the Pharisees' who judged by appearance. Sexual orientation is not the same as sexual activity. That is indeed a sin of detraction. Just because the rest of the congregation are thinking it too, does not make it not a sin of detraction and a gross slander of the just. Church teaching makes clear that while the orientation of homosexuality is an objective moral disorder, the orientation of itself is not a matter or sin either mortal or venial. Slander is not made less sinful because of the number of people thinking it at the time or making the unfounded allegation.

3. Why did the layman seek damages in the first place? Being an Altar Server is not a job, but a vocation. It's not like he's working for American Express. Surely he should just have shaken the dust from his feet and walked away from this parish, if, indeed, he is innocent of wrongdoing with his 'partner' (such a horrid phrase) in the eyes of God?

4.  Why did the bishop preach on not picking and choosing articles of faith in respect to this case? Is he calling the gay chap an heretic on account of his sexuality alone? Has the bishop not read the Catechism of the Catholic Church which explicitly asks for compassion, respect and dignity to be accorded to homosexual persons? Has he not read the bit about homosexuals being called to embrace the Cross and there being no reason why they should not advance in the love of Christ and grow in holiness while acknowledging that they find their condition a trial?

5. Why am I gossiping? Have I nothing better to do? I know nothing more of this case than what has been published, but is it not possible that these two men were aided and strengthened in their celibacy because they were Altar Servers? I know and I understand why and how this happened and I understand about the danger of giving off scandal on the Altar, but really, could this whole situation not have been handled a lot better!? Perhaps it is all a part of the modern re-definition of relationships that is to blame. Once you admit your orientation nowadays, people are bound to assume you act on it. Then they find out you're living with a guy so they assume you're shagging him even though you are both looking after your dear old mum. Initial suspicions for the fiasco must fall upon the congregation, some of whom will have been holy, some of whom will be liberals who don't give a toss and some of whom will be pious frauds. You'll find all three in every congregation. Anyone would have thought it were a baptist church!

6.  We are all, all of us, rightfully, expected to accept the Teaching of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church in its fullness. This Teaching can never be diluted or changed, but that goes for those who are Guardians of it, as well as those who are its recipients. The Teaching of the Church is that homosexual acts are gravely immoral and mortally sinful. The Teaching of the Church is that homosexual persons are called to chastity. The Teaching of the Church is that homosexual persons are treated with compassion, dignity and respect.

Foetus 'cannot feel pain before 24 weeks'

The Telegraph online leads with the story that according to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the human foetus cannot feel pain before 24 weeks. The inference is therefore that abortion is acceptable up to this limit.

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists were commissioned to produce a report  by the Department of Health. According to the article...

The report said: "It can be concluded that the foetus cannot experience pain in any sense prior to this gestation." Professor Allan Templeton, president of the Royal College, who chaired the review, told The Times that research put forward by anti-abortion campaigners that the human foetus did feel pain at or before 24 weeks was based on evidence from premature babies. This did not apply to the foetus in the womb, he said.

A second finding is that the foetus is naturally sedated and unconscious in the womb, leading the panel to advise that anaesthetics for the foetus are not needed when it is terminated.

"There's nothing in the report that suggests any need to review the upper limit," said Prof Templeton.

The review would appear to remove one strut of the argument by pro-life campaigners that the current abortion limit needs to be lowered, although they are likely to challenge the Royal College's findings.

The central 'strut' of pro-life campaigners upon which hinges all other arguments is not whether an unborn baby feels pain during an abortion. The central 'strut' of pro-life campaigners is that abortion is a direct intervention by medical authorities, indeed an invasion, into the womb wherein dwells a living human being which science has verfied is indeed human and indeed alive. This intervention is conducted with the aim of ending a human life which, without their direct intervention would be born alive and enjoy all the rights enshrined in civil law that we enjoy, like the right to life.

As a society, do we really believe that a graphic, brutal (and abortion at 24 weeks is both) and torturous murder is that much worse to shooting someone in the head at point blank range? We might find one murder more ghastly and be horrified at the sadism of the individual who committed the outrage, but the end result is the same. A life has needlessly been ended by an act of gross evil.

I mean, the infamous Dr Harold Shipman, who went around 'terminating' his elderly patients without actually asking their permission probably gave the old dears enough barbiturates to ensure they died in relative peace. Does that mean we should never have put the man inside because he inflicted not pain on his patients, but merely death?

Ironically, the same publication has also ran with an article concerning those terrible Romans, whose brothel site has been discovered in Hambledon in Buckinghamshire along with the skeletons of 97 infants.

Apparently, the Romans only considered people to be human beings from the age of 2 years upwards, so it goes to show just how arbitrary we can be about the definition of human life. According to Dr Simon Mays, a skeletal biologist at English Heritage's Centre for Archaeology, “There is no other site that would yield anything like the 97 infant burials."

So, what did the Romans do for us, again? It looks very much like they gave us roads and abortion clinics.

Richard Dawkins interested in setting up 'atheist free school'

Richard Dawkins, according to The Telegraph is interested in setting up an 'atheist free school'.

Great idea. The sooner our schools are freed from atheists the better.

Please, Mr Dawkins can you help to remove the atheists from Catholic schools as well?

7 Women

John Ford's last film is a real head-scratcher. 7 Women (1966) is a gender-bending anti-Western, with a mostly-female cast fending off savages in 1930's China. A film that will interest auteurists and feminist-inclined critics, it doesn't live up to its interesting premise, providing a well-acted but inert drama.

Seven Christian missionaries are operating in 1930's China under the strict control of the fanatical Mrs. Andrews (Margaret Leighton). The tough American Doctor D.R. Cartwright (Anne Bancroft) arrives to help with a cholera epidemic, her brusque ways immediately aggravating the uptight missionaries. Things grow worse when a band of Mongol thugs led by Tunga Khan (Mike Mazurski) show up and take the women hostage. In an attempt to save her colleagues, Cartwright agrees to survive as Tunga Khan's concubine, plotting an ingenious revenge.

Ford's oeuvre has its share of strong female characters: Edna May Oliver in Drums Along the Mohawk, Jane Darwell in The Grapes of Wrath. But 7 Women is still an unexpected film. It has the structure and feel of a Western, save the setting, with seven very different female protagonists. The only major male character, the teacher Mr. Pether (Eddie Albert), is ineffectual, cast in a "feminine" occupation and dies in a futile gesture at reclaiming manhood (or something); his wife (Betty Palmer) survives, giving birth to a baby under siege, in an echo of Stagecoach. The movie is definitely a celebration of feminine strength, and this is its primary virtue.

One could perhaps quibble with Ford's portrayal of said women: he invites us to see at least the leads as transgendered men, with Cartwright's masculine dress and vulgar demeanor, and Andrews's implied lesbianism. Personally, however, I have little use for feminist twaddle, with its close-minded dogmas. I find Ford admirably employing an interesting cross-section of strong women. Anyone expecting a Zulu-in-drag style siege will be let down, as the women react in different ways to their predicament, forcing Cartwright to take command. The movie scores points for its brilliant ending, and perhaps the best closing line outside of The Professionals.

This feminist reading makes the movie sound a lot more interesting than it actually is. 7 Women is dull and slow for most of its length, as if Ford and writers Janet Green and John McCormack thought the premise alone would carry the film. A half-baked rivalry between Cartwright and Andrews goes nowhere, and lots of talky scenes drag down the story. The actual arrival of the Mongols is anti-climactic, and the story drifts afterwards: an off-screen rape and Cartwright's noble sacrifice provide the only real drama. The Cartwright-Andrews clash defuses as Andrews goes bananas, and the Mongols seem too dumb to be a real threat. Ford's claustrophobic, set-bound direction doesn't help either, though Elmer Bernstein's rousing score is excellent.

The movie's positive female characters are off-set by its racist supporting cast. The Chinese are mostly complacent nobodies, gratefully accepting help or fleeing Tunga Khan's thugs. The Mongol villains are monosyllabic, lusty cavemen who make Ford's portrayal of Indians look progressive; having obviously non-Asian actors - Ford regulars Mike Mazurki and Woody Strode - play them doesn't help. Ford seemed to have difficulty juggling his portrayal of minorities: he similarly ennobled African-American soldiers in Sergeant Rutledge only to demonize Native Americans.

The cast is the primary reason to watch. Anne Bancroft gives a fabulous performance: she's convincingly tough and self-reliant, and her sacrifice towards the end seems wholly germane to her character. Margaret Leighton (Under Capricorn) is excellent in the first half, only to descend into boring hysteria later on. Sue Lyon (Lolita) is under-used. Flora Robson (55 Days at Peking) and Anna Lee (Hangmen Also Die!) also stand out.

7 Women seems like it ought to be something special, as both John Ford's final film, and a movie decidedly unlike most of his work. Sadly, it ends up more a bizarre curio than anything else.

Don't Let Children Breathe Your Smoke...Don't Let Children Breathe...

"That's my boy! Go on son! Enjoy life, you only get one!"

It must be so confusing being an unborn baby in modern times. I mean, at one moment people are saying its alright for you to be killed to the point that babykillers are advertising on Channel 4 and then the next they're saying you should be defended from your mother's cigarette smoke because its not healthy for you. I'm 32 and I can't figure out that one!

Perhaps the Government could clear up the confusion for us, but I wouldn't bank on the Clegg-Cameron Show doing a good job of it. "Remember guys, smoking while pregnant = bad, a social taboo. Killing your baby while pregnant = Fine."

Our beloved BBC report that...

'All pregnant women should be tested for smoking so that they can be given quitting advice if necessary, a health watchdog says.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence said carbon monoxide tests should be carried out on every expectant mother. If implemented, every woman would have the breath test at her first ante-natal appointment. Midwives criticised the test, saying it could make the women feel "guilty". NICE (Nice? They don't sound very nice!) said the guidelines were not aimed at penalising smokers but were designed to help women and their families give up smoking during and after pregnancy.

"During pregnancy, smoking puts the health of the women and her unborn baby at great risk both in the short and long-term, and small children who are exposed to second-hand smoke are more likely to suffer from respiratory problems," Professor Mike Kelly, Nice director of the centre of public health excellence, said. One of our recommendations is for midwives to encourage all pregnant women to have their carbon monoxide levels tested and discuss the results with them. This isn't to penalise them if they have been smoking, but instead will be a useful way to show women that both smoking and passive smoking can lead to having high levels of carbon monoxide in their systems."

What a 'Nice' society in which we live. If these ridiculous 'health' institutes sincerely cared for unborn babies they'd put the anti-smoking crusade on the back burner and demand that all abortion clinics be closed down today. They don't of course. I mean, what could be a graver health risk than being chemically attacked in the womb or having some surgical scissors jabbed into your skull? Do these amateurs care about unborn babies? No, they're just health freaks!

Jesus Did Not Die on a Cross Says 'Scholar'

"Read all about it! Controversial, headline grabbing assertion made by unknown university academic questions Gospel accounts of the Passion of Christ!"

A 'scholar' from a Swedish University has suggested that Our Lord may not have died (which is a somewhat different construction on his view than the headline makes out) nailed to a Cross because there is 'no evidence' that the Romans crucified prisoners two thousand years ago.

According to a rather ropey report in The Telegraph, with my comments in bold...

'The legend (King Arthur, Robin Hood, Atlantis, Our Lord Jesus Christ) of his execution is based on the traditions of the Christian church and artistic illustrations rather than antique texts, according to theologian Gunnar Samuelsson.

He claims the Bible has been misinterpreted (Something always gets lost in translations...) as there are no explicit references to the use of nails or to crucifixion (Oh, really?) - only that Jesus bore a "staurus" towards Calvary which is not necessarily a cross but can also mean a "pole".(Perhaps He did, but does it actually say that Our Lord carried a pole in any of the Gospel narratives, or, actually, anywhere?)

Mr Samuelsson, who has written a 400-page thesis (Is this 'thesis' intended for sale, by any chance?) after studying the original texts, said: "The problem is descriptions of crucifixions are remarkably absent in the antique literature (Is this guy an antique dealer or a theologian?). The sources where you would expect to find support for the established understanding of the event really don't say anything." (Did he think of asking a theologian from, say, the Vatican for some pointers? I sink not!)

The ancient Greek, Latin and Hebrew literature from Homer to the first century AD describe an arsenal of suspension punishments but none mention "crosses" or "crucifixion." Mr Samuelsson, of Gothenburg University, said: "Consequently, the contemporary understanding of crucifixion as a punishment is severely challenged. And what's even more challenging is the same can be concluded about the accounts of the crucifixion of Jesus. The New Testament doesn't say as much as we'd like to believe."

('...And they gave him to drink wine mingled with myrrh; but he took it not. And crucifying him, they divided his garments, casting lots upon them, what every man should take.  And it was the third hour, and they crucified him.', Gospel of St Mark, Douay-Rheims)

The article continues...

Any evidence that Jesus was left to die after being nailed to a cross is strikingly sparse - both in the ancient pre-Christian and extra-Biblical literature as well as The Bible.

It is actually a rather misleading headline for the anonymously penned article since the author of the 'thesis', a 'theologian', suggests that Our Lord may have died upon a staurus or pole. It is plausible and many respected theologians, I think, hold the view that Our Blessed Lord carried a staurus or pole to the site of His Crucifixion, but it is unlikely that on his arrival there that He was not crucified as the Evangelists make plain. All of the Gospel narratives, I think, testify to Our Lord's Passion and Crucifixion. The Gospel of St Matthew further testifies...

'And they put over his head his cause written: THIS IS JESUS THE KING OF THE JEWS. 38 Then were crucified with him two thieves: one on the right hand, and one on the left.' (Douay-Rheims)

What is more, proper historians rather than opportunistic chancers are in little doubt as to the use of crucifixion by the Roman authorities in putting down Jewish rebellion while also using it as a off-putting punishment for a range of crimes, like those of Barrabas who got let off only for the Son of God to take his place. Seneca the Younger, Josephus, Cicero and Tacitus all wrote about crucifixion as you will see by this nicely written Wikipedia article. How did this guy miss them? He needs to go online more!

What Gunnar is saying is that despite the Gospel accounts of Our Lord's Death on the Cross and the historical evidence at our disposal for crucifixion being a common form of torturous execution by the Romans of the time, all of which he has chosen to ignore totally, Our Blessed Lord may have died on a pole. Well, the man is welcome to his opinion but where is his evidence? Anyway, I'm off now to bash my Bible some more! Everything the Catholic Church understands about the Life, Ministry, Death, Resurrection and Ascension of Christ has been passed down by the Apostles to their Successors to their Successors to their Successors unto today and that includes the Holy Gospels which include narratives of the Passion of Our Saviour. If you ignore the Holy Tradition of the Church then everything is most certainly in doubt and I mean everything. Any thoughts?

The Grapes of Wrath

John Ford's adaptation of John Steinback's The Grapes of Wrath (1940) is one of the director's most thematically-interesting films. Quite contrary to his oft-complacent Westerns, Ford expresses outrage at the plight of small farmers in Depression-era America, driven West.

Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) returns to his Oklahoma farm after serving a prison sentence. He finds that local landlords have driven his family out, and tracks them down to a relative's home. Together with Ma Joad (Jane Darwell), the rest of the family and itinerant preacher Casey (John Carradine), Tom and Co., set out on a car ride for California, hoping to find menial work. They end shuffling from work camp to work camp, brushed off by bosses, bullied by cops and shunned by Californians.

John Ford is usually pegged as a conservative director, a reductive and oversimplified view. Patriotic, pro-military and religious to a fault, Ford also cultivated liberal outrage at social injustice, anti-Communist witch hunts and treatment of racial minorities. He wasn't a socialist, of course, but a progressive populist, who saw the average citizen as the true hero of America. A conservative director would not have made The Grapes of Wrath in the pre-World War II era, when anything remotely leftist was considered subversive.

Ford's depiction of Depression-era America is at complete odds with the optimism of other films. The Okies are shuffled from place to place, each promise of work denied or unfulfilled, the American Dream proving a bitter joke. Authorities are either violent, crooked or completely indifferent to their charges, echoed even by ordinary people. Scenes in the work camps are shockingly subversive: a cop fatally wounds an old lady with a stray bullet; starving children beg for food; farmer's homes are plowed before their very eyes. In light of this stark story, the most complacent American ought to be roused to action.

The movie fudges Steinbeck's novel a bit with a vaguely happy ending, affirming that "the people" will find a way to combat the injustice. The denouement, with Joad walking alone on a desolate landscape, directly recalls Young Mr. Lincoln, setting Tom up as a future fighter of injustice. But the stark, oppressive events of the story remain in one's mind, showing that perhaps justice isn't always done in Ameirca.

Ford's direction is marvellous. Gregg Toland's striking black-and-white cinematography complements the film's desolate atmosphere; set-bound sequences mix well with real locations, and Alfred Newman's mournful score contributes wonderfully as well.

Henry Fonda does a fine job in the lead. Tom is a generally complacent character, afraid to get into trouble, but Fonda's inherent Everyman dignity makes him compelling and relatable. The supporting cast frequently steals the show. Jane Darwell is excellent as Ma Joad, tough, world-weary but optimistic. Ford regulars John Carradine and John Qualen give career-best performances; Qualen is particularly impressive, his embattled homesteader a far cry from his bumptious characters in His Girl Friday and The Searchers.

The Grapes of Wrath is an interesting movie from a director known for his allegedly pro-Establishment worldview, showing that intolerable situations make even the most complacent men and women consider Revolution.

St Alexander Nevski Cathedral, Sofia, Bulgaria

A friend of mine has just recently come back from Bulgaria. Apparently you can buy a house there for about £5,000. This video starts off tamely, before taking you through St Alexander Nevski Cathedral, Sofia, before going trippy and meditating on the cosmos, before going into a meditation on Heaven and Hell. Do not watch this video if you are on any hallucinogenic medication of any kind.

In Praise of Pressure Washers and Dragonflies

I used one of these today on a gardening job. If you have a patio that gets dirty I recommend you get one of these. Take the fun you had with a garden waste shredder and multiply it by ten!



The couple for whom I do gardening also have a pond and at the moment they have absolutely loads of dragonflies. Beautiful creatures. There were red ones and blue ones and they were all having sex all around the garden. So delicately built and light. During their life cycle, they point to Christ, as you can see from this video above of their life cycle. They appear to 'resurrect', leaving behind them a shell of their old body and emerging in radiance and beauty. Stunning creatures. I believe they use natural family planning.

Papal Visit Organisers Need to Learn from the Pagans

Woodstock 1969












Glastonbury 2009










The pagans can organise a gigantic event seemingly at will. Why can't we do it for the Holy Father? The Last Knight of Noise of the Crusade has quite rightly lamented the organisation of the Papal Visit.

'Damian Thompson has suggested that: “talk of ‘participating’ by watching the Pope on television or online has irritated ordinary Catholics who are also being asked to fork out for the cost of the visit”. That is an understatement. To tell the faithful to participate by television is an insult. We are expected to behave ourselves, to stay indoors unless we have specific permission to be out, as if this were a time of national emergency instead of celebration.'

It isn't easy being an individual passionate about the Catholic Faith in 2010 in England, especially when one gets the distinct impression that those in Office just don't 'feel that way' about it at all. However, the Last Knight goes on to make a suggestion, namely, that we imitate what people definitely did at Woodstock and what people used to do at Glastonbury festival before it went corporate and decidely unrock. Referring to the Gospel reading on the miraculous draught of fishes, the Last Knight says...

'Why should fishing for men be any less dangerous and chaotic than catching fish? Does the Successor of Peter really want to come to this country to see a handful of carefully controlled faithful, selected by Monsignor Summersgill, dutifully clutching their official booklets and safely penned in? Or does he want to come here and do some fishing? If Monsignor Summersgill were asked to take the Pope fishing it would probably involve a barrel full of carp and a shotgun, and certainly no broken nets or sinking boats.

It is clear that the official organisation of this visit is going to let us down. The proposed small and safely controlled contingent of sanitised, ticketed faithful is going to be no match for the secularists’ desire to obscure the rare light which will visit our shores in September. We need to get onto the streets, and make ourselves the story. On Saturday 18 September, just get on the train to London. Go to Hyde Park. It’s Hyde Park for goodness' sake! If they won’t let you in, fill the streets around it and stop the traffic. Make some noise, and drown out the few boring secularists who will bother to turn out. You can watch the Pope on TV any time you like: now is the time to show him you love him. The Catholic faithful of England must make themselves into a miraculous draught for Peter, because the world needs to know that he is God’s Fisher of Men.'

Fantastic. Flood Hyde Park. That's the answer. Health and safety can go spin. We've come to see the Rock and nothing and nobody is going to stand in our way. Let's sleep in Hyde Park overnight and then hitchhike up to Coventry for the Beatification of Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman!

No. Those who are organising this event won't fool the 'Children of the Revolution'.

Is Paris Burning?

Part The Longest Day, part Battle of Algiers, Is Paris Burning? (1966) is a muddled attempt at a cinema verite epic. The interesting story, well-shot action scenes and surprisingly brisk pace keep it from being a chore, but its convoluted plot, nonexistent characters and overwritten script prevent it from achieving full potential.

August, 1944. Allied armies tear through exhausted German armies in France, but the Allies seem to neglect Paris. General Dietrich Von Choltitz (Gert Frobe) is appointed to defend Paris, and is personally ordered by Adolf Hitler (Billy Frick) to destroy the city if its fall becomes imminent. While Choltitz equivocates, the French Resistance's disparate factions debate how to handle the situation. The situation comes to a head when the impetuous FFI starts seizing government buildings, initating vicious streetfighting with the Germans. All the while, Choltitz prepares to destroy the city, while the Resistance desperately tries to convince the Americans under General Omar Bradley (Glenn Ford) to liberate Paris.

Is Paris Burning? is ambitious but frustrating. The overwritten script - credited to Francis Ford Coppola and Gore Vidal, but also doctored by French and German writers - has little sense of scope or dramatic economy. It's not that the film is long or slow - for a 173-minute feature, it's surprisingly fast-moving - but it is clogged, confused and only sporadically gripping. The relationships between the disparate Resistance factions are poorly defined, and the poorly-drawn characters don't help. Instead of being complex, the film is convoluted and often dramatically inert, with an occasional brilliant set-piece or inspired detail bringing it alive.

The cast consists of more or less every French actor working in 1966. Like most Hollywood "all-star" epics, however, the sheer number of stars prevents them from registering as characters. I spotted Alain Delon (The Leopard), Leslie Caron (Gigi), Jean-Louis Trintigant (Z) and Jean-Paul Belmondo (Breathless), but the rest - even favorites like Michel Piccoli and Michel Lonsdale - are virtually invisible. Few of these actors make an impression, save Pierre Vaneck's Major who convinces the Allies to liberate Paris, and their inclusion is of value only to star spotters.

The Americans are even worse off: Orson Welles is good as a Swedish diplomat caught between the two sides, and Anthony Perkins (The Tin Star) has a decent bit, but Kirk Douglas, Glenn Ford and Robert Stack are poorly cast and badly used. Their inclusion seems a cynical grab at American box office, but one wonders if any Kirk Douglas fan would want to watch him putter around in a nightshirt for two minutes.

The one actor who comes off perfectly is Gert Frobe (Goldfinger). He's given a difficult role, a dedicated career soldier who chafes at the needless destruction of Paris. The 20 July plot is alluded to a few times - in the opening, Choltitz visits the headquarters where Hitler narrowly survived - highlighting the General's dilemna: by 1944 the Wehrmacht high command recognized Hitler as insane, and were torn between their duty as soldiers and revulsion at obeying a lunatic. Frobe gives a performance of unusual subtlety, making Choltitz a sympathetic, complex and ultimately tragic character.

Fortunately, Is Paris Burning? does have its share of virtues. Rene Clement's direction is straightforward yet striking, with heavy use of Paris locations and deep focus photography. Archival footage is often overused, but the actual battle scenes are intense and gripping. Maurice Jarre's jaunty, celebratory score is among his very best. A number of individual set-pieces - a night-time massacre of French students, Resistance fighters humorlessly interrupting a wedding, Jean-Paul Belmondo and girlfriend using their bicycles as cover against German snipers - are quite striking. And despite the problematic road getting there, the incredibly joyous, exuberant ending, with all of Paris celebrating the end of the nightmarish occupation, is a wonderful conclusion.

Is Paris Burning? is a mixed bag, a fairly middling historical epic. Perhaps a TV miniseries would have given the story a proper depth and scope; perhaps a better-drawn script would have helped with the convoluted-plot and poorly-rendered characters. Still, it has enough high points to make it worth a look.

School's Out

Summer vacation is finally here! Which means two months of guilt-free relaxation and movie watching.

I have a boatload of films to watch this week, all of them first-time viewings. I will review as many of them as I can this week, then take the rest of June off. Sound good?

Persepolis

Having recently fallen in love with Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis books, it was only natural that I should check out the Oscar-nominated film adaptation. Fortunately, Persepolis (2007) keeps Satrapi's work intact: her autobiographical tale of a child's life in Revolutionary Iran, and adolescence abroad, rings true through a perfect mixture of humor, pathos and personal tragedy.

Iran, 1979. Marjane "Marji" Satrapi (Gabrielle Lopes, Chiara Mastroianni) is a precocious child wrapped up in fantasy and materialism. Her parents (Catherine Denevue and Simon Abkarian) protest the Shah's regime, which collapses after the Shah flees. However, Marjane and her family find the Ayatollah Khomeini's new Islamic regime even worse, with alcohol outlawed, women forced to don veils, and a destructive war with Iraq making life unbearable. Teenaged Marjane is sent to live in Vienna, where she flits around the edges of counter-culture, struggles with romance and education, is stereotyped as a terrorist, and ends up homeless and destitute. She comes home to Iran, only to find herself a stranger even in her home country.

Persepolis is an excellent mixture of honesty and humanism, conveyed through its beautifully-realized protagonist. Satrapi is wonderfully forthcoming about herself: she presents episodes where, as a child, she leads an attack on the son of a policeman. Later, she condemns an innocent man to prison so she won't miss a date. Often narcissistic and self-destructive, Marji is no intellectual rebel or quirky heroine with all the answers, just an ordinary adolescent into music, boys and blue jeans, her faults and confusion magnified by the situation. Even transforming herself into a "modern woman" is a limited success: Iran remains repressive, and Marji is stuck in a rotten marriage which enhances her predicament.

We know, of course, that Satrapi went on to be a successful cartoonist and author, but Marji at age 18, penniless in the Vienna streets, would have no way of knowing it. Despite the depressing nature of the material, and its sad conclusion, Persepolis pulsates with joy and life-affirming happiness, with Satrapi's caustic wit and shrewd observations providing plenty of humor. The story's real-life conclusion provides an extra-textual delight.

The movie skims over the story's historical and political background, but this is forgivable. Background about Iran's history and the Shah's rise are presented in amusing vignettes, exactly how a child would digest a difficult history lesson. As in so many revolutions, the ideal revolution is subverted with something far worse: while the Shah arrests and tortures dissidents, the Ayatollah executes them. And for Iranians (and women especially), life becomes unbearable. Satrapi, who lost friends and relatives to both regimes, cannot be called objective, but Persepolis has the ring of truth throughout. Specific incidents and anecdotes are presented with vivid clarity: being harrassed by cops for "indecency," the underground parties and blackmarket music tapes, the disfigurement and death of friends in the war.

Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud keep the comic's visual style intact: the simple, stark black-and-white visual style perfectly enhances the feeling of loss and nostalgia. Despite the story's episodic nature, it has a fast and urgent pace, flowing perfectly. The animation enhances the material with creative uses of montage, perfectly portraying the difficult backstory, and specific sequences - particularly Marji's descent into depression - are made extremely powerful. The voice work is uniformly excellent.

Some minor omissions aside, Persepolis is a fabulous, near-perfect adaptation of the graphic novel, and one of its decade's best animated films.

PS: Happy Father's Day!

Well Done, Sir Bob Geldof!

Christopher Brooker of The Telegraph has brought to the readerships' attention two instances of forced adoption, one, incredibly, of an unborn child. Families now appear to have a prominent and vociferous campaigner in the form of Sir Bob Geldof. Well done, Sir Bob!

Thank Heaven for small mercies, because even small mercies are rarely forthcoming for poor families under attack from Social Services. Social Services is the diseased arm of the State. It should be cut off for the untold misery that they cause children and parents. They are vipers. The article reports...

'On June 3, a 17-year-old Staffordshire girl, living with her parents and seven months pregnant, was horrified to receive a letter which began: “Dear Corrinne, I am the new allocated social worker for your unborn child. We have serious concerns about your ability to care for your unborn baby. We are so worried that we intend on going to Court to apply for an Order that will allow us to place your baby with alternative carers.” This so shocked the family that they raised what money they could and, like many others faced with similar threats, escaped abroad, where they now live in circumstances hardly conducive to a happy delivery of their new child.

Staffordshire social workers were also involved in the tragic case of Maureen Smith, the mother so desperate at the prospect of losing her two children that she fled to Spain, where she killed them before attempting suicide. As she wrote in her suicide note: “Social Services In Staffordshire and their policy of forced adoption are responsible for this.”

These are just two instances of the vast, long-running tragedy which Bob Geldof, launching a report last December on the “barbaric” chaos of our family law system, called “state-sanctioned kidnap”, whereby social workers, abetted by family courts and an army of complicit lawyers and “experts”, routinely snatch children from loving parents to feed the maw of the adoption and fostering industry.

Yet contrast this with last week’s report exonerating Kirklees social workers from any failings in the case of Shannon Matthews, the Yorkshire girl made subject, after years of neglect and ill-treatment, to a fake kidnap by her mother (described by local police as “pure evil”). Even though no fewer than 22 agencies had been involved with this dysfunctional family over many years, the report found that Shannon’s treatment did not justify taking her into care.

If ever there was a scandal which called for the full glare of publicity it is the highly secretive system which allows thousands of children to be sent for forced adoption, often on no proper pretext. Meanwhile the list of cases where social workers ignore all evidence in allowing the abuse of children to continue, grows ever longer.

It is not generally appreciated how adoption and fostering, organised by social workers, have become big business – quite apart from the fees charged by those lawyers and experts who are part of this corrupt system. Adoption payments and access to a wide range of benefits can provide carers with hundreds, even thousands of pounds a week. Still to be found on the internet (see the Forced Adoption website) is an advertisement by Slough Family Placement Services headed “Balloons and family fun to promote fostering”. This promised that Slough’s town square would be “bustling with activities including face painting and balloon modelling”, complete with a “David Beckham lookalike” (“bring a camera”), to launch “a new fostering allowance of £400 a week”.

I have recently reported the harassment and repeated arrests of Mauren Spalek, the devoted Cheshire mother whose two younger children were taken from her in 2006, and who faces trial on June 29 on a criminal charge of sending her son a birthday card. Last week it emerged, from an official register, what the occupation is of the woman who adopted her stolen children. She is a social worker.'

10 Reasons Why This Self-Checkout Madness Must Stop

1. We are buying our shopping from machines instead of people. They damage society. Anyone who uses one is a misanthrope. These self-checkouts are therefore inherently anti-Christian. They should be banned.

2. They don't sell you cigarettes. Why not? Because they don't have arms or legs. They can't communicate like a human being, even if they do remember to ask whether you've 'swiped your Nectar card' before coughing and spitting out your change in an ejection of metallic phlegm.

3. They remove any remaining feeling of shame about buying condoms. People should be ashamed about buying condoms. When a man buys a packet of condoms he should feel like he is placing his immortal soul in jeopardy. He should feel like a man living life on the edge.

4. If we tolerate these machines taking the place of human beings even in small numbers, Sainsburys and Tescos and other stores owned by Sainsburys and Tescos will make moves towards sacking all their staff and replacing all their checkout staff with machines including the shelf-stackers. Can you imagine the cacophany of irritating, noisy machines? The warmth and humanity that we generally find in supermarkets would disappear overnight.

5. These machines could turn against us and start WWIII, just like in 'Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines' starring Arnold Schwarzeneger, especially if, in future, food becomes more scarce and there are wars over food and spring mineral water, the Brecon Beacons becoming a potential nuclear flashpoint.

6. They are too loud. No human being talks that loud. They don't smile or have an 'off-day' when they just can't be arsed to be friendly. These machines make people aggressive and unnecessarily angry and I don't think it is just me who feels this way.

7. They break. I've seen them fail, only for a human being in an orange fleece have to come over with a key and start playing around with it like its some kind of vintage fruit machine. Human beings can be annoying, but, generally, are more interested in helping you and less likely to break than a machine and more reliable. Human beings may both die and fall critically ill, but rarely while serving you at the checkout.

8. If these self-checkout machines are allowed to continue, unemployment in the retail sector will double or treble. In general, the idea that robots and technology can cause an improvement in the lot of the working man and humanity in general is a huge utopian myth. If robots took over from all human work and endeavour, we wouldn't have street parties and distribute wealth around society. No, we'd sit at home watching Jeremy Kyle, on the dole, being hated by the robots who would regard us as a workshy underclass. If all the machines took over all human work, we would be bored, there would be more crime, more poverty, more unemployment and a proliferation of sin. In other words, the Devil makes work for idle hands.

9. The poor staff who are not machines have to listen to them all day. All day! They banned smoking in pubs partly to protect staff from smoke pollution. Now that noise has been upgraded to a pollutant, we should have mercy on them! It must be a living hell to have to work all day in those awful 'Express' shops installed for the sole purpose of knocking Mr Patel's corner shop out of business, listening to that self-checkout machine talking with that earnest, customer sales representative voice that in human terms does not exist. Nobody talks like that! Nobody!

10. They're not attractive. You cannot fancy them. They can't fancy you. There must be some people who have met their future wives/husbands at the checkout. The retail sector should be ashamed of itself for ever having introduced these things. We should, as a society, be ashamed that we ever tolerated the 'pilot schemes'. Ban them! What next?! All local buses being driven by remote control from a mega-computer grid in Luton?!

How the Bishops Can Raise More Money for the Papal Visit

Some Ideas...

Pope Benedict XVI 2010 UK Visit Posters
Pope Benedict XVI 2010 UK Visit Mugs
Pope Benedict XVI 2010 UK Visit T-Shirts
Pope Benedict XVI 2010 UK Visit Spoons
Pope Benedict XVI 2010 UK Visit Placemats
Pope Benedict XVI 2010 UK Visit Badges
Pope Benedict XVI 2010 UK Visit Ties
Pope Benedict XVI 2010 UK Visit Dinner Plates
Pope Benedict XVI 2010 UK Visit Pencils
Pope Benedict XVI 2010 UK Visit Erasers
Pope Benedict XVI 2010 UK Visit Temporary Tattoos
Pope Benedict XVI 2010 UK Visit Guitar Picks
Pope Benedict XVI 2010 UK Visit Postcards


Pope Benedict XVI 2010 UK Visit Three Flying Ducks People Used to Put on Their Walls in the 1970s
Pope Benedict XVI 2010 UK Visit Pencil Sharpners
Pope Benedict XVI 2010 UK Visit Hats
Pope Benedict XVI 2010 UK Visit Whistles
Pope Benedict XVI 2010 UK Visit Tins of Boiled Travel Sweets
Pope Benedict XVI 2010 UK Visit Cushion Covers
Pope Benedict XVI 2010 UK Visit Duvet Covers
Pope Benedict XVI 2010 UK Visit Curtains
Pope Benedict XVI 2010 UK Visit Sofa Throws

(Breath)

Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman Beatification Posters
Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman Beatification Mugs
Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman Beatification T-Shirts
Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman Beatification Spoons
Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman Beatification Placemats...

Whatever you think about Medjugorje, the organisers and multi-million pound marketing firm hired for the Papal Visit could learn a few tricks from the 'visionaries'. Given that it is unlikely that the organisers will think of this, get your Pope Benedict T-Shirts and other merchandise here.

RIP Ronald Neame

Another showbiz legend passes away, this time Ronald Neame, who died yesterday at the age of 99.

Neame was a skilled cinematographer who worked on Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail, and also collaborated with David Lean during the latter's Cineguild days: In Which We Serve, This Happy Breed and Blithe Spirit were all photographed by him, he was production manager on Brief Encounter and tweaked many of Lean's scripts. However, Neame was also a prolific director in his own right: I love his Alec Guinness collaborations, The Horse's Mouth and Tunes of Glory, and he also directed the much-beloved The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Scrooge and The Poseidon Adventure.

RIP Mr. Neame.

Rent

I was a big fan of Rent back in high school, but I hadn't watched the movie in years. Chris Columbus's 2005 adaptation of Jonathan Larson's hit musical has a mixed reputation among Rent-heads, but I personally love it.

December 24th, 1989, 9 P.M., Eastern Standard Time - New York City's Alphabet City, as a tenement is about to be bought by a mega-corporation and its denizens evicted for not paying rent. These include: Roger Davis (Adam Pascal), the bitter rock musician who seeks "one song glory"; Mark Cohen (Anthony Rapp), the would-be film maker and ex-boyfriend of flirty bisexual performance artist Maureen Johnson (Idina Menzel), who is now with the anal-retentive lawyer Joanne (Tracie Thoms); anarchist philosopher Tom Collins (Jesse L. Martin) and his transsexual lover Angel Dumont Schunard (Wilson Jermaine Heredia); and heroin-addicted dancer Mimi (Rosario Dawson), who is in love with Roger. The opposition is Benjamin Coffin III (Taye Diggs), a former friend who has now "sold out." The characters also combat AIDS, drug addiction and romantic difficulties.

A loose reworking of Puccini's La Boheme, Rent celebrates the lives of young artists struggling to get by. It's not that the movie celebrates their being selfish, completely supports them or upholds them as geniuses. Its celebration of them comes on a much more basic level, as people struggling to live under difficult circumstances: facing eviction, struggling to make a living, combating addiction and dying from AIDS.

Rent is, above all, a wonderfully humanist story. Its uplifting message about living life and staying true to one's self, along with the endearingly optimistic tone and driving energy, is universally appealing. The movie accepts its racially and sexually diverse cast mostly without comment, with no bigots being told off and no speeches about tolerance. The movie does err in trimming Benny from a conflicted sell-out to a cardboard villain demanding rent, an odd blip in an otherwise solid adaptation. The story segues a bit uneasily from vibrant celebration into tragedy, but the sheer emotional power of Angel's death makes up for the second half's awkward plotting. Through sheer chemistry and emotional power, you care about these characters, even if many of them are narcissistic jerks.

The film is mostly faithful to the source: a few songs are cut or trimmed, and the rock opera is turned into a conventional musical. Columbus handles the big numbers wonderfully: the understated Seasons of Love, the angry Rent, the sexy Light My Candle, the heart-breaking Will I? and I'll Cover You, and my favorite, the wonderfully energetic, anarchic, perfectly-choreographed La Vie Boheme. The movie opens up more than enough, with lots of NYC location shooting, a MGM fantasy dance for Tango: Maureen, and Roger's trip to New Mexico during What You Own. A few weak numbers just sit there (Today 4 U, Over the Moon), but they weren't much better on stage. Most of the cuts (the annoying "Voice Mail" blurbs) were wise, though I miss the horribly sad Goodbye, Love.

Columbus makes a risky move in casting most of the original Broadway cast. Aside from Law and Order's Jesse L. Martin and Taye Diggs (How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Chicago), they only have a handful of film and TV appearances between them, and they're also arguably too old for their parts. The idea is sound: box office be damned, why not get the original actors with their talent and chemistry? This definitely works, as their collective performance overcomes a few rough patches.

Martin, Anthony Rapp and Wilson Jermaine-Heredia come off best, effortlessly recapturing the passion and energy of their stage roles. On the other hand, Adam Pascal badly shows his age, Diggs is sorely underused, and though gorgeous, Idina Menzel (Enchanted) is annoying. Rosario Dawson (Sin City) and Tracie Thoms (Grindhouse) fit in like a glove: Dawson gets arguably the meatiest role, portraying Mimi with the right mixture of sexiness and desperation. Thoms's Joanne is a wet fish, but she has an amazing singing voice, sizzling in her big duet with Menzel. Fortunately, the cast has remarkable chemistry and easily gets through the individual bumps.

Rewatching Rent all these years later is like revisiting an old friend. I could easily pick out flaws with the material, but I like it enough that I'd rather not. Hopefully, coming from a guy who ordinarily can't stand musicals, this endorsement means something.

Chris Patten To Urge Government to Ban Vuvuzelas

The Telegraph reports that Archbishop Vincent Nichols is concerned that vuvuzelas, blamed for ruining the usual respectful silence of football matches, could be used during the Papal Visit to the UK. Tatchell, Hitchens, Fry and Dawkins have apparently all responded by letter to the Archbishop, saying, "Thanks Archbishop! Great idea!"

'Although himself an avid football fan, the Most Rev Vincent Nichols, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, is worried that the forthcoming Papal visit could be marred by vuvuzelas. "I have had enough of them already," says the Archbishop of Westminster. "I hope they stay in South Africa. Personally, I think the football would be more enjoyable without this constant cacophony."

He is concerned that some people have got into the habit of using the plastic horns during the World Cup in South Africa and might not be able to resist using them when Pope Benedict XVI, pictured, addresses crowds in Britain. The Pope is due to arrive in September for a state visit when he will meet the Queen and beatify Cardinal John Henry Newman. He is scheduled to visit Glasgow, Edinburgh, Coventry and London during his four-day visit and address a number of crowds. Archbishop Nichols has often spoken of his love of the beautiful game, and, in particular, his devotion to Liverpool Football Club. He recently named Kenny Dalglish as his sporting hero.'

Tu Es Petrus!

I have written the following piece for the Unofficial Papal Visit Website set up by James Preece.

Let me know if the pictures are naff, or its too wordy, layout is atrocious, its too lengthy or obsessed with carbon reduction initiatives and other people's faiths.

It hasn't taken me long to write, about an hour at best. It is far from perfect, of course, but I am still wondering how, if I, who am a gardener by trade, can bash out a half-decent effort on the background to the Papal Visit, does it seem such a hard task for the organisers of the visit itself, who are probably paid rather well for their services?

Somebody responsible for this aspect of the Papal Visit needs a serious 'heart speaks unto heart' with his employee...

'The Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI is to come in September to visit the UK. While here he will beatify the Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman. It is a truly historic occasion both for the country and the Church, at the prospect of which the whole Church should rejoice greatly, even if the whole country cannot bring itself to do so.

Despite numerous setbacks (the magnitude of which should embarrass the whole Church in England and Wales) in the planning of the visit so far, with the venue for the Beatification Mass in Coventry still yet to be confirmed, excitement is palpably building at the prospect of His Holiness arriving on these isles.

Pope Benedict XVI is the direct Apostolic Successor of St Peter and if St Peter could rouse a crowd without millions of pounds being squandered by the other Apostles, then it is perhaps possible for the Catholic Church in England and Wales to look after a Papal Visit here in September.

The timing of his visit is providential but it is a brave Pontiff who comes here. The United Kingdom is beset by a host of problems stemming from a largely secular mentality. Pope Benedict XVI will arrive in a country which has severed itself from its traditional Christian roots, first established by St Augustine of Canterbury at the request of another Supreme Pontiff, Pope St Gregory the Great, and the country now suffers the grave consequences of that severage.

 Abortion rates in the UK consistently average at around 200,000 innocent lives lost a year. The Labour Government passed legislation in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act which made commodities of human persons, embryos to be tested upon, experimented upon and used, only to be destroyed in a vain attempt to further scientific enquiry. The Government continued its assault on human dignity by refusing to lower the upper limit for abortions.

The Labour Government passed legislation attacking the institutions of Marriage and the Family, by passing the Civil Partnerships Act, creating, in law, a new kind of relationship recognised by the State set to rival marriage between one man and one woman. The Labour Government also enshrined in law an Equalities Act which threatens to be used in a new and viscious assault upon religious liberty and human freedom with several high profile cases suggesting that those who hold firmly to their Christian beliefs and practise them in public are vulnerable to persecution.

The UK, while remaining a country of many faiths and where the practise of religion is established in communities across the Union, is becoming increasingly and aggressively secular. Prominent figures have gained a great deal of attention in the mass media and popularity, most notably and most vociferously, the atheistic biologist and author of ‘The God Delusion’, Richard Dawkins.

The Church has not been immune to the atheistic zeitgeist and the culture of moral relativism now taking hold of the UK. The Church is suffering a decline in the Priesthood and many parish Churches have paid the ultimate price of the decline of the Faith by having been shut down by Dioceses, often to the great protest and anger of the lay Faithful. The abuse scandals which rocked the Church in 2010 have threatened (if you read the press and believe the hype) to overpower those who lead Her and lead the Faithful in the 21st Century, most notably in Ireland and the US.

Yet, while there is much over which the Catholic Church in the United Kingdom can mourn, there is hope. Christ may not have promised that the Gates of Hell would not come near the Church, but He did promise that the Gates of Hell would not prevail against Her.

• Pope Benedict XVI has been at the forefront of the renewal of the Church, liberating the Traditional Latin Mass which has seen many rediscover the beauty of the liturgy and enabled men and women to find a renewed sense of faith in the Risen Christ.

• Pope Benedict XVI has been at the forefront of the drive to cleanse the Church, to rid Her of ‘filth’, to remove from positions of authority those who seek to betray the mission of the Church and abuse those who are most vulnerable in Her care.

• Pope Benedict XVI remains resolutely faithful to the Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the Deposit of Faith with which he is charged with defending while others in positions of authority in the Church seek to modernise the Faith to reflect the values of the World, exhibiting in his writings and in his public proclamations great holiness and insight into the truths of the Most Holy Faith.

The Franciscan Friars and Nuns of the Immaculate are one new Order faithful to their holy father, St Francis, devoted to both the Traditonal Mass and the Pope, while living radical poverty for the love of Christ. The Dominicans, too, are enjoying a renaissance. Their members are growing and their new members are young. Young people are rediscovering, in the Sacrament of Marriage that True Love never dies, nor shies away from sacrifice. The liberation of the Latin Mass has been instrumental in inspiring men to offer their lives as an oblation to God in the Priesthood. Young people are discovering that Love is not what the media tells it that it is, but something that is Holy, that comes from God.

It is against this backdrop of a Church wounded, but still very much alive, shaken, but still sanctified by the Holy Spirit, embattled, but aided by that holy joy that comes from witnessing that same Spirit at work in the fresh growth evident upon the Vine, that His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI will be welcomed by hundreds of thousands (if permitted) of Catholics in the United Kingdom on his arrival.

The flame of Faith, given and handed down generations ago by a holy Pope and his holy but reluctant emissary, with his missionary monks in tow, is still very alive and it shall not be snuffed out, not even with all the bad will in the World (or even within the Church). The visit of Pope Benedict XVI will, God willing, be a huge success and increase the faith of the Church in the United Kingdom.


Tu Es Petrus! You are Peter, Your Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, and we welcome you with open arms to the country once named Our Lady’s Dowry. We love you, Holy Father!'

Young Mr. Lincoln

1939 was a great year for John Ford: he turned out three classic films, including Stagecoach, Drugs Along the Mohawk, and Young Mr. Lincoln. The latter film is a pitch-perfect, poetic ode to Americana, a celebration of American democracy and one of its most revered figures.

Abraham Lincoln (Henry Fonda) is an unschooled Illinoisan who takes up law after the death of sweetheart Ann Rutledge (Pauline Moore). Lincoln finds himself the defense attorney in an extremely sticky case: two brothers (Richard Cromwell and Eddie Quillan) stand accused of murdering a farmer, but only one seems to have actually done it. Lincoln determines not only to defend the boys, but to clear them of the crime altogether.

No film director has more thoroughly defined America's past than John Ford. As in Drums Along the Mohawk, Ford eschews the "traditional" view of history, with its privileged men in wigs making history: it's the little people, the hard-working, rough-hewn frontiersmen (and women) who really shape a nation's destiny. The movie expects us to know Lincoln's historical achievements, providing only clever hints - his rivalry with Stephen Douglas (Milburn Stone), his flirtation with Mary Todd (Marjorie Weaver). Of more interest is the man behind the monument, the man haunted by personal loss (not only Ann, but most of his family), determined to do right by the truth and Constitution. In John Ford's America, justice is always done.

Ford provides a masterful directing job, lacing the film with beautifully metaphorical sequences: a well-handled fair epitomizing Ford's reverence for community, Lincoln facing down a lynch mob, the climactic storm. The courtroom scenes sparkle with wit and tension, well-crafted by screenwriter Lamar Trotti, and the twist is well-handled (if a bit obvious in retrospect). Ford establishes a distinct cinematic language, presaging his later works: Fonda leaning back on a rocking chair, like in My Darling Clementine; Alfred Newman's poignant love theme, later re-used in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. There's more than a bit of cornball humor and sentimentality, but this comes with the Ford territory. It's a cinematic poem, and realism oughtn't be a concern.

Henry Fonda gives perhaps his best performance. His Lincoln is a beautiful creation, embodying everything good about the American character: hard-working, curious, intelligent, honest and witty, driven by healthy ambition. Fonda makes the character credible, and he's simply a joy to watch. The supporting cast is good if unspectacular: Donald Meek (Stagecoach) gets a juicy supporting role as Fonda's blustering courtroom adversary; the ubiquitous Ward Bond and Jack Pennick turn up in small but important parts.

Young Mr. Lincoln is another classic John Ford film, and a must-watch for his fans.