Category: Faith & Ideology

P.D. James, The Children of Men

Netflix a while back sent me (at my request) the 2006 film adaptation of P.D.James dystopian The Children of Men. I actually had time to watch it tonite.

I’m not really into thrillers, and there was too much of that for my taste. There was also way too much of “the F word,” mostly in its adjectival form. Surely with a bit of imagination they could have conveyed “these are desperate revolutionaries” or “these are fascist, xenophobe soldiers” some other way. (The nudity is not erotic and is, in my judgment, necessary.)

But the premise was a fascinating one.

Alfonso Cuaron directs this Oscar-nominated film version of P.D. James’s classic dystopian novel, a futuristic drama set in a world in which humans have lost the ability to reproduce and subsequently face certain extinction. Things change when a single woman mysteriously becomes pregnant, prompting a conflicted government bureaucrat (Clive Owen) and his ex-wife (Julianne Moore) to join forces to protect her. Michael Caine co-stars.

Overall, I recommend it. Just be sure the kiddies are down for the night, and don’t play it too loud.

While at the Oasis tonite, I picked up Bishop (now Saint) Nikolai Velimirovich’s Prayers by the Lake and read two gems, XXXVIII and XXXIX. After watching the movie, how could I not notice the opening of XXXIX?:

Do you know, my child, why the clouds are closed when the fields are thirsty for rain, and why they open, when the fields have no desire for rain?
Nature has been confused by the wickedness of men, and has abandoned its order.
Do you know, my child, why the fields produce heavy fruit in the springtime, and yield a barren harvest in the summer?
Because the daughters of men have hated the fruit of their womb, and kill it while it is still in blossom.
…

(Note that (1) this is a prayer, and not necessarily literal; (2) if taken literally, it says that our sin confuses nature, not that God screws up nature to punish us; (3) that point 2, and the prayer in its entirety, is evocative of how Orthodox Christianity differs from many other Christian traditions.)

Burning Witches and Stoning Adulteresses

C. S. Lewis, one of my greatest influences, opined that we don’t burn witches because we don’t believe they exist or that they can harm others. If we did think that people were casting efficacious spells of black magic to harm others, surely we would punish them.

In other words, we have a difference of opinion of fact with those who burnt witches; we have not really made a moral advance as compared to them. Continue reading “Burning Witches and Stoning Adulteresses” →

Same-sex marriage decision

(This was too long for Facebook.) I have never found my crystal ball very reliable, but I’m taking it out again anyway:

  1. Most Democrats in the Fall elections will continue to say they favor traditional marriage, but they’ll also continue to refuse to do anything to buttress it – either by opposing same-sex marriage, changing divorce laws, or whatever.
  2. Like Obama, Democrats will leave themselves wiggle room (“I said I was religiously opposed, not really opposed! Separation of Church’n’State, y’know.”) so they can claim to have been on “the right side of history” when the smoke clears. Continue reading “Same-sex marriage decision” →

Vocations – true and fancied

“Every time I move to a new place, I’m asked by the locals, “How do you like living here?” I’m never quite sure how to answer that question, and for the longest time I didn’t know why. And then one day it dawned on me, I couldn’t answer the question because I couldn’t figure out what the difference was between one place and the next.” Continue reading “Vocations – true and fancied” →

Another blog recommendation

Mirror of Justice is “A blog dedicated to the development of Catholic legal theory.” I apparently discovered it relatively late in the game, as it already is the second “stickiest” blog, trailing only the Volokh Conspiracy site (another law-oriented site). In other words, MOJ readers spend lots of time engaging what they read there.

This isn’t arcane stuff you need to be a lawyer to appreciate, although being a lawyer probably deepens the appreciation — or the opposition.

It’s sometimes philosophical (are there absolutes? more than one?), sometimes Front Porchy (are the suburbs bad?), sometimes surprisingly eclectic (does belief in interreligious unity reek of colonialism and empire?), and increasingly, one of my favorites.