essays

[Our Sunday Visitor, October 26, 2003]

School of Rock

Take a good look at those rolling eyebrows'you're going to be seeing them for a long time. In 'School of Rock' Jack Black inhabits his character, Dewey Finn, with such appealing manic energy that there's no question a comic star is born.

What makes Black such a winner' Probably his startling lack of self-consciousness.

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[Beliefnet, September 24, 2003]

Most of us have yet to see Mel Gibson's 'The Passion,' but we've gained one sure impression: it's bloody. 'I wanted to bring you there,' Gibson told Peter J. Boyer in September 15's New Yorker magazine. 'I wanted to be true to the Gospels. That has never been done before.'

This goal means showing us what real scourging and crucifixion would look like.

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[Books & Culture, September-October 2003]

Does being a Christian mean always having to say you're sorry? When outsiders look at the Roman Catholic rite of confession (now more often termed "reconciliation"), they suspect it is driven by feelings of masochistic self-hatred, and sustained by claims of sacerdotal magic. Why should we have to spend this life groveling over sins, if Jesus already paid for them on the Cross? Why should we speak sins out loud to another person, when it could remain between us and the bedpost? And why should we believe that a priest stands between us and God, forgiving or retaining our debts as he chooses?

Two new books from Roman Catholic authors

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