Posts Tagged ‘ Catholic ’

‘Law and Order: Criminal Intent’ Imagines Christianity Disproven

June 30, 2010
By
‘Law and Order: Criminal Intent’ Imagines Christianity Disproven

Law and Order: Criminal Intent, the long-running spinoff of the recently canceled TV crime drama mainstay Law and Order, has on fairly regular occasions manifested the overt progressivist and anti-Christian bias of its forebear Last night’s episode is one of the most blatant instances yet. It’s a pity because the show has interesting story lines and the central characters, NYC police detectives played by Jeff Goldblum and Saffron Burrows, are intelligent and fairly likable. Unfortunately, last night’s story line is neither. In “Palimpsest,” detectives Nichols and Stevens investigate a case involving two wealthy Manhattan antiquarians who apparently killed each other in a sword-fighting duel. (That kind of insanely bizarre situation is common for the show.) Also involved in the story is the schizophrenic adult daughter of one of the dead men, whom Nichols used to date before her illness became manifest. The story centers around the search for an ancient book purported to be a contemporary Roman account of the trial of Jesus Christ, which we are told is believed to contradict the Gospel narrative by absolving the Jewish religious hierarchy of any responsibility and suggests the trial was entirely political in intent. All of this, we are further given

Read more »

‘South Park,’ Blasphemy, and the Ghost of Theo Van Gogh

April 23, 2010
By
‘South Park,’ Blasphemy, and the Ghost of Theo Van Gogh

In the face of threats and intimidation from religious zealots, do you submit or do you speak up? Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of “South Park,” speak up — often hilariously and crudely. Comedy Central, the network that broadcasts “South Park,” decided this week it would be better to submit. The decision to censor an episode lampooning the fear and hysteria surrounding depictions of Islam’s prophet, Muhammad, sets a very bad precedent. The Associated Press reports Friday: Producers of “South Park” said Thursday that Comedy Central removed a speech about intimidation and fear from their show after a radical Muslim group warned that they could be killed for insulting the Prophet Muhammad. It came during about 35 seconds of dialogue between the cartoon characters of Kyle, Jesus Christ and Santa Claus that was bleeped out. “It wasn’t some meta-joke on our part,” producers Trey Parker and Matt Stone said. Comedy Central declined to comment. I haven’t watched the latest episode of South Park yet, and evidently I won’t be able to either until it appears on DVD or Comedy Central relents and allows the episode to rerun. Episode 201 was scheduled to air again Thursday night, but Comedy Central subbed in the episode from April 8.

Read more »

German Cartoon Evokes Catholic Outrage

April 20, 2010
By
German Cartoon Evokes Catholic Outrage

A cartoon on the cover of a German satirical magazine has evoked outrage among Catholics, as was clearly its intent. Story here.

Read more »

Notre Dame Doesn’t Know What It Lost

March 23, 2010
By
Notre Dame Doesn’t Know What It Lost

Catholic writer George Weigel of the Ethics and Public Policy Center takes Notre Dame to task for failing to acknowledge adequately the recent death of Ralph McInerny, arguably one of the greatest men of letters to spend his professional career in the shadow of that  school’s “Touchdown Jesus.” Notre Dame did publish a respectful obituary at the Jacques Maritain Center webpage, but that’s the only obituary I could locate at the university’s extensive website. I stumbled upon it through Google, searching specifically for “Notre Dame Ralph McInerny Obituary.” Trying to find it from the school’s homepage is frustrating to say the least. Back to Weigel’s take on Notre Dame’s response to this great man’s passing: The university Web site posted a nicely written obituary three days after his death, but there was little sense in the university’s official recognition of its loss that a gigantic figure had left the scene. One cannot help suspect that this has something to do with the fact that Ralph thought Notre Dame had gone off the rails in its dogged and relentlessly self-promoting attempts to measure itself against what it likes to term “peer schools,” such as Dartmouth and Yale. What Ralph understood, and

Read more »

TNT’s ‘Leverage’ Christmas-Week Episode Includes Strong Religious Themes, Imagery

December 26, 2008
By
TNT’s ‘Leverage’ Christmas-Week Episode Includes Strong Religious Themes, Imagery

            The latest episode of TNT’s Leverage dealt intelligently with Christian themes and ideas two days before Christmas, S. T. Karnick writes.      

Read more »

European Churches’ Blasé Reaction to Georgia Invasion Reflects Seriously Disturbed Values

September 5, 2008
By
European Churches’ Blasé Reaction to Georgia Invasion Reflects Seriously Disturbed Values

Western churches, especially in Europe, have neglected their brethren around the world while enthusiastically signing on to political causes.

Read more »

European Churches’ Blasé Reaction to Georgia Invasion Reflects Seriously Disturbed Values

September 5, 2008
By
European Churches’ Blasé Reaction to Georgia Invasion Reflects Seriously Disturbed Values

Western churches, especially in Europe, have neglected their brethren around the world while enthusiastically signing on to political causes.

Read more »

Jack Black Wrestles for God

March 12, 2008
By
Jack Black Wrestles for God

The zany Jack Black comedy Nacho Libre, now on The Movie Channel, has a surprisingly strong religious foundation.  

Read more »

More Thoughts on “Saving Grace”

July 25, 2007
By
More Thoughts on “Saving Grace”

"Bubba," a regular reader of this site, has sent us his thoughts on the new TNT TV program Saving Grace, in a comment on my article on that show and AMC-TV’s Mad Men. I think readers will benefit from Bubba’s analysis, so I append it here with gratitude to their thoughtful author. Sam: I was wondering whether you would review Saving Grace and what your opinion would be. I looked at the show from a few angles (from the couch, from the kitchen grabbing a snack, from the recliner)and generally liked what I saw. For what its worth, I offer a few of my observations.

Read more »

More on Lord Darcy

March 7, 2007
By

Matthew Bowman of Christendom College posted a very interesting comment on my article on Randall Garrett’s Lord Darcy tales, which I think adds some value to the discussion. Matthew’s comment indicates some reasons why the stories are so interesting, and suggests that a renaissance of interest in them is possible. Here is Matthew’s comment: Well, I have to say you’ve got good taste in fiction. I only read Lord Darcy for the first time at the tail end of last summer, as I was getting ready for the new semester at college. I’d first heard about it from my father, thouh only iin very vague terms — basically just "alternate universe where magic is used to solve crimes." Years later, following some "you’d probably like this links" on Amazon, I came across a book that sounded good. Noticing it was a Baen book, I immediately switched over to Baen.com to read the sample chapters. The first story blew me away. It not only sounded like the story my father had alluded to years before but couldn’t remember the title of, it was also a fantasy story with a strong base in Roman Catholicsm. (I later found out that Randall Garrett

Read more »

Rocky Balboa, Christian Warrior

December 31, 2006
By
Rocky Balboa, Christian Warrior

Your correspondent has been very busy with other work during the past week and has neglected his work here, for which he apologizes profusely. During this hectic time, however, we did manage to take a couple of hours to see Rocky Balboa, the sixth and supposedly last of actor/writer/director Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky films. Stallone has promoted the film aggressively to Christian audiences, pointing out that he has become much more greatly committed to Christianity (and jolly good for him!), specifically the Catholicism in which he was brought up.  Stallone says that the character of Rocky Balboa always had a strong element of Stallone’s Christian thought behind him: It’s like he was being chosen, Jesus was over him, and he was going to be the fella that would live through the example of Christ," Stallone said. "He’s very, very forgiving. There’s no bitterness in him. He always turns the other cheek. And it’s like his whole life was about service. Those are reasonable claims about Rocky, and of course his Christian name is a clear and rather charming reference to the disciple Peter (whose name, Petra, means "rock" and whose clear statement of Jesus’s divinity was the "rock" on which Jesus

Read more »

Madonna’s Crucifixion Reported Cancelled

October 20, 2006
By
Madonna’s Crucifixion Reported Cancelled

The American Family Association has announced that NBC TV has decided to delete the mock crucifixion scene that was to appear in a concert special starring rock singer Madonna. As reported on this site on September 20, NBC TV is pondering what to do about rock singer Madonna’s upcoming TV special on the network. A video of the middle-aged pop star’s latest  concert will be broadcast on the network in November. The problem: Madonna sings one song, "Live to Tell," while suspended on a cross, bound by silver cuffs and wearing a crown of thorns. Catholic and Orthodox church groups have protested the spectacle. Madonna defends it by saying that it is not "anti-Christian, sacrilegious or blasphemous." She says that in fact Jesus himself would be just like her if he were here today: "It is no different than a person wearing a cross or ‘taking up the cross’ as it says in the Bible. Rather, it is my plea to the audience to encourage mankind to help one another and to see the world as a unified whole. I believe in my heart that if Jesus were alive today he would be doing the same thing." At that time,

Read more »


"Culture is the expression of the guiding philosophy of the day."—Murray Rothbard

Subscribe to The American Culture.

 

February 2012
S M T W T F S
« Jan    
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
26272829  

Archive

Twitter Feed!

Follow the American Culture and S. T. Karnick on Twitter! Send message "follow stkarnick1" to 40404 on your cell phone or go to twitter.com.

Packages Seo