Arts

At the beginning of March, Philip Groning’s film Into Great Silence came into a theatre in New York that specializes in foreign films. It was advertised as having a two-week run. But when each of the three daily showings continued to sell out, the theatre owners put “Held Over” up on the marquis. Now, at month’s end, it’s still playing to full houses. The DVD went on sale in Canada April 3.

TORONTO - The first Canadian theater screening of the film “Karol: The Pope, The Man” will be shown at the Ontario Place IMAX Cinesphere in English and Polish on Mar . 31 and in Italian Apr. 1. It is being sponsored by Catholic Youth Studio-KSM Inc.

Transfiguration: A Meditation on Transforming Ourselves and Our World by John Dear (Image Books, soft cover, 238 pages, $14.95 list)

If there is one lesson we can never learn too many times it is how to read the Bible. Jesuit Father John Dear’s Transfiguration shows us clearly and concretely how it’s done.

Fr. Stan Chu Ilo is a Catholic priest from Nigeria, now based in the diocese of Peterborough. He is an Igbo, a tribe from the Eastern part of Nigeria. The aim of his book is to present a true story of Africa, with a message that “Beyond the shadows of the present gloom lies the true face of Africa.”

TORONTO - The claim by a Toronto filmmaker that he had found the true burial site of Jesus of Nazareth — along with Jesus’ wife and child — began to sink under withering criticism almost as soon as he revealed his new film Feb. 26.

Black Snake Moan takes a great starting point and turns it into a bad movie.

Jesus: A Meditation on His Stories and His Relationships with Women, by Andrew M. Greeley (Forge Books, 176 pages, $21.95, hardcover).

Many know Andrew Greeley primarily as as the writer of a long-running series of crime novels featuring Irish-American sleuths such as Fr. Blackie Ryan. Others know him as a sociologist of religion, a frequent political and spiritual pundit on network TV. But what is often forgotten is that, first and foremost, Andrew Greeley is a diocesan priest — Fr. Andrew Greeley — with more than 40 years experience as a pastor and homilist.

{mosimage}The worst thing you can say about a religion is that it is a self-imposed prison of the mind — an identity of limits that deforms the human soul.

The title of this book may be surprising. When the terms “secularity” and “Gospel” are included in the same sentence, they are usually contrasted. We naturally look  for the word  “versus”  between them. 

The most important information in the bookends of the Bible, Genesis and Apocalypse, is the stuff that tells us who we are. Identity is one of the most deeply religious questions we can ask.