John Patrick Shanley’s ‘Doubt’ looks at the darkness to be encountered even within the most sacred locales
Michael V. Tueth
Posted inFrom Our Archives
Uncertain Sympathies: John Patrick Shanley’s ‘Doubt’
The sun doesn’t shine much in the Bronx neighborhood where John Patrick Shanley’s powerful film, Doubt, is set. The atmosphere is gray and cold; its melancholy mood is disturbed only once in the film by a fierce wind storm that blows down many of the bare limbs of the convent trees. The winds of change are indeed blowing in the Catholic Church in 1964, and Sister Aloysius Beauvier, the principal of St. Nicholas parish school, seems determined to protect her domain from any corrupting influences that might be in the air.
Posted inFaith in Focus
Here Comes My Baby: Hollywood’s surprising focus on unplanned pregnancy
During graduate studies in English many years ago, I came to love certain academic books, the first of which was Northrop Frye’s The Anatomy of Criticism. Frye, who applied archetypal analysis to classic literature, labeled comic drama as “the mythos of spring,” a celebration of a
Posted inFaith in Focus
A Dish Best Served Cold: The musical ‘Sweeney Todd’
Tim Burtons Sweeney Todd, a wicked, bloody triumph of filmmaking, has caught the attention of both critics and audiences and has received numerous nominations and awards. There are, however, a couple of things one should know before buying a ticket. First, it is a musical, which neither the advertis
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Body and Soul
A media professor at Marquette University Claire Hoertz Badaracco has already provided a valuable study of the interaction of media and religion in the collection of essays she edited in 2005 Quoting God How Media Shape Ideas About Religion and Culture She now adds the medical profession to the
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Communal Ecstasy!
Dancing in the Streets is a study of the gatherings of people for frenzied communal festivity or what the author Barbara Ehrenreich calls ldquo collective joy rdquo throughout the ages It is a thoroughgoing piece of social history The book should also appeal to students of religion drama pol
Posted inArts & Culture, Film
To Change the World: Michael Apted’s ‘Amazing Grace’
‘Amazing Grace’ attempts to depict Wilberforce’s life while also capturing a sense of the labyrinthine journey of a simple moral issue through the thickets of political intrigue and compromise.
Posted inBooks
Dramatic Dominican
In the course of 50 years in and out of the theatrical spotlight Vincent Harke the Dominican priest who founded the renowned Department of Speech and Drama at The Catholic University of America in Washington D C attracted a host of admirers One of them a graduate of the department Mary Jo Sa