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Like most Catholics, I appreciate Benedict's efforts to confront the abuse scourge. But Rome's moral fallibility (reminder: it didn't definitively disavow slavery until 1888) is particularly apparent when it tries to downplay the scandal by insisting that clergy in the 1960s and 70s were susceptible to the era's liberal mores, or that the rate of pedophilia among its ranks is no larger than that of society in general. Those arguments - We're no worse than the rest of you! - effectively surrender claims to moral superiority, let alone divine direction. As a Catholic, I believe...
...define our faith not via hoary doctrine but via our own reason, which is how Catholicism is supposed to be practiced anyway. (Yes, despite the Vatican's warnings, it's safe to try theology at home!) Because Catholicism so richly contemplates Jesus' human as well as divine nature - Michelangelo didn't sculpt the Pieta in a theological vacuum - real Catholicism promotes human reason as a door to moral understanding and spiritual redemption. The Church can be a valuable guide to that understanding, one that jerks like me can benefit from. But it's not the arbiter of that understanding...
...Second, on remaking an old favorite. I'll tell you why the middle-aged critical Cassandras remember the 1981 version as a movie milestone: because when they first saw it, they were 11. Not that it didn't boast its antique charms, mostly in Harryhausen's nifty-creaky beasties, but these scenes consume perhaps 15 mins. of a two-hr. movie. The rest is a botch, as storytelling or spectacle. First we're up on Olympus in the company of some swank Brit actors - Laurence Olivier as Zeus, Claire Bloom as Hera, Maggie Smith as Thetis - whose contempt...
...Ross put the word out about the upcoming screening through her local Autism Society chapter. "We didn't know if we'd have an empty auditorium," says Harris. "We had 300 seats, and we had to turn people away. I knew we were on to something...
...Green, head of China research at Standard Chartered Bank in Shanghai. During their phone conversation Thursday, Hu told Obama that "healthy and stable economic and trade relations between China and the United States serve the interests of both countries," according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency. The report didn't say whether the two leaders had discussed China's currency. (See pictures of the global financial crisis...