Mission Impossible? Tom Cruise to Play German Catholic Hero

From the Remnant.

Adolf Hitler was given to such fits of anger, William Shirer reported in The Rise And Fall of The Third Reich, that he would fall to the floor and chew the rug. Der Fuhrer’s conniption fits may well have been the result of tertiary syphilis, but whatever their cause, German officialdom is rug-biting mad about Tom Cruise being cast as the lead in a film about German hero Claus Philip Schenk von Stauffenberg.

Stauffenberg was the devout Catholic army colonel who planted the bomb in the attempt to kill Hitler in 1944. Official German angst has nothing to do with Cruise’s skills as a thespian or its love for the Catholic faith. Rather, the Germans fervidly oppose Scientology, which they view as a dangerous, totalitarian cult. Cruise is the world’s foremost Scientologist.

Scientology, cooked up in the brain pan of science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, isn’t so much a totalitarian cult as a childish, New Age fantasy world of aliens and spooks. But German officials believe it is tantamount to Nazism; thus, Cruise is anathema, particularly in dealing with the touchy subject of Hitler and one of his most heroic German enemies. As well, one of Stauffenberg’s children, a former general in the post-World War II German army, likewise opposes the choice of Tom Cruise. Yet Cruise may well do a fine job as Stauffenberg in the film, called Valkyrie, and regardless of the opinions of the Germans and Cruise’s acting ability, the upcoming film occasions telling the story of the Catholic hero who attempted to end the Nazi regime.

My hunch is that the movie never mention that Stauffenberg was a devout Roman Catholic.

Alexy II: Two Thumbs Up to the Latin Mass

This is a no brainer. Pope John Paul II opened the door to reunification with the Orthodox churches. Pope Benedict XVI unleashes the Tridentine Mass. The Orthodox breathe a sign of relief. Hopefully, talks with gain a new momentum.

We've blogged on Alexy II before. Here's the story from interfax-religion.com:

Rome, August 30, Interfax - Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia has greeted the recent decree of Pope Benedict XVI providing more freedom to celebrate the ancient Latin Mass.

The motu proprio Summorum Pontificum that provides more freedom to use the pre-Vatican II Missal ‘is a positive fact,’ Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia said to comment on the Roman Catholic Church reintroducing her ancient liturgical form.

‘We strongly adhere to the tradition. Without being faithful to her liturgy the Russian Orthodox Church would have failed to survive persecutions in 1920s and 1930s,’ the Russian primate told the Italian daily Il Giornale a few days ago after celebration liturgy in the Cathedral of the Dormition in the Kremlin.

The patriarch opined that the pope’s decision might contribute to establishing closer links with the Orthodox Churches, the daily said.

The obligatory Latin Mass was abolished by the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) when the Roman Catholic Church legalized liturgical use of modern languages hoping to attract more people. But the results were far from ideal, and the reform led to a schism as Archbishop Marcel Lefevre refused to accept it an faced excommunication in 1988.

New Blog

I've been on somewhat of a sabbatical and that has ended. I'm starting a new blog. The two will "speak" to each other in a sense. I think the futbol may migrate over there.

This blog will continue because it must. Even if posts are sparse, one can view the fresh content in the news feed. It's everything that I am thinking about it and the woman who generates those news feeds, basically says it all.

I'll say this, the Motu Proprio has had a calming effect on me but I'm still on the attack. Now, its a two-front war.

The Apostle of Common Sense Speaks

New Age mumbo jumbo is no substitute for faith in God

By David Quinn
Monday August 27 200 The Independent (Ireland)

Its reputed author is the great Catholic apologist GK Chesterton (aka the Apostle of Common Sense) . He said: "The danger when men stop believing in God is not that they'll believe in nothing, but that they'll believe in anything."

Chesterton wrote those words almost 100 years ago and he wrote them at a time when people like William Butler Yeats were devotees of the New Age fad of their time, namely theosophy. Clairvoyants, fortune tellers, palm readers and the most esoteric forms of Eastern mysticism were all the rage. Anything but Christianity was the order of the day......

It was against this background that Chesterton wrote those words. (Incidentally, the reason he is only the reputed author is because no one can actually find the exact quote in any of his known writings, although I stand to be corrected). In any event, the quote stands and it exactly described what was happening in his time and in our own.

Back then, side by side with the rise of atheism and scientific materialism came a new flourishing of beliefs the like of which had not been seen since pagan times and which were decidedly anti-rational. It was as though the decline of Christianity, precipitated by the 19th and early-20th Century versions of Richard Dawkins, had opened up a space not for rationalists like Chesterton himself -- I use that word advisedly -- but for new, or rather very old, forms of superstition.

Fast forward almost 100 years and we have the redoubtable Professor Dawkins presenting his latest series on Channel Four called 'The Enemies of Reason' in which he fires broadside after broadside at fortune-tellers, diviners, tarot-card readers and the whole panoply of magical and mystical practices to which countless numbers of people today have recourse.

However, what never seems to occur to people like Richard Dawkins and his fellow travellers is that, in a rich irony, people like himself have actually helped pave the way for the palm-readers, et al. Man does not live by scientific rationality alone and if you take from him Christianity, or one of the other mainstream religions, his spiritual side will have to go looking for other outlets. That is what happened in Chesterton's time and it is what is happening today.

Speaking at Knock on Wednesday, Archbishop Sean Brady might well have been thinking of GK Chesterton when he said that in modern Ireland the decline of Christianity has seen, on the one hand, a rise in shallow, empty, almost panic-stricken consumerism, and on the other a rise, or re-rise in various ancient, and at the same time, very New Age practices like astrology and fortune-telling. It was this second point that caught the media's attention.

Read more.