[My friend] Tom asked whether on Saturday afternoon I would accompany him to celebrate a Mass in Hitchcock’s house.

I was dumbfounded, but of course said yes. On that Saturday, when we found Hitchcock asleep in the living room, Tom gently shook him. Hitchcock awoke, looked up and kissed Tom’s hand, thanking him.

Tom said, “Hitch, this is Mark Henninger, a young priest from Cleveland.”

“Cleveland?” Hitchcock said. “Disgraceful!”

After we chatted for a while, we all crossed from the living room through a breezeway to his study, and there, with his wife, Alma, we celebrated a quiet Mass….
Weighing one’s life with its share of wounds suffered and inflicted in such a perspective, and seeking reconciliation with an experienced and forgiving God, strikes me as profoundly human. Hitchcock’s extraordinary reaction to receiving communion was the face of real humanity and religion, far away from headlines . . . or today’s filmmakers and biographers.

One of Hitchcock’s biographers, Donald Spoto, has written that Hitchcock let it be known that he “rejected suggestions that he allow a priest . . . to come for a visit, or celebrate a quiet, informal ritual at the house for his comfort.” That in the movie director’s final days he deliberately and successfully led outsiders to believe precisely the opposite of what happened is pure Hitchcock.

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Police say a Massachusetts man left his girlfriend’s 2-year-old son in a car while he went shopping for Black Friday bargains, then went home with his new 51-inch flat screen television and left the toddler behind.

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This is from the Carol Burnett Show with Harvey Korman as the dentist’s patient.

The research examined by the commission “clearly shows that media violence consumption increases the relative risk of aggression, defined as intentional harm to another person that could be verbal, relational, or physical,” the report said.

More than 15 meta-analyses, each bringing together multiple studies, have been published on the link between media violence and aggression. The results of all these studies found that exposure to media violence not only increases aggressive behaviour, but also aggressive thoughts, feelings, physiological arousal, and decreases prosocial behavior.

It is mistaken to think that the aggression must be immediate or severe, such as shooting someone, the report qualified. It can take a variety of forms, such as a child being more defiant and disrespectful, or an adult being less open to others.

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Our son recommended it to us, and a friend from the Midwest said it was very well received in the Chicago area. I was glad I forced myself to read nothing about it, because it was not what I thought it would be. Definitely not suitable for certain viewers and rated as such, but a very good script and cast finely directed by Zemeckis–KSH.

Actor Nicolas Cage will reportedly star in what producers hope will be a new, improved movie version of the best-selling, end-times thriller Left Behind.

The project is being developed by Cloud Ten Pictures, which released the first film adaptation of the book in 2000, following it with two other installments from the successful series of novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins””which have sold more than 64 million copies since the first title came out in 1995.

Cloud Ten founder and CEO Paul Lalonde, who was one of the producers of the original, independently made movie that starred Kirk Cameron, is producing the action thriller that will be “in the mold of a classic disaster film” with Michael Walker, The Hollywood Reporter reported. Jay David Williams of Family Screen Partners is executive producing.

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A scientist who gave up his job in alternative technology to train as a vicar stars in a new TV series starting next week.

Marcus Zipperlen from Penparcau, Aberystwyth, is one of a number of trainee priests who were followed around for a year by the cameras at St Michael’s College, Cardiff. His journey will be featured in Vicar Academy on BBC1 Wales starting on Monday 15 October.

Made by an independent company, Presentable, Vicar Academy shadowed several full-time students, (“ordinands”) from St Michael’s College ”“ Wales’ only theological college ”“ who came from all corners of the country.

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After spending 18 of the last 30 years in Egypt, I am not a romantic when it comes to the realities of religious intolerance, social discrimination and sectarian violence experienced by many Christians due to religious fanatics who claim to be Christian, Jewish or Muslim. I have overheard various “men of religion” refer to Christians using the religious “M” word, “mushrik” meaning polytheist and idolater or “K” word “kafr” meaning infidel. I’ve heard it all and seen a lot. While two wrongs never make a right, Christians of most denominations should never fail to recall the violence, discrimination and persecution we have been guilty of during our own 2,000 year history “in the name of God and Jesus Christ”.

I cannot speak for Muslims outside of Egypt, but I can try to explain the reactions of many to such a film without equating these reasons to being justifications. Most Americans get quite upset when we watch the American flag being burned or trampled on. We at least get upset if someone desecrates the Bible and Catholics get very upset if someone desecrates the Eucharist. Maybe we don’t burn those who do or torture them anymore, but we have in the past. We claim to be “one nation under God with liberty and justice for all” and yet we have always found at least one race, nationality, religion or orientation to focus on and “go after”.

Western societies that profess “freedom of religion” have moved toward “freedom FROM religion”. Personally, even as a Catholic priest, I feel that “religion” in civil democracies have the obligation to form and educate the individual and collective conscience of its followers and to be “a voice of conscience” in society. However, I oppose any religion dictating to government how it should legislate morality according to any particular religious belief system. At the same time, this is NOT the current reality in the Muslim world whether I/we like it or not. Cultural sensitivity must include religious and social sensitivity.

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Liberation is a peculiarly American love. And these days it seems particularly beloved when the liberation is one from the tyranny of faith.

Mainstream culture prizes those who convert to secularism, the side of the thoughtful and the free. We read of their escapes””books in recent years include “The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance,” by Elna Baker, and “Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots,” by Deborah Feldman. And we watch their oppression by religion on movie screens and television”””Jesus Camp,” “Sister Wives,” “Big Love””and are relieved by the distance between their lives and our own.

And now we have TLC’s new series “Breaking Amish,” a reality show that follows the lives of five young Amish and Mennonite men and women as they “forgo horses and buggies for New York City’s taxis and subways.” The Hollywood Reporter lauded TLC for acting “not only as documentarian but as liberator.”

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On Wednesday 15 men and four women meet to decide who will succeed Rowan Williams. The frontrunners include a Sun columnist, an economist, and chair of the Hillsborough independent panel.

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The 14-minute trailer on YouTube enraged Muslims worldwide with its depiction of Muhammad as a womanizer, religious fraud and child molester. Most Egyptian Christians in the U.S. have rejected the movie and say the man and the nonprofit tied to the film are fringe players who are not well-known in the Coptic Orthodox Church, the church for the vast majority of Coptic Christians in America.

A tiny minority of U.S. Copts, however, have used their adopted nation’s free speech protections to speak out against Islam in a way that would not be tolerated in their native Egypt. The few who engage in this anti-Muslim, evangelical activism _ including those behind the movie trailer _ are fueled by that history, said Eliot Dickinson, an associate professor of political science at Western Oregon University who has written a book on U.S. Copts.

“Whoever made this film is such an outlier in their community that it’s completely unrepresentative,” Dickinson said. “But what it does is, it taps into this frustration of always being persecuted back in Egypt and let’s not downplay that. To be a Copt in Egypt now is a very, very difficult life because, especially after the Arab Spring, it’s open season.”

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A mob of hundreds of Muslim men attacked and burnt an 82-year-old church and an adjoining school in northwest Pakistan during a protest against an anti-Islam film, sparking concerns among the minority Christian community.

The mob broke through the gate of the St Paul’s Lutheran Church inside the cantonment in Mardan city, 48 km from the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa capital of Peshawar, on Friday while returning from a rally against the film Innocence Of Muslims.

According to reports from Christians in Mardan, the mob attacked and set on fire the church, St Paul’s high school, a library, a computer laboratory and houses of four clergymen, including Bishop Peter Majeed.

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“I don’t accept that criticism,” [Kevin] Miller told CP outside the Cinema Village theater. “I know that we have a little fun with Mark Driscoll at a couple of points. I think that we give people who believe what he believes ample time to make their case. We’re not having somebody who doesn’t believe what they believe kind of present a caricature. We give them, some people would say we give them too much time, to make their case.”

Acknowledging that “we don’t have every position,” Miller adds, “I would hope that this film would build bridges too. I know that some people don’t want a bridge. It’s going to burn some bridges, and I’m sorry for that. That’s not what I would like to see happen.”

In Schaeffer’s opinion, “Hellbound?” isn’t trying to explain God or what people believe about Him.

“The fact, is I don’t think this movie is about hell or theology,” he said. “I think there’s a subtext which totally overwhelms the film. And the subtext is flag-waving, insane retributive ideas of justice…”

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At least 19 people have died as violent protests erupted on the streets of Pakistan’s main cities in anger at an anti-Islam film made in the US.

Fourteen people were killed in the port city of Karachi and a further five died in the north-western city of Peshawar, hospital officials said.

Protesters clashed with police outside the diplomatic enclave in the capital, Islamabad, near the US embassy.

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So let’s get this straight: In the consensus view of modern American liberalism, it is hilarious to mock Mormons and Mormonism but outrageous to mock Muslims and Islam. Why? Maybe it’s because nobody has ever been harmed, much less killed, making fun of Mormons.

Here’s what else we learned this week about the emerging liberal consensus: That it’s okay to denounce a movie you haven’t seen, which is like trashing a book you haven’t read. That it’s okay to give perp-walk treatment to the alleged””and no doubt terrified””maker of the film on legally flimsy and politically motivated grounds of parole violation. That it’s okay for the federal government publicly to call on Google to pull the video clip from YouTube in an attempt to mollify rampaging Islamists. That it’s okay to concede the fundamentalist premise that religious belief ought to be entitled to the highest possible degree of social deference””except when Mormons and sundry Christian rubes are concerned.

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The appeal for legislation to ban the publication of material that causes religious offence was con­tained in a letter sent last weekend to the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, by the President-Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Jerusa­lem and the Middle East, the Most Revd Mouneer Anis. The other sig­natories were: the Bishop in Cyprus & the Gulf, the Rt Revd Michael Lewis; the Area Bishop for North Africa, Dr Bill Musk; and the Area Bishop for the Horn of Africa, Dr Grant Le­-Marquand.

The Bishops proposed that an “international declaration be nego­tiated that outlaws the intentional and deliberate insulting or defama­tion of persons (such as prophets), symbols, texts, and constructs of belief deemed holy by people of faith”.

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Anglican leaders across the Communion have spoken out about The Innocence of Muslims, a film containing anti-Islam content which has so far triggered protests, violence and death in countries like Libya and Egypt.

Both Anglican and Catholic Archbishops in New Zealand have condemned the film, its message and its promotion, alongside the Federation of Islamic Associations President and the city of Wellington’s Regional Jewish Council Chairperson, Race Relations Commissioner and local Bishops.

According to Anglican Taonga magazine, the group labelled the film (which openly defames the Islamic prophet Muhammad) as “irresponsible” and “inflammatory”, saying it was dishonestly made and presented, and designed to mislead, provoke hate, and cause harm.

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[Robert] McKee doesn’t believe in God. But if he did, he’d have to believe in hell.

He said that anyone who believes in God and says there is no hell or that hell isn’t forever is a “wussy.”

“If choice doesn’t have any meaning, life doesn’t have any meaning,” he said in the film. “By eliminating hell, these people are sucking the meaning out of life.”

[Filmmaker Kevin] Miller, who attends an Anglican church in Canada, also believes that people have to face the consequences for their actions. But that doesn’t mean that they have to be punished forever.

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It had actually been online since July, but nobody had paid attention to its crude libels against the Prophet Mohammed until Mr Abdullah’s show broadcast clips from it last weekend, calling for the film-makers to be executed.

Within hours the hardline Salafi Islamists who watch his programme, and who have been growing in strength since last year’s revolution, were demonstrating in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and outside the US embassy, which they stormed on Tuesday, burning the US flag.

Thus came the spark to a week of violent protests against the film, leading to the killing of the US ambassador to Libya on Tuesday evening and assaults on Western embassies across the Middle East, leaving at least nine dead and hundreds injured.

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I finally got to watch this production during the past week after knowing peripherally about the story. Wow–incredibly powerful. And, as usual, there was so much I did not know–KSH. Here is the blurb about it to whet your appetite:

See how one man’s conviction and determination helped save 3,000 lives on 9/11.

In 2001, Rick Rescorla was the 62-year-old head of security at the Morgan Stanley Bank. The bank’s offices were situated high up in the South Tower at the World Trade Center. Rescorla was convinced that Osama Bin Laden would use jet planes to try and destroy the World Trade Center.

Long before September 11th, he developed an evacuation plan for the bank. The plan and its preparation were hugely unpopular with the Morgan Stanley staff, many of whom thought Rescorla was mad. Ultimately, however, the plan saved 3,000 lives. It was put into effect after the first jet hit the North Tower–even though WTC managers were instructing everyone to stay in the buildings. When the second jet hit the South Tower, Rescorla averted panic and organized a rapid evacuation. Rescorla went back inside to help the injured and trapped get out. He was still inside when the building collapsed and his body was never found.

In the recently released documentary “Kumaré,” filmmaker Vikram Gandhi, who grew up in a Hindu family in New Jersey and graduated from Columbia University, sets out to skewer the ersatz yogic and Eastern philosophies that have been embraced by New Age enthusiasts in America.

Taking a leaf from Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Borat,” Mr. Gandhi adopts the persona of a guru named Kumaré, or divine child. Complete with beard, flowing robes and a pitch-perfect imitation of his grandmother’s Indian lilt, Mr. Gandhi/Kumaré heads for southern Arizona, where his spiritual-sounding bromides (“illusion is truth”) attract a circle of 15 devotees, who see him as an authentic spiritual guide.

Anyone who has ever rolled his eyes at strip-mall yoga centers, Beverly Hills ashrams or commercial perfumes with names like Atman (Sanskrit for “true self”) will appreciate the film’s sendup of New Age movements and transplanted Eastern spirituality.

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Most Americans knew nothing about “Innocence of Muslims.” That’s the film that has set the Muslim world on fire, causing protests in Egypt and Libya that led to the death of the U.S. envoy to Libya, Christopher Stevens.

The bottom line is that we know very little about “Sam Bacile,” the man who says he produced the film and who says Sam Bacile is his name. The Wall Street Journal caught up with Bacile before he went into hiding. (Update at 3:34 p.m. ET. Some of the claims made in this interview have come under question. We’ve updated this post ”” read below ”” to reflect that…..)

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The more specific you can be the more helpful it will be for the rest of us. We are especially interested in material others might not be aware of that you have found moving or interesting. What specifically brought this to mind is an off handed reference in my most recent sermon to my wife and I particularly liking English and Scottish mysteries. I was then asked about by several parishioners which mysteries and how did we get them–KSH?

The US television network NBC was branded an embarrassment yesterday for its coverage of the Paralympics as athletes, sports chiefs and disability campaigners called for better recognition by international broadcasters of the world’s second largest sports event.
Fierce reaction to the widespread blackout beyond Britain of the Opening Ceremony on Wednesday night came after a record number of people tuned in to watch the critically acclaimed event live on Channel 4.
The host broadcaster reported a peak audience of 11.2 million viewers, its biggest for more than ten years.
Conversely, NBC will wait until September 16 before screening its 90-minute special on the Paralympics, including edited highlights of the show.

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Do you hate it when people complain? It turns out there’s a good reason: Listening to too much complaining is bad for your brain in multiple ways, according to Trevor Blake, a serial entrepreneur and author of Three Simple Steps: A Map to Success in Business and Life. In the book, he describes how neuroscientists have learned to measure brain activity when faced with various stimuli, including a long gripe session.

“The brain works more like a muscle than we thought,” Blake says. “So if you’re pinned in a corner for too long listening to someone being negative, you’re more likely to behave that way as well.”

Even worse, being exposed to too much complaining can actually make you dumb. Research shows that exposure to 30 minutes or more of negativity–including viewing such material on TV–actually peels away neurons in the brain’s hippocampus. “That’s the part of your brain you need for problem solving,” he says. “Basically, it turns your brain to mush.”

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You know what? We’re all screwed up. And the way Christians mess things up is we act like we’ve got it going on. And if we would just stay in that place of, hey, we’re all screwed up and but for the grace of God none of us have a shot here. We need to have a sense of humor about it; that’s kind of the way I’ve always faced my comedy.

Is the church good fodder for humor? Are we any good at laughing at ourselves?

No, we’re not very good at it, but we certainly should be able to laugh at ourselves because we can be idiots sometimes. I think that’s the appeal for me. People ask me, “Are you religious?” But I don’t like the word religious, because the only people Jesus argued with were “religious” people. I think that’s why I love doing this stuff with the homeless guys so much, through Atlanta Mission….They take guys off the street and put them up for a year, help them go through detox and get clean. Those guys get it. They get it better than people in church because they’re not clinging to their own self-righteousness. When you’re living under a bridge, you kind of understand it’s nothing based on you. That’s why I love working with those guys. They understand.

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