18 Mar

The Life of Pi – the best-selling novel by Yann Martel adapted by Ang Lee – is a compelling and beautiful film. It is a visual delight and its magnificent score is a lovely lullaby – it soothes the soul. The film portrays the story of Piscine Molitor Pi Patel, the son of an Indian zoo keeper, adrift after a shipwreck that claimed the life of his family. The incident acutely affects Pi; a teenager who has striven his whole life to understand the world around him, the emotions of those who live in it and the various beliefs that exist in that world. Pi survives the wreckage, but his life remains endangered. Not only is he adrift at sea, but also the other inhabitant of the lifeboat is a dangerous and hungry Bengal tiger – Richard Parker....

10 Mar

Chances are you've heard of the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes. If you haven't, I highly recommend you start reading it and don't stop. To my mind, it equals any work of literature in terms of its depth of character and its exploration of the human experience. Also, it's a pleasure to read: it is very funny and beautifully drawn. It's one of those marvellous experiences that are all-too-easy to miss. So let me tell you about it....

08 Mar

I think I'd like to be A Jesuit on Mars To soar through that black, airless sea And evangelize the stars Perhaps some child of the red sands Awaits the Word of God They'll gape in amazement as I land In my ecclesial space pod...

05 Mar

Poetry should leave its reader with something beautiful and so should a well-written game. Games, like poetry demand their reader's active participation in discovering meaning beyond what is apparent on the surface. As a story, The Cave teaches us to go deeper in more ways than one.Poetry should leave its reader with something beautiful and so should a well-written game. Games, like poetry demand their reader's active participation in discovering meaning beyond what is apparent on the surface. As a story, The Cave teaches us to go deeper in more ways than one....

02 Mar

Watching on television the departure of Benedict XVI on February 28, 2013 and seeing photos of his helicopter flight around Rome, brought to mind lines from Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem Morte D'Arthur....

26 Feb

I don't know about too many other Canadians, but I've been smitten with the television series, Downton Abbey. A period-piece if ever there was one, post Edwardian English society has been on colourful display. Of course, as one London critic observed, no one actually lived in quite that way....

17 Feb

Margaret Silf's new book, Just Call Me López: Getting to the Heart of Ignatius Loyola (Loyola Press, Chicago, 2012), is a very handsome little hardcover piece of work, as befits its subject. The cover photo shows a warm and inviting corner of a contemporary living room, and on the wall a new portrait of Ignatius composing one of his close to 7,000 letters....

12 Feb

Insight into life's deeper questions – suffering, the quest for God, and one's place in the cosmos – are often handled more effectively in stories than in learned debates or arcane texts. A story of a young man adrift in a lifeboat with a man-eating tiger might be seen as an unlikely instrument for insight into these questions but the recent Ang Lee film The Life of Pi, based on the novel by Yann Martel, is filled with surprises and food for thought....

12 Feb

For most people, Pope Benedict's resignation was a surprise, and not seen as a possibility. Or at least, it was a very remote one. Generally, the Church's tradition has not favoured papal resignations, though church law provides for such a possibility. Historically to our knowledge, four popes have resigned, the last one in 1415. Thus, the pope's resignation is all the more surprising. Two main questions arise: Who is papabile? And what qualities should the cardinals look for in a new pope?...

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