MYSTERY AT THE NEW MEDIA CELEBRATION

“I heard about your blog at the Catholic New Media Celebration. Were you there?”

So asks Ms. Angela Santana from Saint School, a blog about college, faith, and young adulthood. Yes, Angela, there is an EegahInc, and unless I’m mistaken, he was a few rows behind you at the conference. Bwah Ha Ha! Actually, Angela points out one my serious personality flaws; unless I’ve known you for twenty years, I’m not much for talking. Here I go through the trouble of attending a get-together designed to build relationships among hundreds of Catholic bloggers and podcasters, and I can count the number of people I actually spoke to on my fingers. I have a personality custom made for the Internet.

To make up for my shortcomings, I’ll happily give a nod to any of my fellow conference attendees who drop me a note here or on 4marks or Facebook (If you can find me there, Bwah Ha Ha!). Along with her own blog, Angela also brought to my attention Rebecca Christian's blog, Catholic In Film School. Rebecca is a junior in college studying screenwriting and theology in Los Angeles. Best of wishes Rebecca, may you never make a film which ends up being reviewed here.

If there’s anybody else out there I didn’t speak to who’d like a mention, just let me know. Talk to… er, write to you later.

WEEKLY NEWSREEL

Good evening Mr. & Mrs. Catholic and all you other Christians at sea. Here at the Newsreel we find ourselves still in the thrall of Miles O’Keefe’s luxurious mane. Ah, hair! Let it fly in the breeze and get caught in the trees, give a home to the fleas in our hair. A home for fleas, a hive for bees, a nest for birds, there ain't no words for the beauty, the splendor, the wonder of our hair. Flow it, show it, long as God can grow it, our hair. Our hair like Jesus wore it, Hallelujah we adore it! Now off to press.

DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO – Ooooo, check out the tail lights on this one. Hey, We’re talking about her hair! Sheesh, you people. Actually, this kind of elaborate hair ornamentation puts us in the mind of Jezebel who, upon learning that the newly appointed king Jehu was in town, “shadowed her eyes, adorned her hair, and looked down from her window.” A number of modern scholars have suggested that the original readers of the Biblical text would have associated this description of Jezebel with carven images of the elaborately coiffed Kilili, “she who leans out of the window”. This Babylonian goddess wasn’t your typical earth-mother of the time, but rather a warrior and seductress and, as an aspect of Ishtar, the patroness of sacred prostitution. Using such recognizable imagery to describe Jezebel implies that she was more than just some skanky Canaanite princess, but likely a pagan priestess of some sort, which would better explain her ability to corrupt the religion of Israel during the reign of her husband Ahab. If all that’s true, then Jezebel’s final fall from the castle wall to the hungry dogs below isn’t just a gruesome campfire tale (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but an allegorical toppling of a pagan religion. Gotta watch those little details in Scripture, dear readers, they’re loaded.

DATELINE: KENSINGTON – The nice lady above reminds this reporter of his very brief stay with the United Pentecostal Church, the nice folks who interpret I Corinthians 11 to mean that a woman should never cut her hair while a man should keep it close to the scalp. We’ve recently discussed St. Paul’s likely meaning when crafting his words on hair-dos and their implications that Jesus probably (not definitely) had shoulder length hair. What we didn’t provide was an example of what exactly St. Paul was decrying when he criticized long hair on men. For that, we turn to the book of 2 Samuel which tells us of Absalom, son of King David, who just might have borne more than a passing resemblance to the lady above. Quite famous for his flowing girly-locks, the young Absalom shaved his head only once a year, a ritual which usually left a pile of hair weighing in at a whopping 200 shekels, or about 4 pounds. In later years, however, Absalom's ambition grew along with his hair, eventually resulting in an open revolt against his father. Absalom’s life came to an undignified end when his fab-u-lous hair became tangled in a low hanging bush and Joab, finding the poor guy swinging in the wind like a pinata, poked a few holes in him with a lance. Absalom's vanity ultimately left him, as the Bible so poetically (and yes, allegorically) describes, hanging between Heaven and Earth.

DATELINE: PARTS UNKNOWN – Our last newsreel is of a monkey getting a haircut. There’s no biblical, catechetical, or allegorical reason for this; we just wanted to see a monkey get a haircut. Everybody loves monkeys.

And with that, we leave you until next time. As always, in the words of the great Les Nessman, “Good evening, and may the good news be yours.”

INTERMISSION: SATAN SUBLETS

Yes, I do read. (Mostly the same stuff I watch, but hey, it’s got words.) And all those months ago, when I first responded to the Page 123 Meme which Mr. WAC from Fish In A Barrel tagged me with, the same one which prompted my upcoming review of Ator: The Fighting Eagle, I included this small excerpt from the second closest book I had at hand:

"When I modeled her, I thought that she would be mine forever-but others came and admired her-others like you and your friend." The axe sliced through the air, missing Arthur and striking the brick wall. Sparks flew as the smashing contact was made."

That bit of prosery comes from Satan Sublets (What? You were expecting War and Peace from the guy who brought you Final Exam: The Novelization?) written by the non-existent Jack Younger, one of the many pseudonyms of Russ Jones. Russ is one of those semi-Renaissance type guys you find scattered across the world of sci-fi/horror who has done a little bit of everything to keep working with the subject matter he adores. Over the past few decades he’s been a comic book artist (Mystery In Space) and writer (Arrgh!), magazine publisher (Monster Mania) and editor (Creepy Magazine), and even a documentarian (Buzby Berkeley). More important to the topic at hand, however, is that during the mid-seventies, Russ Jones anonymously authored over twenty dime store novels with titles such as Claw, Curse of the Pharaohs, Maniac!, Demon, and Rest In Agony.

I think it’s fair to say that not everything  Russ has done had the Pulitzer as a goal. Russ himself admits as much when discussing the time director David Hewitt couldn't get the rights to make a film version of Creepy Magazine and called Jones up to provide a screenplay instead. In the book Eye On Science Fiction, Mr. Jones remembers, "I wasn't particularly busy at the time, and Dave had a picture to make and didn't have a script. I had some cast-off stories I had done, and I fired them off to him in the mail." These cast-offs eventually became the five stories which comprise 1967's Dr. Terror's Gallery of Horrors, a poor man's spin on the much better Amicus anthology films of the time. Jones wasn't too fond of the finished product himself. "I didn't want my name on it at all, but I knew it was gonna look good on the resume!" Now I could be 100% wrong, but after reading Satan Sublets, I would lay odds this book offers up something of the exact same scenario. Take a look at the plot.

On the verge of giving up on his search for an apartment in New York City, Peter Harcourt chances upon the nearly hidden rental offices of L. Devlin. Offered a luxurious apartment at a rate only a madman could turn down, Peter immediately sends for his wife and young daughter. Things go well until little Peggy builds an altar to her favorite goatman doll inside her locked playroom and the cat disappears. It all ends horribly one rainy night as Peggy kills her mother, transforms into a goatman, and leaves her father a rambling lunatic for the rest of his life. The following week Devlin rents the apartment to retired businessman Arthur Grant. Things go well until Arthur and his friend Carl become obsessed with the wax figure of a beautiful woman they've found at a local artist's studio. Unfortunately for them, the figure's creator becomes jealous of their attentions and decides to rectify the situation with an ax. The following week Devlin rents the apartment to Mike Fuller and his wife Debbi. Things go well until Mike begins to lose his hearing and Debbi, knowing her phone conversations can't be overheard anymore, resumes her career as an on-call nymphomaniac. Unfortunately for her, Mr. Devlin recommends a doctor to Mike who replaces his auditory nerves with those of a vampire bat. The newly created nosferatu, who can now hear quite well, eventually slays his wife and the vampiric pair take up residence in the building's basement with some of Devlin's other creatures. The following week...

Any of that sound familiar? It should. The stories are chock full of references to Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, EC Comics, you name it. The wax museum story even goes so far as to have the characters discuss the similarity of their situation with 1953's House of Wax. Let's face it, no matter how much silly B-level entertainment the book offers up (Hey kids, bat eardrum transplants can turn you into a vampire! Get yours now!), the stories in Satan Sublets have cut-and-paste written all over them. The biggest giveaway is the jarring sex scene in the final story that feels totally out-of-tone with the rest of the book. It smacks of having had some editor call Jones up and say, “Look, Russ baby, it’s the 70s. We gotta have us some graphic sex in this thing!” The book reads like a bunch of unrelated (and unsold) short stories Jones had laying around which he reworked and patched together with the flimsy linking device of Devlin and called it a book.

The funny thing is, the Devlin stuff is what’s most enjoyable about the book because, well… it’s just… goofy. Take this section where Devlin explains what’s going on in the apartment building.

“You see, Mr. Fuller – that apartment is owned by the Prince of Darkness, Himself. I find people for Him, so he can enjoy his New York abode. In fact, the Master is quite pleased with the progress He has made in this town. Soon, it shall all be under His domain.”

So let me get this straight. Satan’s big scheme to conquer a city of over 8 million people is by sub-leasing out a single apartment? Come on, I know times are tough, but would the entire population of the largest city in the United States really line up and surrender their souls one at a time just to get rent controlled living space? (Cheap gasoline, maybe, but low rent?) Is this the best Old Scratch can come up with? I mean, his résumé sounds pretty intimidating in The Catechism. "A murderer from the beginning, …a liar and the father of lies," Satan is "the deceiver of the whole world." Through him sin and death entered the world and by his definitive defeat all creation will be "freed from the corruption of sin and death." Does somebody who sounds this awful really have to resort to such pedestrian methods?

You know, he just might. Although the Catechism never short changes the danger represented by the Devil, it does go on to explain that “the power of Satan is, nonetheless, not infinite. He is only a creature, powerful from the fact that he is pure spirit, but still a creature.” Basically, as a created being, Satan cannot possess the omni-traits of God. He can’t know everything, he can’t do everything, and he can’t be everywhere at once. Theoretically this means that even as a spiritual being, Satan could be confined to a single place at any given time and forced to travel like the rest of us if he wishes to go from one place to another. If this is the case, then it’s quite possible the Devil could be hanging out in a New York City apartment building carrying out his (snicker) master plan while the rest of the fallen multitude do his dirty work elsewhere.

A number of theologians, however, speculate that this lack of omnipresence doesn’t preclude the ability of the Devil to bilocate or multi-locate. According to the New Catholic Dictionary bilocation is “the actual presence of the same finite being in two totally different places at the same time.” (I’m going to include the rest of the definition here because it’s interesting, but if you’re like me, you might want to get a second dictionary to look up the stuff you’re reading in the first dictionary.) “A physical body is said to be in place circumscriptively, every exterior part juxtaposed with Its corresponding part of the environing surfaces. A spiritual being is said to be in place definitely, entire in every part of space occupied. A mixed mode of location is that of a being circumscriptively in one place and definitely elsewhere, as is Christ in heaven and in the Sacred Host. This latter mode of bilocation is pertinent to the Catholic doctrine of the Holy Eucharist. All the physical laws of matter known to natural science contradict the bilocation of a material body as physically possible. As an absolute or metaphysical impossibility involving an intrinsic, essential contradiction, Catholic philosophers maintain that there is no intrinsic repugnance to a mixed mode of location. Since local extension is not an essential note of material substance, but merely a relation, bilocation does not involve the multiplication of a body's substance but only the multiplication of its local relations to other bodies.”

All that is just a fancy and philosophically correct way of saying that while not able to be omnipresent like God, beings with a spirit can in a certain sense be in two places at once. So with the ability to bilocate, the Devil could actually be hanging out at his own New York apartment AND be down the street getting Rosemary pregant AND be in Washington possessing Reagan seemingly all at the same time. Perhaps that’s why Father Pedro Barrajon, a trained exorcist and professor of theological anthropology at the Athenaeum Pontificium Regina Apostolorum in Rome, recently stated that “The devil is present everywhere that evil things happen within the normal laws of nature. In anyone who says: I don't accept love, the love of my brothers and sisters, the love of God. And in many places, in all massacres, in every murder, in physical catastrophes, in every concentration camp, in all evil.”

So, be warned. Just because the Devil might be tied up with this silly subletting scheme in the Big Apple right now, that doesn’t mean he can’t be outside your door right now also.

BACK FROM THE CATHOLIC NEW MEDIA CELEBRATION

SQPN’s first Catholic New Media Celebration has concluded and I’m back at the theater already. Although I’m lousy when it comes to interacting with real live human beings, I did manage to say hello to a few people there including Joe McClane from The Catholic Hack and SQPN founder himself Father Roderick, both whom seem to be genuinely nice guys.

A special thanks to Mark Shea for introducing me to the phrase “Nuking The Fridge” and giving me a reason to want to see the new Indiana Jones movie. (Probably not the one Lucas had in mind, but I’m sure he’ll take my money anyway.)

And a very special thanks to Jeff Miller, The Curt Jester, for his gracious compliments. I tried to track him down after the blogging panel to say thanks in person, but he either shies away from attention or he’s just freaking invisible.

Be sure to check out all the above links for what I’m sure will be interesting tidbits regarding the day’s events. All in all it was a pretty good way to spend a Sunday.

CATHOLIC NEW MEDIA CELEBRATION

Since my schedule miraculously cleared up and this event is being held (practically) in my backyard, it looks like I’ll be attending SQPN’s Catholic New Media Celebration this coming Sunday. It should be fun and informative to listen to the big boys and girls discuss blogging and podcasting. This will be the first convention I’ve attended in a long time which won’t be overrun with a bunch of middle-aged professionals cutting loose in stormtrooper uniforms and elf ears (at least, I don’t think so), but I still get to go to mass with folks like Mark Shea and Jeff Miller, so it’s all good.

OUTTAKES #016

This week’s exercise in bad taste was brought to you by clips taken from 1970’s The Double Garden, better known in the U.S. as The Revenge of Dr. X, with some last minute assistance from the Santa Ana Journal Cooking School of 1935. Please leave all complaints in the comments box.

SHORT FEATURE: SCANDAL - THE WARRIOR

Watching the trailer for Ator: The Fighting Eagle, I have to say there's one thing that really sticks out. And I mean LITERALLY sticks out. I'm talking about, of course, that great mass of teased and sprayed glory that is Miles O'Keefe's hair. It's a thing of wonder. But that's how we liked our savages and barbarians in the 1980s, with a giant sword in one hand and a huge can of Aqua Net in the other. As more evidence I offer you this. Now, despite how it looks, this is not the latest video from one of those freaky Call To Action liturgies. No, this is a clip from the rock group Scandal featuring Patty Smyth shooting down the walls of heartache. Bang! Bang!

Speaking of firing off shots, if you ever want to start a holy war without actually resorting to bloodshed, then just log on to any religious discussion forum on the Internet and ask this simple question, "Did Jesus really have long hair?" Oh, the humanity! By the time the smoke clears the electronic landscape will be littered with virtual corpses.

Most of the controversy centers around 1 Corinthians 11:14 in which Paul states that, "Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears his hair long it is a disgrace to him?" That sure makes it sound like all of those old paintings are misleading us, doesn't it? Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. Maybe the image of the Hollywood hippie Jesus is spot on, or maybe he actually looked more like the clean cut Leave It To Beaver Jesus in the text books the Free Will Baptists gave me when I was in middle school.

"Part of the problem in discussing hair length is how long is long?" notes the folks at Catholic Answers. "We know from archeological materials such as Middle Eastern carvings and Egyptian tomb paintings that Jews wore what we would consider today as long hair and beards. Hair reached down to the shoulders on men. Women wore hair down to the waist. Paul was telling Corinthian men that wearing hair down to the waist as women did would be effeminate and contrary to what natural law would suggest, especially considering the physical demands of many first-century male occupations. It is easy for us today to assume the length and cut of a Jewish man’s hair in the first century to be as it is for most men today, but that’s a misconception that can result in our misreading Paul."

Basically, we'll never know for sure what hair style Jesus really wore simply because the Bible never tells us. And I for one am relieved. It's hard enough trying to conform my inner being to the "image" of Jesus without having to do the same with my physical appearance. Can you imagine if Christianity not only involved all that praying and soul-searching, but also included an hour in front of the mirror with a blow dryer and a jar of Dippity Do?

COMING ATTRACTIONS: ATOR: THE FIGHTING EAGLE

Back on January 31 fo this year, I made a promise to Mr. WAC from Fish In A Barrel to review Ator. The only problem is that the DVD was on the dreaded Long Wait list at Netflix. Four months later, guess what finally came in? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Can someone please explain to me how there could be such an enormous backlog of people so anxious to see Miles O'Keefe in a loincloth that it took four months for me to get the movie? Anyone? Anyone?

SEX MADNESS

THE TAGLINE

"She sought big thrills... and caught big trouble! A country girl finds the crimson road."

THE PLOT

Paul Lorenz, son of the local anti-syphilis crusader, and a group of his pals head out to the Glorified Burlesque to catch a girlie show. Also attending are Peggy, Betty, and an unnamed child molester. Excited by what they've seen at the show, the lesbian Peggy bullies the bi-curious Betty into coming home with her while the molester stalks and kills a young girl. Meanwhile, Paul and the boys meet up with some of the show's dancers for a sex party and all end up with syphilis. One dancer, Millicent, skips the party however. She has an appointment with a doctor who is treating her for the syphilis she acquired after allowing herself to be pimped out by a theater manager in order to get a job. Unfortunately for Millicent the doctor she's seeing is a quack and lies to her about her condition. Believing herself cured, Millicent flees the big city and returns home to marry her childhood sweetheart. Inevitably, their child is born syphilitic and the husband goes blind. Overwhelmed by the consequences of her mistake, Mary prepares to poison herself and her family. Just in time, Mllicent's new doctor has found a possible treatment, but can he reach her in time to let her know?

THE POINT

So what would you do if you had an idea for a movie about wild sex parties, aggressive lipstick lesbians, and dancers who'll do anything (Anything? Anything!) for a job? Well, these days, you'd head over to HBO or Showtime, get a writing contract, and probably win an Emmy Award. But things weren't quite that easy back in 1938 when Sex Madness was filmed. Writing in the book Policing Cinema: Movies and Censorship in Early-Twentieth-Century America, Lee Grieveson notes that "legislative and reform activism in relation to cinema gathered pace after the proliferation of nickelodeons from 1906 on had opened moving pictures to lower-class and immigrant populations that had not previously frequented theatrical-style entertainments in any great numbers. Once at the cinema, these groups were subjected, many suggested, to a “carnival of vulgarity, suggestiveness, and violence” and to a “moral leprosy” that posed a serious “menace to the morals of the community and the healthy development of the social organism." In response to this perceived threat, a number of Protestant groups called for federal regulation of movie content.

Wary of government censorship, however, a number of prominent lay Catholics called for self-regulation within the movie industry and presented to Hollywood a code drawn up in 1930 by Father Daniel A. Lord, S.J. As described in Hollywood Censored: Morality Codes, Catholics, and the Movies by Gregory D. Black, this production code "prohibited films from glorifying criminals, gangsters, adulterers, and prostitutes. Lord's code, which soon became the Bible of film production, banned nudity, excessive violence, white slavery, illegal drugs, miscegenation, lustful kissing, suggestive postures, and profanity from the screen." (Which sounds pretty much like the content of tonight's schedule on Cinemax.) Hollywood didn't take to the code immediately though. The film industry basically ignored the document until 1934 when the Catholic Leagion of Decency finally threatened to boycott all movies at which point the code was quickly adopted. Arguing for freedom of expression is nice and all that, but when a petition signed by millions of people shows up saying they're no longer going to buy movie tickets, it's time to throw some clothes on and quit all that cussing.

At any rate, the newly rechristened Hays Code (Named after MPAA President Will Hays; I guess nobody wanted to submit to the Lord's Code.) did what it was supposed to and it looked like the days of seedy cinema was over and done with. Except, of course, there were still people out there who wanted to see all that banned stuff and were willing to pay for it. (Charles Dolan, founder of HBO & Cinemax, would have been about 8 years old at this time. Ah, impressionable young minds.) But the question was how could filmmakers slip in a steady supply of tawdriness to meet the demand, especially during those closely monitored first few years following the implementation of the code? Elementary, dear readers, by claiming they were (altogether now) doing it for the children.

You see, by the time the Hays Code came along, educational short films were already being shown everywhere, but obviously without those things considered too sensitive for the eyes of the kiddies. But didn't the kids need to be kept safe from things like wild sex parties, aggressive lipstick lesbians, and dancers who'll do anything (Anything? Anything!) for a job? Well, of course. So, in the name of providing information to parents regarding those kinds of dangers, filmmakers were able to bypass the code and produce adults-only "educational" feature films. As film historian Bruce Eder puts it, "The implied message of [these] movies and their promotion was that the people who made them weren't interested in taking your money [though they would do that] so much as in educating and warning audiences about an otherwise forbidden subject, and if there was some titillation or a risqué thrill to be found in parts of it, so be it."

Which at last brings us to our feature presentation, Sex Madness (aka They Must Be Told aka Human Wreckage). This little gem was yet another offering from the production company of Dwain Esper. According to Eder, "Esper was a bottom-dweller in the field of exploitation movies, a producer and distributor so lowbrow and sleazy [and at times grotesque] in his output and methods that he was an embarrassment to most of his colleagues in the exploitation field, a realm of filmmaking where shame was otherwise virtually unknown." If this sounds a bit hyperbolic, then just call to mind Esper's filmography which includes such classics as Marihuana: Weed With Roots In Hell, Reefer Madness, How To Take A Bath, and How To Undress In Front Of Your Husband. (Look'em up folks, they're all real.) Having mined the drug and burlesque scenes for all they were worth with those films, Esper came up with Sex Madness to exploit the latest crisis threatening America, syphilis.

Now this particular social disease actually was a real problem during the 30s. By the time Sex Madness was released, syphilis had become a public health disaster in the United States with an estimated ten to fifteen percent of the general population suffering from the disease. (I guess the 1920s weren't just roaring, they were burning and itching as well.) It was a near panic situation and ripe for exploitation. Of course, the government was already on the case with such educational shorts as Know For Sure and With These Weapons. But nobody would pay to see a bunch of lectures, no matter how important. No, in order to sell tickets, the film would need to have something a bit more than just government approved talking heads, something like, say... wild sex parties, aggressive lipstick lesbians, and dancers who'll do anything (Anything? Anything!) for a job. Esper's sex hygiene film, or "clap opera" as these movies became known inside the industry, delivered all this and much more.

Well, okay, not that much more. The plot synopsis at the top is almost all there is to the film. Throw in some documentary footage of doctors looking at syphilis sores, some lustful kissing at the sex party, and an extended burlesque dance sequence in which a few dozen women in modest one-piece bathing suits end their routine by turning around and bending over, and you've pretty much summed up the entirety of Sex Madness. The acting is wretched, the direction is non-existent, and you can find better cinematography on security camera footage. Worst of all, the movie is boring. Many people (okay, me) have sought this movie out hoping for more of the campy maniacal glee found in other Esper productions like Reefer Madness. Sadly, that kind of oddly watchable insanity has been replaced in Sex Madness by a lumbering turgid soap opera with all the subtly of a Brazilian Telenovela. Sex Madness is a truly bad movie. In fact, from both a critical and entertainment perspective, this is likely the worst movie I've reviewed for this blog so far. 

Still, a couple of weeks later, I find myself mulling over some of the things watching Sex Madness and looking up its backstory brought to mind. (Stuff besides wild sex parties, aggressive lipstick lesbians, and dancers who'll do anything (Anything? Anything!) for a job, I mean.) Things like was there ever really a time when movies like this were considered titillating and risqué? It's hard to believe what with today's standards. Why it seems like just a short time ago during the height of the low-rise jeans craze that you could see more butt-crack in the church pew in front of you than you can in Sex Madness. And was there actually a moment in history when Hollywood viewed the threat of a boycott as anything other than free publicity? Sure, The Golden Compass may have taken a hit domestically thanks in part to the Catholic League, but it was still a huge hit outside of the United States where a secularized Europe shook its head and wondered what all the hoopla was about. And most of all, was there really a time in the United States when you could get millions of Catholics to agree on an issue so strongly that they moved in unison and effectively changed an entire industry, even if just for a little while?

Shocking, but that's the way it's supposed to work. The Catechism uses fairly clear and strong language on this. "The initiative of lay Christians is necessary especially when the matter involves discovering or inventing the means for permeating social, political, and economic realities with the demands of Christian doctrine and life. (Read that again; it's gonna sound scary to some people.) This initiative is a normal element of the life of the Church: Lay believers are in the front line of Church life; for them the Church is the animating principle of human society... (Tell that to the Catholic politicians in the House of Representatives who recently told the Pope to buzz off.) Since, like all the faithful, lay Christians are entrusted by God with the apostolate by virtue of their Baptism and Confirmation, they have the right and duty, (Duty? Duty!) individually or grouped in associations, to work so that the divine message of salvation may be known and accepted by all men throughout the earth. This duty is the more pressing when it is only through them that men can hear the Gospel and know Christ. Their activity in ecclesial communities is so necessary that, for the most part, the apostolate of the pastors cannot be fully effective without it."

Taken in context that last part's not talking about just being eucharistic ministers and lectors, friends. It's talking about being a proactive Church Militant and marching out into society to fight sin wherever it's found. Now the Production Code written by Fr. Lord and forced on the movie industry by the Legion of Decency may not be the best example of this concept as some of the stuff in the code was just weird. (Even when it was later explained that the ban on interracial relationships was included, not because they were immoral [violated natural law], but because they were unusual [deviated from prevailing social mores], it still didn't make much sense.) But the Production Code and threatened boycott do show that such things can be done successfully. It just takes enough of us being of one mind to make it work. And in a church where you're likely to hear We Are One Body sung every other Sunday that shouldn't be much of a problem. Right?

THE STINGER

And just to put the brief educational film fest we've been having to rest for a little while, we give you the Archdiocese of Chicago's contribution to the genre... The CYO Calvacade! Be sure to watch Part 2 to the 6:40 mark. Was there ever really a time when you could say things like that?