On the Fourth of July

On the Fourth of July, we greet all our American members, readers and followers, and may God bless America!

Another consideration claims our earnest attention. All intelligent men are agreed, and We Ourselves have with pleasure intimated it above, that America seems destined for greater things. Now, it is Our wish that the Catholic Church should not only share in, but help to bring about, this prospective greatness. We deem it right and proper that she should, by availing herself of the opportunities daily presented to her, keep equal step with the Republic in the march of improvement, at the same time striving to the utmost, by her virtue and her institutions, to aid in the rapid growth of the States. Now, she will attain both these objects the more easily and abundantly, in proportion to the degree in which the future shall find her constitution perfected. But what is the meaning of the legation of which we are speaking, or what is its ultimate aim except to bring it about that the constitution of the Church shall be strengthened, her discipline better fortified? Wherefore, We ardently desire that this truth should sink day by day more deeply into the minds of Catholics-namely, that they can in no better way safeguard their own individual interests and the common good than by yielding a hearty submission and obedience to the Church. Your faithful people, however, are scarcely in need of exhortation on this point; for they are accustomed to adhere to the institutions of Catholicity with willing souls and a constancy worthy of all praise.

Pope Leo XIII
Longinqua
6th January, 1895

Christmas Holiday

Of the films of Deanna Durbin, this is not the most tasteful, even if you look hard for the moral thread. However, the scenes from Midnight Mass for Christmas at the very beginning of this clip are worth showing.

Happy Christmas!

Our Lady's Month VI - The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965)

'The Greatest Story Ever Told' was the last of its kind in several ways. It was the last Biblical epic ever filmed by the Hollywood Studio System, Claude Rains' last film and the last great film of director George Stevens.

The stellar cast is headed by Swedish actor Max Von Sydow in his first English-language role as Our Lord. Once again, a relative unknown is chosen so as not to disturb the pious sentiments of the audience by too many profane associations, and there is something to be said for this. However, as with Jeffrey Hunter, Max might well have asked where does a career go after playing God. In both cases, it didn't go very far.

Dorothy McGuire is cast as Our Lady and Robert Loggia as St. Joseph (who was never out of work thereafter!). It must be said that, while St. Joseph is rather silent, as is appropriate, Our Lady is portrayed as rather insipid - as it had also been suggested she was in 'King of Kings' played by Siobhán McKenna.

Charlton Heston makes another towering Biblical performance as St. John the Baptist. Jamie Farr (St. Jude Thaddeus - to whom he had prayed for work when offered the part), David McCallum (Judas), Roddy McDowall (St. Matthew), Sidney Poitier (Simon of Cyrene), Pat Boone (as the Angel at the tomb), Van Heflin, Shelley Winters (healed woman #3), Ed Wynn, John Wayne (Centurion at Calvary), Telly Savalas (Pilate - for which role he shaved his head and kept it shaved for the rest of his life), Angela Lansbury (Pilate's wife), Martin Landau (Caiaphas), Jose Ferrer (Herod Antipas), and Claude Rains (Herod the Great) all add a sense of a masterpiece tribute to the subject matter, although, on the other hand, the sense of wonderment at the stars might distract from the theme.

Donald Pleasence plays the dark hermit, a figure of the devil, who hovers in the background of various events in the life of Our Lord. His character adds a unique dimension of spiritual insight.

Highlights include John Wayne as the Roman centurion who witnesses Calvary with the words "truly this Man was the Son of God." Duke pays tribute to the King of Kings, as it were. the story is told that, when Stevens asked Wayne to give the line more awe, he gave the line as "Aw, truly this Man was the Son of God."

The scenes of the Passion bring this film well within the class of devotional films and a precursor of 'The Passion of the Christ.' It is a brave director who tries to top the drama of the Crucifixion but the courage of Stevens is well placed in an uplifting vignette of both resurrection and ascension.

Stevens filmed on location in North America, explaining: "I wanted to get an effect of grandeur as a background to Christ, and none of the Holy Land areas shape up with the excitement of the American southwest. I know that Colorado is not the Jordan, nor is Southern Utah, Palestine. But our intention is to romanticize the area, and it can be done better here."

Filming took so long that the actor playing Nicodemus died before completing his performance as cinematographer William C. Mellor and the actress playing St. Mary Magdalene became pregnant, requiring costume redesigns and carefully placed camera angles, and the lake where filming of St. John the Baptist's scenes delayed the completion of the Glen Canyon Dam!

Veteran David Lean was the unit director for the early scene featuring Claude Rains as Herod the Great. The film received mixed reviews, although it was nominated for five Academy Awards: Best Musical Score; Best Cinematography (color); Art Direction (color); Costume Design (color); and Special Visual Effects. Perhaps on account of its length (3 hours 45 minutes shortened to 3 hours 19 minutes and later to 2 hours 21 minutes), the film was a box office floperoonie and was to discourage Biblical epic movies for decades to come.

Our Lady's Month V - King of Kings (1961)

King of Kings, rather like Ben-Hur is a 'story of Christ', that is, a series of fictional narratives that are blended with the Biblical account of Our Lord's earthly life. Unlike Ben-Hur, it gives Our Lord a face - Geoffrey Hunter's face, in fact - and gives Our Lady a voice - and an Irish accent! - played by Siobhán McKenna.

The music of King of Kings is also memorable and links it to other Biblical epics, Quo Vadis? (1951) and Ben-Hur (1959), which also featured scores by Miklós Rózsa.

Lowlights include the inclusion of the unbiblical 'For Thine is the Kingdom...' as Our Lord gives the 'Our Father' to the Apostles.

What would an Hollywood Biblical epic be without Charlton Heston? Apparently, it would be like this. The film received a poor review both from America (see below) and Time magazine (Friday, Oct. 27, 1961):

King of Kings (Samuel Bronston; M-G-M). Christianity, which has survived the Turkish onslaught and the Communist conspiracy, may even survive this picture; but individual Christians who try to sit through it may find themselves longing for extreme unction.

A remake of Cecil B. DeMille's 1927 life of Christ. King of Kings was produced in Spain by a marked-down DeMille named Samuel Bronston who built 396 sets, hired some 20,000 extras and a dozen slightly famous players, spent more than four months and $8,000.000. And what emerged? Incontestably the corniest, phoniest, ickiest and most monstrously vulgar of all the big Bible stories Hollywood has told in the last decade. Nevertheless, the subject is so dear to the hearts of millions that King of Kings will undoubtedly be filling Hollywood's collection plates for months to come. Scheduled for reserved-seat. pre-Christmas release at fancy prices ($1.50-$3.50 on Broadway), the film will soon be playing in 26 cities from Los Angeles to Rome, has rung up an advance sale of about $600,000—bigger than Ben Hur's.

Fortunately. Bronston's bust enjoys one solid virtue: a script precisely organized and competently prosed by Playwright Philip (Anna Lucasta) Yordan. who has often quite sensitively reconciled the grandeurs of the King James version with the need for a fresh, contemporary tone. After noisily establishing the Romans in Palestine. Scenarist Yordan moves swiftly and synoptically through the Gospels: The Nativity, The Flight into Egypt. The Massacre of the Innocents; Christ's boyhood, baptism and temptation in the desert; Salome's Dance and the murder of John the Baptist; the Sermon on the Mount, the triumphal procession to Jerusalem, the Last Supper, the Agony in the Garden, the Trial before Pilate, the Ascent of Calvary, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection. Unfortunately, many of these episodes are shamelessly scanted and most of Christ's miracles—certainly the most dramatic moments of his ministry—are inexplicably omitted. The time thus saved is devoted to two bombinating battles that never actually took place; to a wildly unhistorical subplot that exaggerates Barabbas (vaguely identified by the Bible as an insurrectionist) into a sort of George Washington of the Jews, and makes Judas merely a bewildered Benedict Arnold; to a number of incidents in the life of Christ —among them a dramatic death-cell confrontation with John the Baptist—that are nowhere sanctioned by scripture and invariably ring false.

Director Nicholas Ray makes few positive contributions. With his customary penchant for the pretentious (Johnny Guitar), he slushes up the sound track with angel voices—all, as usual, soprano, apparently on the theory that only girls are nice enough to be angels: he fancy-pants around with his camera in a ludicrous gilt-plaster palace that looks as if it were made of baroque-candy; and he ever-so-reverently overdresses his hovel scenes till they gloom and glow like cheap reproductions of Murillo.

With his actors Director Ray does no better, Frank Thring plays Herod Antipas in the grand, grotesque manner of Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible, but since nobody else is playing at the same pitch he just looks like some kind of a nut. Robert Ryan reads the part of John the Baptist with a clear Midwestern twang, and a degree of woodenness that may incline the spectator to sympathize with Salome when she calls for his head on a platter. As Salome, 16-year-old Brigid Bazlen is pretty enough, but as a belly dancer she has too little ootch in her cootch. And as the Mother of God, Siobhan McKenna does little more than smirk and mince as though she were playing Mother Machree. The imitation of Christ is little better than blasphemy.* Granted that the role is impossible to cast or play; granted that the attempt may nevertheless be worth making. Whatever possessed Producer Bronston to offer the part to Jeffrey Hunter, 35, a fan-mag cover boy with a flabby face, a cute little lopsided smile, babyblue eyes and barely enough histrionic ability to play a Hollywood marine? And why dress the poor guy up in a glossy-curly pageboy peruke, why shave his armpits and powder his face till he looks like the pallid, simpering chorus-boy Christ of the religious-supply shoppes?

The definitive criticism of Bronston's Christ, and indeed of his entire film, is expressed in the snide subtitle by which it is widely known in the trade: I Was a Teenage Jesus...

*Writing in America, a Jesuit weekly, Film Critic Moira Walsh last week anathematized Hollywood's biblical epics as "disedifying and even antireligious," and called King of Kings "the culmination of a gigantic fraud perpetuated by the film industry on the moviegoing public." Noting that the film has been criticised by the Roman Catholic Legion of Decency as "theologically, historically and scripturally inaccurate," she adds: "Christ is there as a physical presence, but His spirit is absent . . . There is not the slightest possibility that anyone will derive from the film any meaningful insight into what Christ's life and sufferings signify for us ... It is obvious that Bronston, Ray and Yordan have no opinion on the subject of Christ, except that He is a hot box-office property."

Our Lady's Month IV - The Miracle of Fatima (1952)

The Miracle Of Our Lady Of Fatima is a feature film made in 1952. It starred Susan Whitney as Lucia dos Santos, Sammy Ogg as Francisco Marto, and Sherry Jackson as Jacinta Marto. Neither of the three had particularly notable prior or subsequent careers. Sammy Ogg went on to become a Protestant minister. Gilbert Roland, already a divorcee at the time, was cast in the entirely fictional role of Hugo, a kindly agnostic friend of the three children, who rediscovers his faith in God through the Miracle of the Sun. The musical score by Max Steiner received an Academy Award nomination and the soundtrack includes several traditional hymns.

An obvious error in the introduction to the film is the date of 15th May, 1917, when the first apparition took place on 13th May, 1917. The film is unremarkable for the quality of its script and acting but is, nevertheless, a reverent pastiche of the story of Fatima, albeit one that largely omits Our Lady's message, for example, "in the end God will triumph" rather than "my Immaculate Heart". While it can certainly be classed as a 'Catholic' film, it is one created for a general audience.

When the film was shown to Sr. Lucia she is reported not to have liked the film. I don't disagree but as a portrayal of Our Lady, it is an example of the better forms that were once observed. The voice of Our Lady - and oddly of Sr. Lucia as an older nun - was that of Angela Clarke. The figure of Our Lady is throughout indistinct but dignified. The conclusion of the film is a presentation of a ceremony at the Fatima of the day together with a rather odd reunion between Sr. Lucia and Hugo.

Our Lady's Month II - Song of Bernadette (1943)

The Song of Bernadette is a 1943 drama film which tells the story of Saint Bernadette Soubirous, who reported 18 visions of Our Lady at Lourdes from February to July, 1858. It was directed by Henry King.

The film was adapted from a novel written by Franz Werfel. The novel was published in 1942. For more than a year it was on the New York Times Best Seller list, at no. 1 for 13 weeks.

The plot follows the novel by Franz Werfel, which is not a documentary but a historical novel blending fact and fiction. Bernadette's real-life friend Antoine Nicolau is portrayed in both novel and film as being deeply in love with her, and vowing to remain unmarried when Bernadette enters the convent but there is no evidence of romantic feelings between them. The government authorities, in particular Imperial Prosecutor Vital Dutour (played by Vincent Price) are portrayed as being much more anti-religion than they actually were. Dutour was in reality a devout Catholic who simply thought Bernadette was hallucinating. Other portrayals come closer to historical accuracy, particularly Anne Revere and Roman Bohnen as Bernadette's overworked parents, Charles Bickford as Father Peyramale, and Blanche Yurka as Bernadette's formidable Aunt Bernarde. The film ends with the death of Bernadette, and does not mention the exhumation of her body or her canonization, as the novel does.

The Song of Bernadette won four Oscars in the 1943 Academy Awards for best leading actress (Jennifer Jones), best art direction, best cinematography, and best musical score. In addition, the film was nominated for a further eight categories: best supporting actor (Charles Bickford), best supporting actress (both Gladys Cooper and Anne Revere), best director, best film editing, best picture, best sound recording, and best screenplay. In the first Golden Globe Awards in 1944, the film won three awards, for best director, best motion picture, best leading actress (Jones).

Franz Werfel was a jew - not untypically in a Hollywood described as Jews producing Catholic films to be watched by Protestants. The book was written by Werfel in fulfilment of a vow that he made having hidden in Lourdes for some weeks during his and his family's successful escape from the Nazis.

Casting aroused considerable speculation and illustrates a healthy reverence among the film makers. Various reasons have given for casting Jennifer Jones in her first starring role (and only her third motion picture) but among them is that a figure unsullied by other associations was sought. The part of 'the Lady' went to Linda Darnell but her part was not advertised at the time because "it would shatter the illusion to have an actress connected with the part of the Virgin Mary" - a far cry from later treatment of Our Lady in film.

The Portrayal of Priests - Part III

As the Boys' Town series ended, another pair of films portraying Priests was released, namely Going My Way (1944) and The Bells of Saint Mary's (1945). In both, the character of Fr. 'Chuck' O'Malley, the somewhat too up-to-date troubleshooter for a Parish in trouble, is played by Bing Crosby. The role came in the middle of the 'Road Movies', a series of comedic films in which he starred. The contrast is distinct and uncomfortable. On the other hand, Crosby was the biggest box office draw during these years and his portrayal of a Priest, while less than dogmatic, can only be regarded as sympathetic.

His relationship with Fr. Fitzgibbon (Barry Fitzgerald) must be one of the most human and generous portrayals of the Priesthood in film. In the clip above, Fr. O'Malley sings the ill and elderly Fr. Fitzgibbon to sleep.

A third Priest, the avuncular Fr. O'Dowd played by Frank McHugh (who played the same character again in 1952 in another Leo McCarey production My Son John), is a classmate of Fr. O'Malley. The pair are engaged in a 'generation gap' plotline in contrast to Fr. Fitzgibbon, although the youngsters are shown taking matters of religion quite as seriously. Golf, of which Crosby was famously fond, is the first testing ground - nothing but a poolroom moved outdoors as Fr. Fitzgibbon has it. Nevertheless, the fraternal charity of brother Priests wins out in the end.

Even the question of Priestly celibacy is dealt with in the film. Genevieve Linden, a star of the Metropolitan Opera in New York (played by Risë Stevens, who was actually a star of the Met and whose famous 'Carmen' is reprised on screen), whose career has interrupted a romance between her and Chuck O'Malley (before he entered the Seminary, mind you), meets O'Malley again without realising that he is a Priest. However, once she realised that he is a Priest she never drops the title 'Father' when addressing him.

In the end, Fr. Fitzgibbon settles the matter: "We're separated by many years, Fr. O'Malley, which may be the reason we haven't seen eye-to-eye in many instances, but 'though we've had many differences, we never differed in fundamentals. 'twas only in method... but never in our hearts." That it might ever be so.

In the second film, Fr. O'Malley crosses wits with another set-in-their ways individual. This time Sr. M. Benedict, played by Ingrid Bergman, who would go on the play St. Joan of Arc a few years later. The dramatic structure is essentially the same - conflict, crisis, resolution.

To traditionalist eyes looking in hindsight, the portrayal of Priests in these films seems to be very close to modernist vs. traditionalist, with the modernist having all the best songs - and the writer on his side. Viewed in that light, they are offensive to pious eyes. However, viewed with a certain artistic license and with a suspension of dis-disbelief, they portray the Priest as a human with sympathy and as a Priest of God with due respect.

The Priest in these films is always put into context. His relationships with layfolk, with brother Priests, with women, and even with himself and with God are balanced, articulated and decent. These relationships are not always easy but are always portrayed in a proper and reverent way.

The Portrayal of Priests - Part II

Two years after San Francisco and the same year as Boys' Town, Angels with Dirty Faces was released, starring Jimmy Cagney as gangster Rocky Sullivan, Pat O'Brien as his boyhood friend, Fr. Jerry Connolly, Anne Sheridan as Laury Ferguson, Cagney/Sullivan's childhood sweetheart, and Humphrey Bogart as James Frazier, Cagney/Sullivan's partner in crime and general villain of the piece.

The plot bears striking resemblance to that in San Francisco as regards the relationships between the three principal characters. However, the portrayal of the Priest is now deeper and the spiritual conflict stronger. This is a fight for souls, not only for the soul of Cagney but also for the young hoodlums who idolize him. It should also be noted that Hollywood makes some amends in this film for the glorification of violence in so many of its other films - especially those starring Cagney himself.

At the climax of the film, Cagney faces the death penalty. Unrepentent and hard-nosed to the end, he refuses O'Briens plea to 'turn yellow', that is, to show cowardice as he goes to the chair to break the heroic image the young hoodlums have of him. He remains unrepentant to the end... almost. In the end, it seems, he met eternity making a sacrifice of his own reputation for the sake of others.

Pat O'Brien was known as 'the Irishman in residence' in Hollywood. He was also a regular in the role of a Priest, most famously as the eponimous Fighting Father Dunne. The plot, based upon the true story of a Fr. Dunne of St. Louis, MO, the founder of a Paperboys' Home, is in the mould of Boys' Town, and similarly portrays the Priest as friend of the poor and hero of the children abandoned by Society. He would also go on to play Fr. Francis P. Duffy next to Cagney in The Fighting 69th. O'Brien was part of the so-called Hollywood Irish Mafia, which also included Spencer Tracy, Jimmy Cagney and Frank McHugh.

The Portrayal of Priests - Part I

Mention of Fr. Edward J. Flanagan and the film Boys' Town brings to mind the portrayal of Catholic Priests in popular culture. During what was known as 'the golden age of Hollywood', that portrayal was generally sympathetic. While the addage that Hollywood consisted of Jews making Catholic films for Protestants must be taken with a grain of salt, the grain of truth is there already. We must exercise a critical faculty with such movies, and exercise right judgement both with the work itself and in regard to those who appeared in and worked on it, generally there is much edification in many of them.

Spencer Tracy, himself a Catholic, although not always an exemplary one, played the part of a Priest four times. First in San Francisco in 1936 and then in Boys' Town in 1938 and its sequal, Men of Boys' Town, in 1941, as well as in The Devil at 4 o'clock, in 1961.

San Francisco is set in that city about the time of the Great Earthquake and consequent Great Fire of 1906. The plot follows a familiar pattern of two childhood friends, one who has chosen a life of goodness (Tracy as Fr. Tim Mullen), the other a life of wickedness (Clarke Gable as 'Blackie' Norton, together with the lady (Jeanette MacDonald as Mary Blake) who helps to reawaken the good that was always within him.

In the first clip, we see MacDonald/Blake singing in Church at Christmas. The second clip, the final scene, shows Gable/Norton's final conversion in thanksgiving for the survival of MacDonald/Blake. The admixture of piety and materialism can be viewed in a favourable or an unfavourable light. One is tempted to see Americanism there, except that these movies are the world glancing at the Faith rather than the other way around.

Although they can be seen with a Catholic eye, the themes are not overtly Catholic. However, the film is essentially respectful, edifying and, which is not to be dismissed, a good opportunity to see Jeanette MacDonald at the peak of her talent!

Some were different...

Fr. Edward J. Flanagan

(1886-1948)

The Ryan Report, released in May, opened a window into a shameful part of our heritage as Catholics, the abuse of children in so many institutions run by Catholic Religious Orders. However, it is as much a part of our Catholic heritage as any other. It is part of what makes us what we are and we must ensure that we learn from it in order to become what we should be - and what we should have been all along.

To say that some were different should not minimize the sufferings of children or the wrongs of abusers. It should show us that we can always choose what is right, even in the midst of wrongdoing.

Father Edward J. Flanagan was different. He was the world-famous founder of 'Boys' Town' in Nebraska. It was not because of his fame that he was different but because of his sense of goodness and his courage to live up to that sense. Because he was different, President Harry S. Truman asked him to undertake a tour of Asia and Europe in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War to assess the plight of children - and to assess what might be done to alleviate that plight.

While travelling, he stopped off in Ireland. His visit to Ireland wasn't part of the official itinerary. It was simply a visit to the land of his birth, as he passed through Europe. However, because he was different, because he could not be indifferent to the situation of children, while in Ireland, he visited some of the institutions that housed them. His reaction was a stark condemnation of those institutions and the system that controlled them.

Because of the Hollywood film Boys' Town, released in 1938, ten years before this mission, Fr. Flanagan was treated like a National hero and a media celebrity - at first. Addressing a packed auditorium in Cork's Savoy Cinema, Fr. Flanagan said: "You are the people who permit your children and the children of your communities to go into these institutions of punishment. You can do something about it."

He called Ireland’s penal institutions "a disgrace to the nation," and later said "I do not believe that a child can be reformed by lock and key and bars, or that fear can ever develop a child’s character." He also condemned the Industrial School system as “a scandal, un-Christlike, and wrong,” adding that the Christian Brothers had lost its way.

The Irish Minister for Justice later stated: “I am not disposed to take any notice of what Monsignor Flanagan said while he was in this country, because his statements were so exaggerated that I did not think people would attach any importance to them.” Sadly, in that last point, he was correct.

Fr. Flanagan died in Berlin in 1948 while on this mission for the children of the world.

Some were different from the men and women who abused children under the veil of Religion or who hid that abuse under the same veil. The rest, the rest of us, it seems, were indifferent at best.

We participate in the sin of another: by counsel; by command; by consent; by provocation; by praise or flattery; by concealment; by partaking; by silence; by defense of the ill done.

We are forgiven our sins: by acknowledging our fault; by confessing our guilt; by our sorrow and our repentence; by purposing amendment; by reparation for the harm done.

Our Lady, Comfort of the Afflicted, pray for us!

The Purification of Our Lady

Today is the feast of the Purification of Our Lady and the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple or Candlemas. It marks the fortieth day after the Birth of Our Lord and the end of the Season of Christmastide.

Risë Stevens, seen here singing with Bing Crosby in Going My Way, was one of the great voices of the New York Metropolitan Opera. This clip captures a sense of that time when popular culture deferred to Catholic Culture, a time when Catholics deferred to Catholic Culture, a time when men were men and Popes were Pius.

Going My Way starred Bing Crosby as Fr. O'Mally and Barry Fitzgerald as Fr. Fitzgibbon. It won the Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actor in a Leading Role, Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Best Director, Best Original Song, Best Original Story and Best Screenplay and three further nominations in 1945. It was followed by The Bells of St. Mary's, starring Bing Crosby again as Fr. O'Mally and Ingrid Bergman as St. M. Benedict. The Bells of St. Mary's won one Oscar and seven nominations in 1946. Going My Way was reprised as a television series in 1962-3 starring Gene Kelly in the Crosby role and Leo G. Carroll in Fitzgerald's.

Leo McCarey, the writer and director on both films, was one of the outstanding Catholics of the so-called 'golden age' of Hollywood, amassing 3 Oscars and a further 10 nominations.

Catholic Heritage in Popular Culture

A staple of modern popular culture is the television game show. This video shows an early example of the genre, What's My Line. The original show What's My Line ran from 1950 to 1967. The premise was that the panel attempts to guess the avocation of the guests through a series of questions - or in the final round, attempts to guess the mystery celebrity guest while blind-folded, as in this clip.

The mystery guest in this clip is Bishop, as he then was, Fulton Sheen, a staple of popular American Catholic Culture for decades. Archbishop Sheen, whose cause for canonisation began in 2002, was best known for television shows that essentially took the form of illustrated sermons. He presented The Catholic Hour on radio from 1930 to 1950, and, on television, Life is Worth Living from 1951 to 1955 and later The Fulton Sheen Program from 1961 to 1968.

From a Catholic heritage point-of-view, the most interesting element of this clip from What's My Line is not the presence of Bishop Sheen, however illustrative, but the reaction of the panel as he leaves.

Those familiar with the show will also notice that, uniquely, both the ladies, Arlene Francis and Dorothy Kilgallen, stand to take leave of this guest, but the real 'gravy moment' is the gesture of panelist and journalist (and Catholic) Dorothy Kilgallen towards 'uncle Fultie.' Take a look and you'll see how Catholic culture inhabited the public sphere in the days when men were men and Popes were Pius.

The Presentation of Our Lady in the Temple

Today is the feast of the Presentation of Our Lady in the Temple, by her parents, St. Joachim and St. Anne.

These praises and prayers I lay at thy feet, O Virgin Most Holy! O Virgin Most Sweet! Be thou my true guidethrough this pilgrimage here: and stand by my side when death draweth near.

This performance of Schubert's Ave Maria sung by Dianna Durbin in the unhappily titled 1940 film It's a Date reminds us of the deep respect which popular culture once held for our Catholic Heritage - in the days when we Catholics held our Heritage in respect too. Durbin had earlier recorded the Bach-Gounod Ave Maria with the Vienna Boys Choir and reprised it in Mad about Music in 1938.