A colonial police officer has a crisis in this morally complex story. — G. K. Chesterton, author of Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man, said that he became a Catholic so he could have his sins forgiven. But for that to happen, we must first accept that we have done something wrong in the first place. We must always wish to repent. For Henry…

A man is drawn to the silence and mystery of the desert in this hypnotic tale. — For as long as there have been human beings there have been those among us who are drawn, inexorably, to the void. We intuit that in this nothing there is also everything, for in silence there is an absence of division; and so we seek it out in the hope…

Todd Field’s film is shot through with Christian themes. — Please note: I have tried to avoid spoilers, but I cannot promise I have succeeded. In Todd Field’s Tár, the talented conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic struggles to stay in control as events conspire to threaten her career and reputation. It is a three-hour feast for the eyes, but it…

What Zen and Catholic Christianity have in common. — There is something approaching a tradition of Zen Catholicism. We could cite Thomas Merton, whose exchanges with D.T. Suzuki became Zen and the Birds of Appetite. Pablo d’Ors, in talks and in books like Biography of Silence, has cast light on the uses of Zen to ordinary Christians. And we…

Is anyone beyond saving? — The third of Graham Greene’s ‘Catholic novels’ opens with a quotation from Charles Péguy: ‘The sinner is at the very heart of Christianity. Nobody is so competent as the sinner in matters of Christianity. Nobody, except the saint.’ Fittingly, the story begins with a murder. Charles ‘Fred’ Hale, a reporter…

Sin clings to the whiskey priest hero of this meandering Mexican tale. — Graham Greene called the oppression of Catholics in Tabasco, Mexico the ‘fiercest persecution of religion since the reign of Elizabeth.’ Throughout the 1930s, the ‘Camisas Rojas’ of governor Tomás Garrido Canabal killed priests and laypeople in the name of socialism. (They also banned tombstones and booze.) Greene was in Mexico…

Are we are in the midst of a crisis of morality? — Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue is famous, or perhaps infamous, for its cryptic conclusion. The author writes that we are waiting ‘not for Godot, but for another — doubtless very different — St. Benedict.’ MacIntyre’s claim is that virtue can be understood only by reference to the communities out of which…

How can one person control the world before it hits back? — Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett) is the world’s most famous conductor. She is intelligent, articulate, well put together, and a student of her craft. She is also an ‘EGOT’: someone who has won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony. It suffices to say she is a rare thing. This last is…

On the value of higher education. — During the Conservative leadership race last summer, Rishi Sunak, now Prime Minister, pledged to scrap degrees that did not increase the ‘earning potential’ of their students. He also promised to create a ‘Russell Group’ of technical colleges, and said he would introduce a British baccalaureate. This, he said, would stop…