Help the American Chesterton Society

The following is a message sent out recently by Dale Ahlquist, as copied from the American Chesterton Society’s own blog:

Dear Friends of Chesterton,

I don’t mean to clog up the blog, but I need to make another appearance here directly on the heels of dealing with the New Yorker. With Chesterton becoming better known, the attacks are beginning, and we need to be able to respond.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t be in a worse position to do so. The American Chesterton Society is facing a financial crisis. We need your help. Our usual donations are way down, and as usual, our expenses have gone in the other direction. We need to raise $30,000.

We understand that everyone is feeling squeezed right now, but whatever you can do to help – $25, $50, $100 or more – it would be greatly appreciated.

Your donation is tax-deductible, and you can donate online.

or mail you donation to:

The American Chesterton Society
4117 Pebblebrook Circle
Minneapolis, MN 55437

Please help us keep Chesterton’s flame burning brightly. Thank you so very much.

Your servant,

Dale Ahlquist, President
American Chesterton Society

Give what you can; they do so much and get so little in return, apart from gratitude.

Webster Cook Impeached

The Orlando Sentinel is reporting that Webster Cook, the student senator at the heart of the Eucharistic controversy down in Florida, has been impeached by his own student government.

All but two of the 35 senators present voted to impeach Webster Cook, but the action did not result in his automatic removal from office.

Instead, the vote sets in motion an investigation that could lead to Cook’s eventual removal from his Senate post if he is found to have violated Senate ethics rules.

The Senate will decide whether any sanction is required after the investigation.

[. . .]

But the impeachement is not based on Cook’s taking the wafer. It’s based on allegations that he represented himself as a student government official at the service.

Although the Senate could kick Cook off the student government’s legislative body, it does not have the authority to suspend or expel Cook from the university. That could happen only if he’s found to have violated serious conduct code violations in student court. UCF is barred by federal law from confirming whether any complaints have been filed against Cook. But the statements included in the affidavit refer to a formal complaint against Cook by the campus ministry for disrupting the service.

The Senate investigation will include a special hearing to be scheduled within four weeks but no earlier than two weeks from now, student government officials said. The hearing could include testimony from Cook and ministry officials.

[. . .]

Thursday’s vote came after less than 15 minutes of deliberation. Senate leaders cut short any discussion of whether Cook was right or wrong in taking the wafer, saying they should focus on whether Cook broke Senate rules.

When further results come in, I’ll be sure to post them.  Thanks to a correspondent for bringing this to my attention.

The reader comments on the story linked to above are by turns heartbreaking and incredible (sometimes both).  Such is the world in which we live.

Myers-Cook Brouhaha: The Adventure Continues

A couple of things to note today, including some good news out of Florida:

- A new report from Quasius, who was at the mass in question:

All of Cook’s charges against CCM and the girl whom he claims assaulted him have been dismissed by the student court.

Good news indeed!  Let’s hope this can be an end to the matter, and that further infamy is not perpetrated by Catholic Campus Ministries or anyone else involved.

- Maybe I spoke too soon, though.  CCM is apparently now insisting that Cook is lying about being Catholic and that he came to the mass that day to “accuse Catholics of worshipping the devil.”  This is pretty serious and unlikely stuff, so I’d take the report with a grain of salt.

- As I noted in the original post on the 17th, Prof. Myers has appeared on “The Heart of the Matter,” a show on Catholic Radio International, in an extensive interview (an hour) on the subject at hand as well as other things. There’s some debating, some banter, and some generally genial interaction. It’s available for download at the link, but you’ll have to scroll down ever so slightly to find it. It’s under the heading, “We Need to Talk.”  It is not, in my own opinion, an especially successful interview for anyone involved, but it’s worth presenting here in the interest of completeness.

- Apart from conducting this interview, Prof. Myers has reiterated his desire to descrate the inconsequential and wholly unsacred objects that offend him so.  He does so, however, with a palpable sense of frustration and fatigue, and I can’t say I blame him.  This affair has gone on for a long time.  In other news, he also plans to desecrate a Koran; indeed, apparently people have been mailing them to him for some reason.

Bonus Unintended Comedy: In the link just above, the good professor mistakes a standard chain e-mail for some willed message directed especially at him, taking it to be typical of the response he’s received on this subject.  How long has he been on the Internet, again?  A simple Google search for one line from the message (“Many more important people have forgotten that there is no other name that was given so much authority as the name of Jesus”) returns over 2500 hits, all of them referencing the chain message in question.  I can’t count the number of times I’ve received it or variations of it myself, and on most of those occasions it wasn’t even from a human being.

The Dark Knight (2008)

It doesn’t get much better than this. 9.5/10

NOTE: I’ve avoided spoilers in the review that follows.  Those wishing for a more in-depth and spoiler-filled look at the film, though not necessarily a review, can go here.

How did I manage to miss this?

It would be fairly accurate to say that religion, poetry and comics books all inhabit fairly high positions in the great sphere of things I find interesting. Religion and poetry are quite frequently combined, which is great; religion and comic books somewhat less often; poetry and comic books almost never. Long have I sought the great hat trick, but always in vain.

Until now, apparently. Thanks to author John Zmirak and illustrator Carla Millar we now have The Grand Inquisitor. It looked like a winner based on the somewhat terrifying cover alone, but then came this description of the thing:

“This updating of Dostoevsky’s fable will challenge believers of every hue, and fascinate students of religion, philosophy and literature. The first graphic novel written in Miltonic blank verse, is exquisitely illustrated and promises to change the genre forever.”

A graphic novel updating of the Dostoevsky. Written in Miltonic blank verse. What could it possibly be about?

The pope is dead. The Church is split. A rump conclave elects the first Black African pope in history, a hero who saved his people from persecution in Sudan. But a hostile cardinal kidnaps the new pope at the airport and holds him in secret at a mental hospital. To the captive, uncrowned pope “the Grand Inquisitor” lays out a dark conspiracy he has nurtured for 50 years to offer mankind salvation without the Cross. Will the new pope sign on to this “improved” version of Christianity? Will he end up dead? What obsessions join him to his enemy, and make his new vision so very tempting?

Sign me up.

Caprica makes the jump?

It was announced at the Television Critics’ Association press tour that the two-hour TV movie Caprica – a planet-based prequel to the wildly successful Battlestar Galactica reboot – may not be aired as a backdoor pilot after all.  It could instead simply be taken to series immediately.

“We’re going to take a look at it and maybe just order it as a series from there. We are going to take delivery on it in a couple of weeks and then decide whether to air it as a standalone movie or as the premiere of a new series.”

Sci Fi had a panel for “Caprica” during the network’s TCA session, where showrunner Ron Moore and cast members took the stage to answer questions from critics. The project has long been called a two-hour backdoor pilot, and is supposed to air sometime this fall. An upgrade to a series order would likely change push its air date until sometime next year, a Sci Fi spokesperson says. Certainly the very act of paneling a mere pilot at the critics tour suggests network enthusiasm for the project.

The pilot (and, I can only imagine, the potential series) follow the triumphs and disasters of two families and their patriarchs – Daniel Graystone (Eric Stoltz) and Joseph Adama (Esai Morales) – one responsible for the creation of the humanity-destroying Cylons, the other sire to a line of soldiers determined to defeat them.

Nothing’s set in stone just yet, unfortunately, but the Sci-Fi Channel recently ordered some additional Caprica scripts, which is a pretty good sign.

Am I really interested in a sci-fi soap opera of this sort?  Not especially.  But I don’t care.  This team could produce a full season detailing nothing but a 22-hour roundtable debate about the ethics of sentient machines and I’d still be there every week.  Hell, they could greenlight Laura Roslin: The High School Years and I’d still be all over it.  They’ve earned that kind of attention.