Bilbo and Blart and Dave, oh my...

I caught part of this program on EWTN, which is on our local cable station. It's quite good.


The author, Joseph Pearce, has a bunch of books and lectures about the Catholic influence on various authors, and also on literature, including Shakespeare. The irony? He used to be an anti catholic skinhead type orangeman and was converted in jail. LINK

His books are a bit superficial, but easy reading and I have the several of them with me here...he does bring up points that are often missed in today's PC world. I mean, reading Tolkien without noticing it's Catholic influence is like reading Tolkien and not noticing the influence of the Eddas and Beowulf. For like the Beowulf author, God is in the story even though it occurs in a non Christian world.  To understand, you have to realize that Gregory the Great told Augustine of Canterbury to convert by using what was good in their religion and building on what was good in it by pointing out how the Christian faith made it more complete.

Which is why Catholicism in the Philippines has fiestas and ancestor respect similar to Chinese, and Catholicism in Africa sees nothing wrong with dancing in joy, or that the Irish and Eastern European churches stressed mysticism in religion, whereas the English and American church aren't much for mysticism but for pragmatic deeds.

We have five "religious" stations here, all of which are protestant oriented except for EWTN. One seems to stress Paul only, another is Revealations/end time prophecy all the time, and a third is charismatically oriented with lots of pop songs. EWTN tends to have interviews, news, theology lectures, and call in programs, plus the mass and prayer services.

EWTN news also has interviews on movies and with authors, not necessarily Catholic or even religious...The last one I caught was an interview about a comedy Paul Blart Mall cop 2....
Huh? the last time I looked was not exactly a pious pete type film.

They also interviewed Dean Koontz awhile back. I'm on a Koontz kick (usually I find them in the used book kiosk here).



and they also have an interview with Dave Barry. Luckily it is now on youtube.




sorry I am preachy: I usually post this kind of treacle on my bitching blog, but I'm lazy this afternoon.