Movies, Priests and Pope Francis - Still Popular

Noel Ocol

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Welcome to S+L’s Weekly News Round-Up. As the Director of Marketing and Communications here at S+L, many interesting Catholic news stories and articles come across my desk on a daily basis. Some of them we’ll cover on our different television programs and others I’d like to share with you on this blog.

This blog column is where I’ll point out some of the more interesting news pieces that I’ve come across over the past week! Enjoy!

So many great articles have surfaced over the past few weeks that I don’t event know where to begin or how to group them so that there is some order to this week's blog post! Nevertheless, below are some of the pieces that I’ve enjoyed.

Being a big movie fan and working in television, I found this article particularly interesting. Apparently, there’s a list complied by the Pontifical Commission for Social Communications back in 1995 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the film industry. Check out the Vatican’s top 45 list of great films.

Since we are on the topic of films, our friends at Aleteia published an article highlighting 12 Great Movie Priests in film in the past 4 years. It’s really great to see that the priesthood is being portrayed very positively in some big-budget Hollywood films. I hope it’s a trend that we’ll continue to see!

Speaking of the priest hood in big films, how about on the “small screen”? Imagine some of the funny things that a poor pastor has to put up with on a daily basis at his church!

Check out these Funny Church Moments video posted on the Crux:

Ok, on to a more serious note. I’m sure we all remember from our history class, the atrocities that were committed against the Armenians during the Armenian genocide in 1915-16 when the Ottoman government systematically exterminated Armenian, leaving 1.5 million dead. Apparently, old files have surfaced detailing how the Vatican tried to stop the genocide. It is indeed a very interesting read. The article about it can be read here.

Earlier this month, Peter Wehner of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, published a long but interesting article in The New York Times on why a lot of evangelical Christians are ready to follow Pope Francis’ lead. He makes some compelling arguments as to why evangelicals should love the Pope. It's definitely worth the read.

And since we are talking of interesting reads, do you remember the Screwtape letters written by C.S. Lewis? Here is an absolutely fantastic article, or letter if you so will, written in the same C.S Lewis fashion published in Catholic365. It seems that both Wormwood and Screwtape are still at it but this time in Connecticut.

Check it out here.

Finally now, here is a quiz that I thought you might like. Take it here: How well do you know the Eucharist? Being a catholic all my life I thought, this was an easy one. How wrong I was. Let's see if you can beat my score of 2.

Well, that’s it for me this week folks. I’d love to hear you thoughts and comments on these stories. If you have any interesting stories yourself, please feel free to send them to me!

I hope you enjoyed these little stories! I certainly have. Till next week!

- Noel