Movie Review:

By John Mulderig Catholic News Service

NEW YORK (CNS) — Though presumably targeted — at least in part — at teens, the dystopian adventure “The Hunger Games” (Lionsgate) involves enough problematic content to give parents pause. Responsible oldsters will want to weigh the matter carefully before giving permission for clamoring kids to attend.

At first glance, the depressing futuristic premise of the piece — inherited from Suzanne Collins’ best-selling trilogy of novels, on the first volume of which the film is based — makes it seem unlikely fare for a youthful audience.

In a post-apocalyptic North America, have-not youngsters from oppressed outlying districts are chosen at random to participate in the titular event, a televised survival tournament staged each year for the entertainment of the decadent elite who populate their society’s luxurious capital city.

Since combatants are forced to battle one another — and the hostile wilderness environment in which the games are set — until only one remains alive, the fearful ordeal also serves to keep the once-rebellious, now cowed underlings intimidated.

Director and co-writer Gary Ross’ script, penned in collaboration with Collins and Billy Ray, tracks two teens caught up in this gladiatorial horror show. As early scenes reveal, Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) was selected in the usual way. Heroine Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), by contrast, altruistically volunteered herself as a substitute after her vulnerable younger sister Primrose’s (Willow Shields) name was drawn.

What follows, as this sympathetic duo confronts their doom, is an effective combination of epic spectacle and emotional drama during which humane values are pitted against Darwinian moral chaos.

Insatiable media coverage, led by smarmy TV host Caesar Flickerman (Stanley Tucci), and the wildly off-kilter values of the foppish upper crust, embodied by Peeta and Katniss’ nannylike escort Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks), satirically mirror some darker aspects of our own time. (Interestingly, depending on the individual viewer’s politics, the basic allegory can be read either as a critique of overweening big government or of the trampling under of the 99 percent.)

But sensibilities are not spared as the grim contest unfolds: painful injuries brought about by swords, arrows, hatchets and even the creative use of a hornets’ nest are all portrayed unblinkingly. On the upside, foul language is entirely absent, as too is any sensual activity beyond kissing. So, despite the elements listed below, “The Hunger Games” may possibly prove acceptable for mature adolescents.

The film contains considerable, sometimes gory, hand-to-hand and weapons violence and graphic images of bloody wounds. The Catholic News Service classification is A- III — adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG-13 — parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13. – – –

The last dance as daddy’s little girl

Kimberly Hartman has been eagerly planning her June wedding for months now and after searching through typical father-daughter wedding songs, she and her parents decided on Heartland’s “I loved her first.”

It is tradition for the father of the bride to dance with his daughter on her wedding day. This is the last dance that a father and daughter will share before she starts her life and her dances with her new husband.

Ms. Hartman said she chose the song because they believe it fits her perfectly.

“At one point in the song there is a line that talks about a little freckled face kid and I have freckles,” said Ms. Hartman.

This country song is about a father reminiscing about the little girl that he once knew and how he doesn’t want that close relationship to end. Ms. Hartman, the oldest of two girls, said that she and her dad have always been close. She remembers dancing on her dad’s feet when she was little like many daddy’s little girls do.

She believes that this dance with her dad is an important step from being supported by her family to forming a supportive relationship with her new husband. The dance represents the father letting go of his little girl to become a wife, said the St. Agnes parishioner.

Ms. Hartman met her fiancé, Christopher Holtzner, through a friend and for the last year and a half he has become apart of the Hartman family. Mr. Holtzner, 23, asked Mr. Hartman for permission to marry his daughter. When he was granted permission Mr. Holtzner was so excited to propose that he skipped his original plan, asking Ms. Hartman at a Valentine’s Day dinner, and got down on one knee the next day.

“Most of our clients will forgo other traditions like the garter toss, but they still want to do the dance with their parents,” said Peyton Craig who started Encounters Inc. in 1999. “In some cases women are dancing with two or three father figures.”

Most Popular Father and Daughter Wedding Songs According to Davis Deejays 1.

Prayers come alive for pilgrim travelers

By Christopher Gunty The Catholic Review

We say some prayers so quickly, sometimes we get to the end of the prayer and think, “What did I just say?” Prayers such as the Lord’s Prayer and the Hail Mary, if the domestic church is alive and strong, we learned from our parents – or even from our siblings – and we have prayed them so often, the words roll off our tongue, but often not really through our brain. The pilgrim priests from the Archdiocese of Baltimore* had a unique opportunity today to think about the prayers we pray on our first full day hoofing it around some holy sites in . First stop was at the Pater Noster chapel, a church over a cave where tradition says** first taught what we know as the Lord’s Prayer or the Our Father to his disciples. Another place also holds that claim, depending on how you read the Scriptures. From Matthew:

“‘This is how you are to pray: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven. Give us today our daily bread; and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors; and do not subject us to the final test, but deliver us from the evil one’” (Mt 6:9-13).

Luke’s version

Bishop Denis Madden leads morning prayer near the Dominus Flevit Church on the in Jerusalem. refers to “a certain place,” and perhaps that’s where we were today:

“He was praying in a certain place, and when he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples.’ He said to them, ‘When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us, and do not subject us to the final test’” (Lk 11:1-4).

And so, appropriately, Bishop Denis J. Madden, auxiliary bishop of Baltimore and spiritual leader for the pilgrimage, led us all in the prayer we all know:

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, As we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.

Later, near the Church of Dominus Flevit (the Lord wept Olives still grow on the trees in the Garden of Gethsemane. Some of these trees are more than 2,000 years old, and could have been witness to Christ

), where Jesus wept as he looked out over the city of Jerusalem, we gathered for morning prayer under the shade of a tree. The bishop and priests concelebrated Mass at the Church of the Agony at Gethsemane (where, again, tradition says, these are the olive trees at which Jesus prayed and asked his disciples to stay awake with him). How could it be that Jesus could keep coming back to find his disciples asleep, Bishop Madden asked. Why would he keep coming back to such followers? “This is the same admonition Christ gives to us, to keep trying to live the Gospel. We try as best we can to stay awake.” After a visit to Yad Vashem, the museum of the Shoah (you’ll read about that in another blog post or in The Catholic Review print edition), the group visited two sites related to St. John the Baptist, the site where tradition holds he was born, and the Church of the Visitation, located on the site of where Zechariah and Elizabeth were believed to have lived. At that site, a grotto marks the spot where Mary first visited her cousin after the Annunciation. Luke picks up the story:

“Mary said, ‘Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.’ Then the angel departed from her. During those days Mary set out and traveled to the hill country in haste to a town of Judah, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice and said, ‘Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled’” (Lk 1:38-46).

There, again so appropriately, we prayed:

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of death. Amen.

I prayed especially there for all the mothers in my life, especially my deceased mother Therese, and my grandmothers, and for so many other women who need Mary’s protection and guidance, love and grace. One does not have to travel to these places to make the words of the Our Father and Hail Mary come alive. Being here makes it easier. But so does reading the Scriptures. And sometimes, just slowing down as you pray, and thinking about the words. Keep us inyour prayers as tomorrow we head to Bethlehem. –

Young lobbyists take to Hill for Catholic schools

WASHINGTON – A wave of teenage – and preteen – lobbyists descended upon Washington Jan. 31 to make the legislative case for Catholic schools on a variety of issues, including educational choice.

They were Catholic school students themselves and were at the Capitol for the annual National Appreciation Day for Catholic Schools, part of the Jan. 28-Feb. 3 observance of Catholic Schools Week.

The students were from a dozen Catholic schools in the Washington and Baltimore archdioceses and the Diocese of Arlington, Va. They stuffed themselves into a Senate office building’s hearing room, about 100 seats too small to accommodate all of them, to get their talking points and marching orders from a panel of highly placed grown-ups in the Catholic education field.

There are close to 7,600 Catholic schools in the United States, and their students “would love to be here doing what you’re doing,” said Karen Ristau, president of the National Catholic Educational Association. “You’re representing all the students in all the Catholic schools across the country,” she added. “What you’re doing is very important.”

“You’re going to be our advocates today before the House of Representatives and the Senate on four important issues,” said Father William Davis, an Oblate of St. Francis de Sales who is interim secretary for education for the U.S. bishops. Pointing to his fellow adults at the head table, he said members of Congress or their staffs “can look at me or some of these other people up here and say, ‘You’re supposed to be here. That’s your job.’”

But that was not the case, he added, for the students ready to fan out across the congressional office buildings surrounding the Capitol.

Vincent Guest, who lobbies on the bishops’ behalf on education issues, took note of his Catholic grade school and high school background in his native Philadelphia, saying: “What I am – the good parts – are the product of Catholic education.” He added, “In high school, my principal was Father Davis. … Look around at your teachers,” Guest said. “Someday they may be your boss.”

Father Daniel Coughlin, chaplain to the House of Representatives, said that despite arguments about issues, “everything on Capitol Hill here is pretty friendly.” He told the students to “be proud” and to “say you’re grateful, you’re grateful to be in Catholic schools.”

With a Catholic for the first time as House chaplain, a Catholic as speaker of the House (Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California), and a Catholic as leader of the House Republicans (Rep. John Boehner of Ohio), Father Coughlin said, “We need, as Catholics, to behave well. We need to model what is the best behavior.”

Father Coughlin told the story of Thomas Will, a Catholic student at a public school, who in 1859 “stood up and refused to give the Ten Commandments the way the Protestants said them. … This little guy was beaten up and was ridiculed sometimes.” Later, Will “didn’t want to read from the Protestant Bible. He wanted to read from his Catholic Bible. That got people mad and he was beaten up some more.” That turned out, Father Coughlin said, to be the start of the Catholic school system in the United States: “A few weeks later, he had 300 other kids agreeing with him.”

The issues the students were to take to Congress dealt with:

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Explore ways to find love after 50

Mary Ann Leard learned how to lay laminate flooring by attending clinics at Home Depot on Saturday mornings. She attended to learn the skill, not to meet someone; however, Ms. Leard said that’s one good way for singles to meet people.

“It takes the focus off yourself,” said the single 60-year-old president of the archdiocese’s Catholic Single Again Council (www.singleagain.itgo.com), the umbrella of parish Single Again groups. “The focus is on doing something.”

Ms. Leard finished the clinic without meeting a partner, yet the floors in her house now have laminate. Finding love after 50 can be a dilemma for singles looking for a meaningful relationship. However, there are ways and places. Tom Blake, the author of the book “Finding Love After 50” wrote “to meet a potential mate, older singles need to get out of the house and get involved in activities that interest them. People usually meet the person of their dreams when they aren’t looking.”

His suggested venues include weddings, reunions, dance studios, groups and clubs, church single groups, the Internet and bookstores. “And while you’re trying to figure out where to go,” he said, “don’t forget one of the least expensive – and most effective – ways to meet other singles: networking. Tell friends and co-workers you’re available.”

When people who are new in town or new to a parish ask Lauri Przybysz how they can meet good people, she suggests they volunteer for a service project.

“Working together with others is a bonder,” said the coordinator for the archdiocese’s Marriage and Family Enrichment. “Working together on a service project such as Habitat for Humanity or serving at Our Daily Bread is a good way for people to meet others of the opposite sex and like values.” Other ways singles can meet potential dates and mates, she said, are through small church groups such as Why Catholic? or by sponsoring an RCIA candidate.

“Small groups at church provide a good opportunity for single adults to meet others whose company they will enjoy,” said Ms. Przybysz. Outside of church, she suggests meeting others through college courses or registering for dancing or cooking lessons.

You never know where Cupid may choose to shoot arrows; it could be at one of these gatherings (not a comprehensive list):

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Soul mates without the soul

Without mention of the soul, the Merriam-Webster dictionary describes a “soul mate” as “a person who is perfectly suited to another in temperament; a person who strongly resembles another in attitudes or beliefs.”

Monsignor Jeremiah F. Kenney, judicial vicar, agrees that the soul is not involved. “The Church has no position on the term if it is used in this way. It does not mean people are ‘connected’ by their immortal souls.”

Rather, he said, the term is more of a local concept for the closest of friends who share the same likes and dislikes. “It does mean that two people are so close as to share the same views on almost everything life sends their way.” “Do you believe in soul mates? If so, what is your description of a soul mate and do you believe you are married to your soul mate?” The Catholic Review posed these questions to several parishioners: “No. I believe we can love many people, and the choices we’ve made or the choices that were made for us put us in the path of someone with whom we are compatible and can make the most out of our experiences in life. I’m happily married to someone I’m delighted to be married to. But he and I also have talked about the fact that if ‘this or that’ set of circumstances hadn’t happened, we would most likely be happily married to someone else. There are many paths to follow that can bring great joy in life.”

Committees in House of Delegates hear testimony on same-sex marriage

Feb 15 2012 12:00AM Authors approach church’s challenges from different perspectives

Reviewed by Daniel S. Mulhall Catholic News Service

“The Emerging : A Community’s Search for Itself” by Tom Roberts. Orbis Books (Maryknoll, N.Y., 2011). 204 pp., $24.

Painful Lessons Learned

By any measure, the allegations of child sexual abuse by a former Penn State University football coach – coupled with the failure of those who knew about the abuse to report it to the appropriate civil authorities – is a sad and horrific situation. It is also tragically familiar.

Some people have commented that it is unfair for the media and others to link the Church to the Penn State situation, given that the Church had no known involvement in the matter, Penn State is a state institution, etc. I would argue that it is a fair comparison, given the similarities between the allegations at Penn State and what we know occurred within our Church.

The question now becomes, will the similarities end there, or will the University respond as the Catholic Church in the United States responded? Will Penn State institute groundbreaking institution-wide reforms in child protection? Will it operate with transparency, weed out and hold abusers accountable, promote healing for victims and lead an overall cultural change in how all those who work and volunteer promote safe environments for children? This is what the Catholic Church has done, and here in the Archdiocese of Baltimore we continue to make this a daily priority in our parishes, schools and other institutions.

For Catholics who have cringed over the last two weeks at any reference to the sexual abuse crisis in the Church with every report from Pennsylvania, I remind you that we must always remember our own failings yet also see that there is reason for optimism and hope. For out of the dark place the Church found itself, the bright light of transparency and accountability has led to many purifying reforms:

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2010 in review

Beyond the CR pages: Calvert Hall’s Thanksgiving food drive

In this week’s Catholic Review, you’ll see a brief item about Calvert Hall’s annual Thanksgiving food drive, which collected 13,000 pounds of food for a series of local outreaches. The classes from the all-boys Towson high school even turned it into a contest to see who could collect the most cans.

Campus minister Marc Parisi was kind enough to forward some thoughts from the students at Calvert Hall on this effort. The photo was taken by Evan Zimmer, an intern here at The Catholic Review and a member of the class of 2013 at Calvert Hall.

“I really appreciated our theme this year, ‘A place at the table’ because it made me think not only of myself but the needs of everyone in our community.”