Tag: Christianity

Evidently timed to coincide with the heating up of the presidential race, a movie called “Civil War” made its debut in theaters across the country in March. It is premised on the fantastic notion of Texas and California teaming up to wage war against a usurping three-term president. But although Americans are far removed from anything like that, extreme divisiveness truly is part of our current national life as reflected in our politics.

One source of that sour mood can be seen in poll numbers showing majorities unhappy with the choice they almost certainly will face in November between President Joe Biden and ex-President Donald Trump. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research sampling found 56% more or less dissatisfied with Biden as the Democratic candidate and 58% feeling the same about Trump heading the GOP ticket.

Some of this negativism presumably arises from concern about the two men’s ages. By January of 2029, when the president — whether Biden or Trump — is concluding his term, Biden will be 86 and Trump will be 82. And with all due respect to octogenarians, it’s reasonable to question whether someone in his 80s can handle the intense demands of the presidency.

Age is hardly the only issue in this election, though. Inflation will be much discussed. And unlike elections when neither party seemed eager to talk about abortion, this time it’s much on the minds of candidates and voters.

Trump takes credit for naming three new Supreme Court justices who made up part of the majority that two years ago overturned the infamous Roe v. Wade decision. But he opposes a national law setting a point in pregnancy after which abortion wouldn’t be allowed and says the whole issue should be left to states to settle for themselves.

Biden and the Democrats for their part intend to highlight their support for abortion as a central element of their message wherever abortion has strong public approval.

Recently Cardinal Wilton Gregory of Washington caused a stir by criticizing Biden for his position on abortion. Responding to a questioner on the CBS program “Face the Nation,” he called Biden, a Catholic, “very sincere about his faith” but added that on “life issues” he is a “cafeteria Catholic” who accepts some Church teachings and rejects others to suit his political advantage.

Meanwhile, predictable bickering is underway over the presidential debates, currently scheduled for Sept. 16, Oct. 1, and Oct. 9. In mid-April more than a dozen news organizations, including the Associated Press and five major broadcast and cable networks, called on the two presumptive candidates to commit themselves to participating in the debates, which it said have “no substitute” for letting people know where candidates stand.

Here, though, I’m a dissenter. Yes, people like debates, but the debate format is of doubtful value in learning whether participants possess the qualities that make for a good president.

What the presidency requires above all is prudence — the ability consistently to make morally good choices in pursuit of morally good ends. As philosopher Josef Pieper put it, “the good man is good in so far as he is prudent.” And, Pieper adds, prudence is not to be confused with “cunning,” a kind of “false prudence” possessed by someone who uses immoral means to reach disreputable goals.

I can hear the objection now: “What has morality got to do with it?” The best answer is that although, movies to the contrary notwithstanding, we’re not approaching civil war, the question itself nevertheless reflects something wrong with our politics.

    

Today we read the well-known Greatmartyr, Victory-bearer and Wonderworker GeorgeThe Holy Great Martyr George the Victory-Bearer, was a native of Cappadocia (a district in Asia Minor), and he grew up in a deeply believing Christian family.

“>Life of the Great-Martyr George the Victorious, who was an ordinary soldier in his lifetime. He was very brave. He faithfully served his Emperor, who was not even a pious Christian. But he carried out his orders, defending his fatherland, as long as the question about his piety and faith—who he believed in and how he believed—was not raised. Later he withstood the tormentors and persecutors steadfastly and courageously and firmly confessed the Christian faith, enduring great torments, for which he was called a great-martyr.

But his icons depict the events that occurred after his martyrdom. Even after death, he continued to stand up against all malice and injustice in this world, which always abounds. And they depict the events that took place in a pagan city, where there was an unholy tradition—to make a bloody human sacrifice, and it had to be a female, a virgin. And that year this lot fell to the Emperor’s daughter. She was to be sacrificed to some lizard that inhabited that area (like a modern monitor lizard). As a Christian, she prayed. Then the saint appeared to her on a white horse with a spear—as he used to fight in defense of his fatherland—and saved her.

We must always bear this symbolic image in our hearts, to have this icon at home, in order to remember that every Christian is first of all a soldier of Christ. And the most important battle that each one of us should fight is in our hearts. The Lord has planted a pure “maiden”, the chastity and purity of soul, kindness and inner beauty in all of us. According to God’s plan, each one of us is called to holiness. There is the courageous “knight” in all of us who wants this good. But there is also the evil one in this world who acts through our thoughts, through the passions that we voluntarily let into ourselves, through the addictions that we acquire so easily during our lives, and through our neighbors.

Sometimes, as we see it now, the dynamics of this anger, hatred, envy, revenge and self-interest even reach the levels of states, nations, and the whole world. And then dozens of countries are induced to participate in this conflict. Now, once again, Russia is left alone with God. Perhaps this is a Gospel sign. The Lord said, Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you (Lk. 6:26). It is also other way round, Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for My sake (Mt. 5:11).

May God grant that we find this valiant, brave “knight” in our hearts who will resist all the thoughts and sinful passions that rise up in us. They strive to devour this pure “maiden” that the Lord has placed in us, and which needs to be cultivated to acquire the peace of Christ. And then we must become true peacemakers, sowing this peace of God—but not peace with sin, for what concord hath Christ with Belial? (2 Cor. 6:15). The Lord said that no one can take this peace and joy away from us. If we have it in us, as He said, when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you (Mt. 10:19–20). But above all, we must purify our conscience and try to live honestly; first of all before God and before ourselves. And then we will feel this power of God working in and through us.

Our lives may be filled with many problems. Nowhere has the Lord promised that we would be healed from all illnesses and everything around us would be bliss and The Path to HappinessSearch your hearts and be watchful of its spiritual state.

“>happiness. But everything will be filled with the deepest meaning, and our difficulties, suffering and illnesses will no longer be so terrible for us. For they also will become stepping stones that lift us up to the knowledge of Christ, Who suffers morally out of love, so that every person who can be saved will be saved.

A big part of what made Flannery O’Connor stand out as a Catholic writer was her honesty about sin — including her own. 

“Ideal Christianity doesn’t exist,” she once wrote to a nun, “because anything the human being touches, even Christian truth, he deforms slightly in his own image.”

O’Connor’s life — and her stories — form the basis of “Wildcat,” a long-awaited film directed by Hollywood actor Ethan Hawke, and written by Hawke and Shelby Gaines. “Wildcat” stars Hawke’s daughter Maya as O’Connor, and includes performances from Philip Ettinger as the poet Robert Lowell and Liam Neeson as a priest who visits O’Connor’s bedside. The film, like O’Connor’s stories, is ambitious. But in attempting to emulate her ambition, it falls short.

Such a result was perhaps inevitable. Ethan Hawke’s vision is passionate; he clearly enjoys and appreciates O’Connor’s fiction. Yet she was both a singular and strange talent. Her strangeness arose from a willingness to embrace and channel the mystery of her art, a Catholic vision of the world. The film depicts a scene at a party where writers at a dinner table speak skeptically of the Eucharist, including Elizabeth Hardwick, who dismisses it as merely a symbol.

O’Connor responds: “Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it.” It’s a great line, and it affirms O’Connor as a defender of the faith among secular intellectuals. Yet the line lands oddly in the film — and encapsulates one challenge in adapting O’Connor’s life for the screen. 

In “Wildcat,” the quip about the symbol is spoken by a Protestant writer at a party in Iowa City. The reality is much different. In a December 1955 letter, O’Connor described the event as a scene. Around 1950, O’Connor went to dinner with Lowell and Hardwick, along with Mary McCarthy, a novelist who grew up Catholic but left the Church. O’Connor felt terribly out of place.

“Having me there,” O’Connor recalled, “was like having a dog present who had been trained to say a few words but overcome with inadequacy had forgotten them.” McCarthy, in reality, was the one to make the comment about the Eucharist being a symbol — the comment having the sharpness of a Catholic who had left the faith, and now only appreciated it for its literary trappings.

This isn’t merely splitting hairs. By having Hardwick deliver the line in the film, O’Connor comes off as a provincial, small-town scold who corrects a Protestant on a manner of doctrine. In reality, O’Connor was challenging a fellow Catholic to confront her lost faith. She was affirming the real presence of Christ.

Film is always fiction; a movie requires a bending and flattening of reality. Yet the revisions to O’Connor’s life in “Wildcat” — including an implied attraction between her and Lowell, who is recast in the film as her professor — distract from the arresting, central story of her life.

The film is at its best when it creates sharp, almost hallucinatory moments that blur O’Connor’s life and her fiction. O’Connor often wrote about Christians who skewed religion in their own interests, including literalists whose misunderstanding of Scripture led to prejudice.

That vision comes alive in the film’s depiction of her story “Parker’s Back,” a brilliant tale of how a fundamentalist woman falls for a heavily tattooed, often acerbic man. In the story, Sarah Ruth and Obadiah Elihue Parker make an unlikely couple; she is attracted to him, but also repelled by his atheism. 

After an accident stirs his fascination with God, he gets a deeply intricate tattoo of the face of Christ on his back. He returns to Sarah Ruth and takes off his shirt, hoping that she will recognize his faith and accept him again, but she reacts violently, screaming at him that the tattoo is sinful. Her fundamentalist view causes her to mistake iconography for idolatry; in ways both literal and metaphorical, she is unable to see Christ when he is right in front of her.

Maya Hawke’s portrayal of Sarah Ruth and Rafael Casal’s performance of Parker show two people falling into each other in lust and repelling in anger. Hawke, as director, almost seems freed in these moments of depicting literature rather than life. O’Connor died at 39 from lupus; her existence was marked by suffering. She lived through her characters; not through a desire to be like them, but to investigate the mysteries of this world.

“Wildcat” is marked by an unusual structure, interspersing real and imagined moments without transitions, effectively capturing the drifting and brilliant mind of a fiction writer. Yet the challenge of the movie is that it will make the most sense to those who already know O’Connor well, and it will frustrate those same viewers. The blessing and burden of O’Connor, perhaps, is that we can never recreate her short, troubled, and brilliant life. Her fiction is her best testament.

St. Evodius was one of the 72 disciples of Christ. According to Catholic tradition, he was the first bishop of Antioch after St. Peter, although it’s not known when he assumed that position. 

As bishop of Antioch, Evodius was the first to use the word “Christian” to refer to the disciples of Jesus. It’s most likely that he died somewhere around 64-67, and he was succeeded by St. Ignatius of Antioch.

Father Greg Boyle, a Jesuit priest who is the founder and director of Homeboy Industries, and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were among 19 Americans awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, on May 3.

The White House said the award is given to “individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors.”

In comments at a ceremony to award the medals, Biden said Father Boyle “changed countless lives” through his former gang member rehabilitation ministry.

Biden joked that he was educated by Norbertines who worried their students would go to Jesuit colleges because “you guys were too liberal.”

“Thank God for the Jebbies,” Biden said, quipping, “That’s what my staff hates me doing, ad-libbing.”

Father Boyle established Homeboy Industries in 1992 to improve the lives of former gang members. The organization has evolved into the largest gang intervention, rehab and reentry program in the world.

He was previously pastor of Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights, then the poorest Catholic parish in Los Angeles, which also had the highest concentration of gang activity in the city, which inspired his ministry.

Homeboy Industries wrote on X, formerly Twitter, “Congrats, Father G. You deserve it.”

Pelosi made history as the first and only woman to serve as Speaker of the House, leading the chamber from 2007-2011 and then again from 2019-2023. She became known for her ability to bring together various factions within her party to pass some of her party’s major legislative goals, including 2010’s Affordable Care Act and 2021’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

Pelosi’s tenure was marked by both accomplishment and controversy, including her Catholic faith. Pelosi frequently discusses her Catholic faith on a variety of issues including immigration, poverty and the climate, but sometimes found herself at odds with Catholic bishops on some of her public policy positions, most notably on abortion, something she has in common with Biden, who is the nation’s second Catholic president.

Biden called Pelosi “a brilliant, practical, principled, determined leader” and said her accomplishments are “overwhelming.”

In a statement, Pelosi said, “It is with great appreciation that I accept the Presidential Medal of Freedom from our great and patriotic President of the United States Joe Biden.”

“The Medal is an honor that is respected because it is about America’s highest value: freedom,” Pelosi said. “Freedom was the vision of our founders, has been the goal of our men and women in uniform, and is our promise to our children. It is with reverence for freedom and respect for all who have received it that I am deeply honored and forever grateful. Thank you, President Biden.”

Other recipients include former Vice President Al Gore, Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., whose 2020 endorsement of Biden in that year’s Democratic primary is seen as helping Biden win his first contest in the Palmetto State, as well as Elizabeth Dole, a former Republican senator from North Carolina and former secretary of both the Labor and Transportation departments, and John Kerry, a former U.S. secretary of state.

Recipients also included Michelle Yeoh, the first Asian to win the Academy Award for Best Actress, and Olympian swimmer Katie Ledecky, who is another high-profile Catholic recipient.

In a statement announcing the honorees, the White House said, “President Biden often says there is nothing beyond our capacity when we act together.”

“These nineteen Americans built teams, coalitions, movements, organizations, and businesses that shaped America for the better. They are the pinnacle of leadership in their fields,” their statement said. “They consistently demonstrated over their careers the power of community, hard work, and service.”

In the closing days of his presidency in January 2017, then-President Barack Obama surprised Biden, his vice president, with a Presidential Medal of Freedom. Biden was moved to tears at the ceremony, telling those in attendance he had “no inkling” he would also receive the award.

In 2004, then-President George W. Bush presented the award to Pope John Paul II during a visit to the Vatican in Rome.

What are we to make of the widespread pro-Palestine campus protests across the country?

Here in Southern California, their epicenter has been at UCLA and USC, and counter-protests have led to violence. Mayor Karen Bass and Governor Gavin Newsom are calling for investigations. They’ve even gotten the attention of leaders in the Holy Land, where Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, said he struggled to understand their logic.  

“Universities are places…where engagement with strong ideas that are completely different, must be expressed not with violence, not with boycotts, but with knowing how to engage,” he said earlier this month.  

Closer to home, one of my friends thinks that the protests reflect a student cohort that’s been molded by social media and that doesn’t really know what it’s rebelling against. Another friend has wondered out loud where the students’ money is coming from.

Pundits are also comparing today’s escalating protests with the student protests of the Vietnam war era. Commentators are asking whether something like the protests that roiled Chicago’s Democratic Convention in 1968 will upend the Democratic Convention of 2024 (also taking place in Chicago, coincidentally).

Well, I remember 1968. That year, Providence had led my wife and I to start a Catholic Worker House in Saginaw, Michigan. Folks came and left. Some committed, some not. Among them were members of the Weather Underground on their way to the Democratic Convention to “do their thing.” Not long afterwards, we read that some of them managed to blow themselves up in a basement bomb factory. Violent protest has a cruel trajectory.

What about 2024? Sure, there’s plenty to protest about and grieve for. War is always a human failure. Hamas fighters initially killed about 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, and took about 250 hostages. Israel, in response, has reportedly killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in Gaza. Hamas continues to use civilians as shields. Israel continues its often indiscriminate attacks. Indifference in light of these actions is inexcusable.  

To be sure, we need discernment if we are to judge today’s protests. True discernment makes use of pivotal criteria.

First, since protest is a means to end, the end that protestors seek must be worthy and clearly stated. Protest is expressive, but it must be much more. Second, the means of protest must be non-violent. The means are the end, so to speak, in its coming to be. Terror becomes tyranny. Third, those who protest need the personal discipline without which they cannot succeed. Without discipline, the end is lost sight of, and the means become disproportionate.

It’s important to apply these criteria, and their application calls for prudence, that is, right reason in acting. It is a virtue at once intellectual and moral. So in exercising prudence we begin with taking counsel; having done so we take action. Conscience comes into play. Indeed, conscience as judge is one’s last best exercise of practical reason, of informed reason. No one can examine the conscience of another. Protestors, like the rest of us, must examine their own.

A thought experiment comes to mind. Suppose I am having a conversation with Mayor Bass, Governor Newsom, Cardinal Pizzaballa, and some of my dear and candid friends I referenced earlier. What would I offer for their consideration in light of the criteria I have identified?

To begin with, I would politely tell the Mayor and the Governor that investigations must have their own criteria and that they should be made public. If they fail to do so, they lack credibility. And what would I say to the cardinal? For (another) start, I would say that universities are places of engagement, but equally they are places that ought to uphold justice and respect human dignity. Yet here in California, one major university helps develop the country’s nuclear weaponry while another conducts grotesque fetal experimentation. Students do well to hold them to account.

As the thought experiment comes closer to home, what do I say to my candid friends? Yes, social media shapes and sometimes deforms students. But social media also conveys a measure of self-criticism. It admits to the sinkhole of excessive screen time, and students know as much. And, yes, students can be distressingly inarticulate about their own rebellion.

But their suffering should be no surprise when, as happens in postmodernity, they have grown up in a culture of the absurd. That leaves my friend who bids us to follow the money, the money that props up the student encampments. But in most cases, there probably isn’t much money to follow: In Los Angeles, hundreds – probably thousands – of students are living out of their cars (plus, eating ramen in a tent doesn’t cost more than eating it in a dorm).

The late Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement and recently recognized as “Servant of God” by the Catholic Church, spoke and wrote often about personal responsibility.

Reflecting on today’s situation, I remembered a pertinent exchange we had in 1968 in which she lamented the fecklessness of some of my generation.

I wasn’t shy about expounding on, in her presence, Gandhi’s insistence on discipline in the practice of satyagraha, or passive political resistance, and how demonstrations would achieve nothing without it.

“You are not Gandhi,” she replied to me. It was enough to shut me up.

Her point, of course, was not that I was mistaken about what Gandhi taught. Rather, it was that I should spend more time becoming like Gandhi and less time bewailing the shortcomings of others. Nowadays, though, I am most thankful for a different and living example: a woman named Joan Andrews Bell, who today sits in jail for joining a nonviolent rescue action taken to save the most vulnerable of us all, preborn babies scheduled for abortion. 

Bell’s was an exemplary protest. Even in the silence of a cell, her discerning witness to life speaks clearly: a costly act for which she pays up personally.  

St. Hilary of Arles was born in 401, most likely is now Loraine, France. His family was wealthy, and Hilary received a traditional aristocratic education in philosophy and rhetoric, in preparation for a successful career. 

One of Hilary’s relatives, Honoratus, had founded a monastery in Lerins, dedicating his life to the Church. Honoratus was deeply concerned for Hilary’s soul, and urged him to abandon worldly pursuits to follow Christ. 

Hilary later wrote, “On one side, I saw the Lord calling me; on the other the world offering me its seducing charms and pleasures. How often did I embrace and reject, will and not will the same thing! But in the end Jesus Christ triumphed in me. And three days after Honoratus had left me, the mercy of God, solicited by his prayers subdued my rebellious soul.” 

Hilary became Honoratus’ disciple and embraced a life of prayer, asceticism, and study. He sold his property and gave all the proceeds to the poor. 

In 426, Honoratus became the archbishop of Arles. Hilary followed him initially, but quickly returned to the monastery at Lerins. Honoratus wanted his help, though, so he retrieved Hilary and installed him at Arles. When Honoratus died in 429, Hilary attempted to leave Arles again, but the faithful sent out a search party and had him brought back to be consecrated as the next archbishop. 

Although he was not even 30 years old when he took the position, Hilary was prepared by his years in religious life and his training from Honoratus. He maintained the simplicity of a monk, owning little, putting the poor first, and continuing to do manual labor. 

Archbishop Hilary was known for his kindness and charity, but also remembered for rebuking a government official who brought shame on the Church. He warned lukewarm believers that they would “not so easily get out of hell, if you are once unhappily fallen into its dungeons.” 

Hilary established monasteries throughout his diocese, and held councils to strengthen the local Church’s discipline. He sold off Church properties to pay ransoms for people who had been kidnapped, and is said to have performed miracles. 

Hilary died on May 5, 449. Although he had a few canonical disputes with Pope St. Leo I late in his life, the pope honored him as “Hilary of holy memory” in a letter to the next archbishop of Arles. 

The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) released a pair of emergency rules that it said are aimed at combating “misinformation” and a “deeply dishonest scare campaign” by the Biden administration about the state’s new six-week pro-life law.

The rules, published on May 1, establish guidance for lifesaving measures and clarify that certain procedures, including treatment for ectopic pregnancies, are not considered abortion and remain legal under the Florida Heartbeat Protection Act, which went into effect on Wednesday.

This comes amid significant criticism over the state’s pro-life law that prohibits abortions on women after six weeks of pregnancy except for in cases of rape, incest, or when the life of the mother is in danger. The new AHCA rules further clarify those exceptions.

“The agency finds there is an immediate danger to the health, safety, and welfare of pregnant women and babies due to a deeply dishonest scare campaign and disinformation being perpetuated by the media, the Biden administration, and advocacy groups to misrepresent the Heartbeat Protection Act and the state’s efforts to protect life, moms, and families,” the AHCA wrote in both rules. “The agency is initiating rule-making to safeguard against any immediate harm that could come to pregnant women due to disinformation.”

“This rulemaking,” the AHCA goes on, “will ensure health care providers establish medical records procedures that will adequately protect the care and safety of both mothers and their unborn babies during medical emergencies.”

The rules state that “regardless of gestational age,” treatment for ectopic pregnancies, premature rupture of membranes, trophoblastic tumors, and “other life-threatening conditions” is “not to be considered an abortion and shall not be reported [as such]” even if those procedures inadvertently result in the death of the unborn child.

In a “Myth vs. Fact” sheet published the same day, the AHCA also clarified that “Florida law does not prohibit the removal of the pregnancy for women who experience a miscarriage in any circumstance.”

Jerusalem, May 4, 2024

britannica.com     

The Holy Fire has descended in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, as seen on the Christian Youth Channel.

The Holy Light descended at about 2:14 PM (7:14 AM Eastern Standard time).

It appeared in the edicule (the small chapel built over the burial place of Christ) about five mintues after the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, Theophilos III, entered there to patiently pray and wait.

After the Fire’s descent, the Patriarch passed the holy gift to the faithful who lit from it their bundles of 33 candles, per the age of Christ at the time of His Crucifixion and Resurrection.

The descent of the Light was preceded by a complex ceremony: The doors of the Sepulchre were sealed with a large wax seal as a sign that its inspection had finished, and in it was found nothing that would allow the Patriarch of Jerusalem to light the Fire by any ordinary means.

Shortly before the arrival of Patriarch Theophilos, the seal was removed from the door of the edicule, and a large lampada and 33 candles were carried into the Tomb. Then the Patriarch entered and began to wait. Those present continually prayed for the granting of the Fire until the time of its appearing.

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Based on the 1949 novel by Jack Schaefer, and directed by George Stevens, the Western technicolor “Shane” (1953) is considered a masterpiece by many.

Seventy years on, the movie is still written about, analyzed, and taught in film courses.

Shane (Alan Ladd) is the quintessential outsider: no family, no history, a man of action, and very few words.

He appears at the top of a hill in the wild, wild West, silhouetted against the purple mountains of Wyoming. Loyal Griggs’ cinematography won him an Oscar, while Victor Young’s score speaks of the pioneer spirit, our longing for home, our love for the land.

Into the valley Shane rides, on his white horse, through the chaparral, across a stream, in a buff-colored suede fringed shirt.

The homestead below is owned by Joe Starrett (Van Heflin) and his wife, Marian (Jean Arthur).

“Somebody’s coming, Pa,” says young Joey (Brandon deWilde).

“Well … let him come.”

Shane is slight, blond, and wears an ivory-handled six-shooter he hangs on the back of his chair at supper and never puts on again till the final scene.

He’s headed north. Where? “One place or another. Some place I’ve never been.”

He stays on as a farmhand. The kid instantly idolizes Shane. So do we. So does Marian. Obviously, she and Shane are deeply attracted to each other, though their feelings are never discussed.

After a knock-down, drag-out fight at the local saloon in which Shane and Starrett, though outnumbered, win, she bathes his wounds, and offers to bandage him.

Afterward, son and mother peer through the slats of the bedroom wall for a glimpse of him. 

“Don’t get to liking Shane too much,” Marian tells Joey, obviously talking to herself.

“Why not?” he pleads.

“He’ll be moving on one day, Joey.”

Interestingly for a movie with a major theme of manhood, neither Starrett nor Shane is an alpha male.

Starrett is stolid, steady, fair, the glue that binds the homesteaders together.

Shane is more charismatic, handsome, more cryptic: a better shot and as it turns out, a better fighter.

Starrett sees all of this, absorbs the hurt, trusts his wife — and Shane — implicitly, knows he is loved and valued, and goes on with his work.

The alpha male is Ryker, head of the dastardly posse bent on booting the hard-working homesteaders out of the valley. Coarse and conniving, he covets grazing land for his cattle.

Shane is small, compact, strong but not beefed out. The Rykers all but call him a sissy.

Joey sneaks into Shane’s room one day, finds his gun, runs his hands over it lovingly. “Shane! 

Will you teach me how to shoot?” he begs.

The two go into the side yard. “You always have it here, with the grip between the elbow and the wrist. So when your hand comes up, the gun clears the holster without coming up too high, see?”

Marian hears a shot, comes out, and is upset. Shane gives an iconic speech. “A gun is a tool, no better or worse than any other tool, an ax, a shovel, or anything. A gun is as good or as bad as the man using it.”

“We’d all be better off if there wasn’t a single gun in this valley,” Marian replies, “including yours.”

The Ryker clan hires a professional gunslinger to come in and take the homesteaders out: Jack Palance, reptilian in a black hat.

There’s a shootout at the saloon. The kid sneaks down to watch from afar. The bad guys go down but Shane is wounded. We can’t tell how bad. “Shane! You’re bleeding!”

Shane, back on his horse, only smiles sadly. He tells Joey to grow up to be strong and straight, and to look after his parents. Then, his mission completed, he rides off into the sunset.

“Come back, Shane! Come back!”

“Mother wants you, I know she does!” The words echo across the plain but Shane — for whom there is no longer a place in the valley — only keeps riding.

Many people besides me have seen Shane as a kind of samurai, or medieval knight, or Christ figure. He’s in the world but not quite of it. He’s a sharpshooter who dislikes fighting. With no family himself, he is willing to die for a family. His calling is not primarily to kill, but to bear the terrible burden — the wound, the isolation, the exile — of killing.

The movie raises all kinds of questions: Is a gun really just a tool? When, if ever, is violence and even killing permissible for the follower of Christ? Did Shane die at the end?

One thing’s for sure: The director George Stevens, sickened by the brutalities he’d seen as head of the Signal Corps Special Motion Picture Unit in Europe during World War II, was in no way trying to glorify violence.

If anything, the message of the film is that to perpetrate violence, and especially to kill a man — no matter how justified the killing might seem to be — leaves an ineradicable mark on the soul.

“Come back, Shane!” cries Joey and he is really saying, “Come back, our childhoods!”

When everything was clear-cut.

When our idols were untarnished.

When someone else did the dirty work for us.