DavidScottWritings.com: Essays and Reviews

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Essays and Reviews

	The pope of hope “It may be that people aren’t paying much attention because of his age—he’s almost 81 now. But this is no caretaker Pope biding time until a more youthful helmsman can be found for St. Peter’s barque.”
	Madonnas of a modernist “While nobody would claim Joseph Stella as anything like an orthodox believer, there is something biblical, even liturgical, about his Madonnas. His is the Mary of the ancient litanies.”
	Watt’s up!? “Within less than a hundred years, the world was burning the midnight oil. Cities never slept again.” A review of the exhibit, Light! The Industrial Age: 1750–1900, Art & Science, Technology & Society.
	On the wrong day “The makers of Entertaining Angels have complained that Hollywood wasn’t ready for the hard-core religious message of Dorothy Day’s life. But neither were they” A review of the film, Entertaining Angels.
	A life hidden with God “Charles’ beatification caps a life that for many years seemed less an imitatio Christi than a playing of the lead role in Christ’s most famous parable. Charles is among the great prodigal children in Church history.”
	Pictures at an inquisition “As Rome correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, Allen’s reporting is usually competent and fair-minded. But this book is neither.” A review of Cardinal Ratzinger by John L. Allen, Jr.
	He sang of the hidden God “In the end, the poet enraptured by the Word, the pope who wrote more words than any before him, left without a word. He had passed over. From words to the Word.”
	Finding joy in the darkest night “No other saint spoke or wrote as much about smiling as Mother Teresa did. But after she died and was put on the fast-track for sainthood, we learned how much we didn’t know about her.”
	Inherited estates “But all the ironic humor is a foil to the probing of dark psychological questions, mostly about the complexities of paternity: How far can the apple fall from the tree?” A review of Nobody’s Fool, by Richard Russo.
	Her saving grace “. . . in defining Mary’s Immaculate Conception he was writing a new charter for the modernworld. The dogma was a piece of resistance, a defiant vow to resist the false spirit of the emerging age. . .”
	In her end, the promise of our beginnings “On November 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII declared a new dogma of the Catholic Church. But it was Protestants, not Catholics, who set the tone for the world’s reaction. And Protestant reaction was just this side of apocalyptic. . .”