archives

I got a good dose of U.S. politics last week, but it wasn't in the United States. I was at one of the Western world's rare institutions -- the Irish village dinner party. Here people from all over the world who happen to be in the village at the time sit alongside locals who, I am convinced, are among the best read people in the world. After all, computers and the internet have far less hold in an Irish village than in the States. And there aren't too many expensive TV packages either. Just book talk. And lots of it. Over the dinner table, late into the night, about everything on the globe.

By SHONA CRABTREE Religion News Service

From “The Godfather Trilogy” to “The Exorcist” to “The Passion of the Christ,” Catholic themes have long been mined by Hollywood.

Colleen McDannell, professor of history and religious studies at the University of Utah, is the editor of the recently published Catholics in the Movies, a collection of academic essays that maintains that Catholicism, with its visual nature, ritual and authority, is a natural fit for the big screen. The book also looks at how Catholicism is represented in the movies. (This interview has been edited for length.)