sifting the stream

Coleridge is a monthly digest of noteworthy items in theology and the arts. Art Pending lectures include, on February 8 in London, “Balthazar: The Third Man...

Celebrities are our secular saints. So when a celebrity dies, especially unexpectedly, there is a strange murmur that runs through our culture.

The heroes that we are asked to emulate in popular fiction are almost always men. Supergirl is trying to change that.

I will not say that Call the Midwife has revived my sense of awe at the priesthood and the Catholic life, but it certainly has helped to fan the flames of my heart. Sometimes television stokes my mind. Sometimes it makes me laugh. Rarely does it feed my soul. Call the Midwife does all of these things. It makes me cry big, stupid tears of joy and sorrow.

Sons of Anarchy is first and foremost a show about what it is like to live in a world without grace, a world where the law reigns and the Gospel is in short supply.

So many of the great artists of our generation are consumed by the task of trying to find a way of coping with a meaningless world.