Paul Newman RIP; Silver Chalice; Pier Angeli

Paul Newman passed away yesterday. Check My Way for a detailed bio and film history.

Rather than focus on his "activism" or his awards, I will mention only one film, "The Silver Chalice." Silver Chalice was unique even in its own day (1954) and especially today. Chalice was a Christian based film, set in ancient Rome (Nero's reign) and telling the story of the chalice that had been used by Christ at the Last Supper.

Paul Newman in Silver Chalice


It has been years since I saw the movie, but I recall the plot as a fictionalized account of how the chalice was lost. Another theme of the movie involved power and how those who obtain power can become consumed by their own importance and lose perspective.

Silver Chalice - 1954










The movie also starred Jack Palance, Lorne Greene, E.G. Marshall, Natalie Wood (in a small role) and other notables (including Pier Angeli whose bio is itself a fascinating story).

Pier Angeli with then husband Vic Damone


My Way described the role briefly in its obituary:

Newman started in movies the year before [1954], in "The Silver Chalice," a costume film he so despised that he took out an ad in Variety to apologize.

Newman may have despised the movie, but we can celebrate it as we mourn the passing not only of Newman, but of an era in which movies with a Christian theme could exist.

Shroud of Turin; Matt Lauer's teleprompter thinks Jesus died in "one A.D."

I already knew that in order to host the Today Show, one had to pass some sort of atheist litmus test. It became obvious long ago that individuals could not rise to the top of the MSM/DNC food chain without some degree of hostility to (or at least ignorance of) Christianity.

But I did not know that ignorance of history is a requirement also. Nor did I suspect that basic math (addition, subtraction, counting, etc.) is "frowned upon" as well. I have often suspected that network teleprompter writers believed that history began only with Vietnam, but I never knew how literally true this suspicion was.

On Good Friday, March 21, Matt Lauer's teleprompter featured a segment on the Shroud of Turin, the alleged burial shroud of Jesus.

Shroud of Turin

















There is a question as to how old the Shroud is, with some scholars believing the Shroud to be a Medieval hoax (about 600 - 700 years old), while others believe it was used for Jesus' burial (shortly after Jesus' death on the cross). Without taking sides in the dispute, I note only the questions that Matt Lauer asked one of the experts. While I don't remember the exact question, the question was prefaced with the assumption that the Shroud may have originated in "1 A.D." Lauer repeated "1 A.D." a second time moments later.

Even a moment's reflection would reveal that Jesus could not have died in "1 A.D." Jesus lived about 30 years. His death is generally recognized to have occurred between 29 A.D. and 33 A.D. Even if one did not know when Jesus died, his death could hardly have occurred in "1 A.D." He would have been only 1 year old at that time. If Lauer's teleprompter assumed that Jesus was born in "1 B.C." or "zero" (there was no year "zero"), then how would we number the years in which Jesus was alive?

In fact, the year "1 A.D." marks the year of Jesus' birth, not his death. "A.D." does not mean "after death" as we supposed when we were five years old. It means Anno Domini - in the year of our lord. The phrase is Latin [not the language spoken by people in "Latin America," but the language of ancient Rome and its subject territories].

I am not trying to make a case here, as these facts are well established and commonly recognized. I am simply trying to point out that these questions should have occurred to Lauer as he was reading "1 A.D." on his teleprompter. But I am beginning to suspect that we have only begun to plumb the depths of MSM/DNC ignorance.

Quote of the day - Mark Steyn

There's a big demographic out there (and certainly not confined to evangelical Protestants, or even believing Christians) that's sick of the insipid generalities of the liberal establishment's offensively inoffensive pseudo-religion. By declining to defer to it and suffering no ill effects, Huck demonstrated how weedy and insubstantial it is.

Mark Steyn - 12-21-07

Quote of the day - Joe Sobran

The Pope's [John Paul II] condemnation of stem-cell research on
human embryos was greeted by the usual derision,
sophisticated and otherwise. While the prestige news
media cited polls showing that even most Catholics favor
such research (see?), callers to C-SPAN emitted a
ceaseless flow of ignorantly anti-Catholic sentiment. You
had to hear it to believe it: the Pope has no moral
authority because other popes have had girlfriends and
taught that the earth was flat and failed to condemn the
Holocaust, so there. As Lewis Carroll's Humpty Dumpty
says, after a similar exercise in ratiocination, "That's
logic." It's also a reflection of American education,
state-run and, alas, Catholic.

Joe Sobran (2001)

Quote of the day - Joe Sobran

Today’s atheists baffle me too. If they don’t believe God exists, why do they hate him so much? That doesn’t figure for me.

Joe Sobran

Quote of the day - Joe Sobran

I suppose killing your own children makes some sort of sense from an atheistic and Darwinian point of view. If survival is a ruthless competition, your kids are your competitors, right? No wonder Darwin’s legions are in favor of this “choice.”

Joe Sobran - [commenting on abortion]