RIP: Sean Connery

Sad to see that actor Sean Connery has passed away.

Connery is probably best known for his early James Bond movies and he's done a lot of recent work, but here are the movies of his that I most liked, all from the 80s and 90s ....

- Outland ...

a 1981 British science fiction thriller film .... Set on Jupiter's moon Io, it has been described as a space Western, and bears thematic resemblances to the 1952 film High Noon.



- Highlander ...

a 1986 fantasy action-adventure film .... It stars Christopher Lambert, Sean Connery, Clancy Brown, and Roxanne Hart. The film chronicles the climax of an ages-old war between immortal warriors, depicted through interwoven past and present-day storylines.



- The Untouchables ...

a 1987 American crime film .... The film stars Kevin Costner, Charles Martin Smith, Andy García, Robert De Niro, and Sean Connery, and follows Eliot Ness (Costner) as he forms the Untouchables team to bring Al Capone (De Niro) to justice during Prohibition.



- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade ...

a 1989 American action-adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg, from a story co-written by executive producer George Lucas. It is the third installment in the Indiana Jones franchise. Harrison Ford returned in the title role, while his father is portrayed by Sean Connery.



- The Hunt for Red October ...

a 1990 American submarine spy-thriller film ... starring Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin, Scott Glenn, James Earl Jones, and Sam Neill. The film is an adaptation of Tom Clancy's 1984 bestselling novel of the same name. It is the first installment of the film series with the protagonist Jack Ryan.



- The Rock ...

is a 1996 American action thriller film directed by Michael Bay .... The film stars Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage and Ed Harris, with William Forsythe and Michael Biehn co-starring .... In the film, the Pentagon assigns a team comprising an FBI chemist and a former SAS captain with a team of SEALs to break into Alcatraz, where a group of rogue US Force Recon Marines have seized all the tourists on the Island and have threatened to launch nerve gas filled rockets upon San Francisco ...



Of all of these, I guess my most favorite one is The Rock, which I actually bought because I liked it so much. I remember going to see it at the theater with a friend from my church RCIA group.

What a career! Sean Connery will be missed.

Captain America: voting

Saw this video mentioned in the news - apparently it's gone viral. It's unknown who created it, but it's a combination of a clip from the Avengers Ebdgame movie (Captain America giving the other guys a pep talk before their mission), with content about voting. Kind of stirring :) ...

Shave Ivanka’s Head

May It Be

These are tough times. We could probably all use a benediction. This one is from The Lord of the Rings, by Enya ... May It Be

The Pope and civil unions

In the news: the pope has called for secular governments to allow LGBTQ people to be in civil unions ....

Pope Francis, in Shift for Church, Voices Support for Same-Sex Civil Unions

Pope Francis, who since the beginning of his pontificate has taken a more tolerant tone toward homosexuality, appeared to break with the position of the Roman Catholic Church by supporting civil unions for same-sex couples, according to remarks Francis made in a new documentary that debuted in Rome on Wednesday.

Speaking about pastoral outreach and care for people who identified as L.G.B.T., Francis directly addresses the issue of civil unions in the film.

“What we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered,” Francis said amid remarks in which he otherwise reiterated his support for gay people as children of God. “I stood up for that.” ...

Before we start feeling all warm and fuzzy about the pope, we have to remember a few things ...

Francis has *not* suggested changing the Catholic church's stance on gay people, their actions, and their relationships. The Catechism still states ....

Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered." They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved .... Homosexual persons are called to chastity ....

And Francis has himself rejected the idea of marriage equality for gay people in his exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, writing ...

There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family ...

Francis likes to tell the secular world how to treat people, while he supports a church that treats them worse. What Francis has done is a kind of blame shifting, and he did it with women too. The Catholic church treats women like non-sentient breeding machines, while not allowing them to be priests, deacons, or to even have equality of opportunity in other Vatican jobs. Yet in Amoris Laetitia, he wrote ...

I would like to stress the fact that, even though significant advances have been made in the recognition of women’s rights and their participation in public life in some countries much remains to be done to promote these rights. ... I think of ... their lack of equal access to dignified work and roles of decision-making.

The irony is painful.

I guess we're supposed to be grateful that a guy who thought of gay marrige as the work of the devil is now ok with secular civil unions, but civil unions for gay people are already an anachronism in a world that has moved on to a truer equality - marraige for LGBTQ people. The pope's endorsement for civil unions, while sort of interesting, is so 'too little too late'.

It's time the Catholic chirch let go of their archaic teaching on LGBTQ people and joined not only the other Christian churches that support gay people and marriage equality, but also the actual Catholic people, a majority of which support that as well.

You might argue, "but the church's stance is based on the bible". It's not, actually, but that's a post for another day.

Caribbean Blue

Old song by Enya.

Possum

A baby possum looks for a stray bit of cat food. It's hard to tell in the photo, but he's only about the size of a small hamster :)

A Closer Look

Sometimes you have to laugh or you will howl like a banshee, so it's time for A Closer Look ...

Fixing things

John Oliver explains why the process that has given us Amy Coney Barrett as Supreme Court Justice is so undemocratic, and what we can do to fix things.