Quick Hits: Scorsese’s Silence, leftists look to the Pope, ‘room at the inn’ in the Bronx

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Dec 22, 2016 | In Quick Hits

A few last-minute reading assignments before the Christmas break:

• Steven Greydanus, an insightful film reviewer with a reliably Catholic perspective, offers his thoughts on Silence, the new Martin Scorsese film based on the novel by Shusaku Endo. The novel is heart-wrenching, profoundly disturbing, with a conclusion that can be interpreted in radically different ways. Apparently the film is the same. Greydanus writes;

  It poses a challenge for viewers of any faith or of none, or of any culture or ethnicity, even if the challenge is not the same for everyone. A friend who is an atheist has said that Silence made him want to believe in God. For my part, Silence presses my Christian ethos to the breaking point.

• In the Wall Street Journal, Rome correspondent Francis Rocca observes that with conservative political figures sweeping to power around the world, leftists have begun to look to Pope Francis as a potential ally: “the improbable standard-bearer for many progressives around the world.”
• And in an appropriate column for the Christmas season, again published in the Wall Street Journal, Bill McGurn tells the story of Good Counsel home in the Bronx, where young pregnant women are welcomed when they have nowhere else to turn. The column’s title captures the seasonal reference: “Room at the Inn.”