by Father Robert Lauder I HAVE NO IDEA what the television viewing habits of readers of this column might be. It is no secret that there is an enormous amount of junk on television. The complaint, “There is nothing to watch,” is one I hear frequently. So when there is something good on television, I [...]

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by Father Robert Lauder AS I WRITE this column I am trying to tie up some loose ends in a course I give at St. John’s University. The course deals with what we can know philosophically about the mystery of God. At the beginning of the course, and indeed from time-to-time during the semester, I [...]

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by Father Robert Lauder Each year I act as moderator for two programs that take place under the auspices of the Office of Faith Formation of the Diocese of Brooklyn: an adult education course on the Catholic novel and a Friday film festival. Each program takes place twice each year, once in the fall and [...]

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by Father Robert Lauder Over the last 10 years, my Good Friday experience has followed a pattern. In the morning, I have gone over to Manhattan to take part in a Pax Christi Stations of the Cross procession along 42nd Street. (This year I had to forego that because of a complete knee replacement I [...]

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by Father Robert Lauder’ ONE OF THE challenges that I have in teaching philosophy to undergraduates at St. John’s University, Jamaica, is to help the students see the importance of what they are studying. This is probably a challenge for any professor who teaches philosophy. I admit to the students that it is easy to [...]

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by Father Robert Lauder ANYONE WHO READS this column regularly may recall that last year I did a series of columns on a book that I very much like, Jesuit Father Michael Paul Gallagher’s Faith Maps: Ten Religious Explorers from Newman to Joseph Ratzinger (New York: Paulist Press, 2010, 158 pages, $16.95). Father Gallagher provides [...]

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by Father Robert Lauder ONE EVENING a few months ago, I was watching Turner Classic Movies (TCM) during the station’s tribute to anyone who, related to the film industry, had died during 2012. Photos of those who had died appeared on the screen. Those honored included actors, producers, cinematographers, costume designers and critics. There were [...]

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by Father Robert Lauder As Lent drew to a close, I decided that I wanted to write a column about the resurrection of the Lord and our participation in Christ’s resurrection.  The mystery of Christ’s resurrection had been on my mind either explicitly or implicitly every time I thought about the meaning of Lent. While [...]

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by Father Robert Lauder IN THE COURSE on philosophy and film that I give at St. John’s University I try to help the students analyze films both in terms of the theme or message and also in terms of how the theme or message is presented. A film may have a wonderful theme and a [...]

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by Father Robert Lauder IN THE FEB. 4 issue of the Jesuit magazine America, there was a provocative essay titled The Searcher, which was written by Patrick J. McNamara about the great American film director, John Ford. In the essay, McNamara points out a number of themes that appear in John Ford’s films that seem [...]

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