Scorsese’s ‘Silence’: Is It a Masterpiece?

Second in a series

LOOKING FORWARD to the screening of “Silence,” the first film of this fall’s Friday Film Festival at the Immaculate Conception Center in Douglaston, I have been reflecting on the nature of art and on what makes a work of art a masterpiece.

Priority of Silence

This past week, Pope-Emeritus Benedict XVI who had pledged to “remain hidden” from the world since his resignation from the papacy in 2013 released an afterword for a future edition of a new book by Cardinal Robert Sarah, the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship at the Vatican entitled “The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise.” Benedict writes: “We should be grateful to Pope Francis for appointing such a spiritual teacher as head of the congregation that is responsible for the celebration of the liturgy in the Church,” and states further, “With Cardinal Sarah, a master of silence and of interior prayer, the liturgy is in good hands.”