De La Mennais Brothers: Making Jesus Christ better known and loved by young people

In recent months I've been living in parallel worlds of desctruction and violence: one, the real world as portrayed by Sky News, BBC 24, CNN, etc... where natural disasters, warfare and the danger of nuclear catastrophe have been dominating screen time, and the second being a world of destruction of apocalyptic (or near apocalyptic) proportions, where corny dialogue, bad (or at best dubious) science, crimes against cinematic good taste, plot and character cliches, etc... reign supreme. And I am beginning to wonder what it is doing to my soul. I jest not. I am referring to the fact that for the last few months I have been teaching about the Disaster Movie genre to my Yr. 11 students (15-16 year-olds) as a compulsory element of their GCSE Film Studies course.I would be lying if I said that the viewing or reviewing of such "classics" of the genre as "The Core", "Dante's Peak", "2012" and "Skyline" had not afforded me any guil...

The Telegraph website is in early with a review and plot summary article about a film I've been looking forward to for some time: "The Way". Here's their "logline" of the plot: "Martin Sheen plays an American doctor who decides to walk the the 500-mile Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route after his son is killed there. The film is directed by Sheen's son Emilio Estevez." St. James' statue at the "Glory Door" entrance to Santiago Cathedral. Having been to Santiago de Compostella 3 times as a pilgrim (twice cycling - from Brittany + from Liverpool - and once hiking) it is a place and a journey that is very close to my heart and to the hearts of fellow Camino pilgrims in my congregation. The film is being released in the UK on May 13th. Click here for an article page that includes the film's trailer. Here's the start of another Telegraph article by columnist and author Christopher Howse that is certainly encouraging and gets ...

I am at the moment in our Paris community for meetings with our "Lamennais Media Team" (Commission for information + communication), responsible for co-ordinating communication and information in the Mennaisian Family throughout the world, 18 months after our first series of meetings in Rome. We are discussing a variety of different issues and ideas relating to, for example, the congregation's new website, the 150th anniversary celebrations of Jean-Marie De La Mennais' death, Lamennais Magazine, collaboration and sharing of ideas + resources between our different Provinces, new initiatives, etc... If you have any thoughts or ideas yourselves about any of these things, please let us know by posting a comment to this message. ******************************** As part of this year's celebrations to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the death of our Founder, our Canadian Province had an idea which we communicated to all our Provinces, inviting schools to interview p...

It's been a while since I posted on here. I suppose I've been having a bit of "time off" from certain activities in the aftermath of our school production (see a previous article from Feb.). Needing to "chill" for a couple of weeks. During this time we had our half-term break. I attended the cremation of a cycling friend of mine in the Wirral (nr. Liverpool) and while I was there took the chance to visit some old friends of mine from my 17 years living there, one of whom has just been diagnosed with malignant throat cancer. Those few days were nonetheless a joyous time of friendship and laughter. **************** I was sent the below poem recently and it struck a chord with me. Change can be frightening, but openness to change is a prerequisite of letting the Spirit work within you, modelling you ever more closely into the image of Christ. SONNETS TO ORPHEUS: II, 12 (stanza 1) Desire change. Be enthusiastic for that flame in which a thing escapes your grasp...