Tag: Catholic Church

Where were you October 3, 1992 when someone shouted, ‘Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!’? 

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Freedom of Speech, writing

Two days ago, a Time Magazine story headlined: “The Controversial Saturday Night Live Performance That Made Sinéad O’Connor an Icon.” I agree, it did , but that wasn’t the reaction at the time. Then, and probably up to the day she died, the reaction was pure hatred and scorn for her protest against the Catholic Church about a problem that had for years been obvious to everyone. Even her friends had nothing good to say about her on October 4th and afterwards.

She followed a long tradition of protest singers that went back to Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and almost everyone else who was singing during the Vietnam War years.

According to Time, “Speaking with the New York Times in 2021, O’Connor said she had no regrets, though the backlash was overwhelming. ‘I’m not sorry I did it. It was brilliant. But it was very traumatizing. It was open season on treating me like a crazy b-tch.'” 

Jeremy Smith, writing in Film said, “My memory is tainted by the ensuing smear campaign, a campaign that did not end until today, when Sinéad O’Connor died at the infuriatingly young age of 56 – and I’m probably a fool to believe this denigration will cease just because she’s not around to defend herself anymore. I’ve never seen a popular musician face such unremitting scorn. Not even close. But O’Connor — contrary to the narrative seared into our psyches by a media that could not bear her scorched-earth declaration that the Catholic Church is, charitable works be damned, a factory of institutionally abetted child abuse — never stopped speaking her truth. That continues to be our truth and our shame.”

Well said, and I hope that in time those who slandered her will one day see that she bravely spoke the truth, a truth that most people preferred not to mention.

–Malcolm

 

 

 

Review: ‘The Templar Salvation’

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, reviews2 Comments

The Templar SalvationThe Templar Salvation by Raymond Khoury
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Raymond Khoury’s The Templar Salvation (2010) sequel to The Last Templar (2006) is better than the original. Like the original, The Templar Salvation presents a story of lost/hidden church secrets with dual time lines, a lot of historical detail, and plenty of action.

In the present day, Khoury brings back FBI agent Sean Reilly and archeologist Tess Chaykin in a race with terrorist Mansoor Zahed to find a cache of early Christian documents. In 1203, while the Fourth Crusade siege of Constantinople is in progress, a small band of Templars sets out to rescue and then hide the same set of documents. In both time lines, the Catholic church doesn’t want the documents to come to light.

The Last Templar featured an amazing opening scene. The Templar Salvation’s opening, while slightly less spectacular is action-oriented and inventive. Tess is in danger. Sean rushes to the rescue and, in spite of the law enforcement resources available in Turkey and at the Vatican, becomes the point man in a search for Tess, Mansoor, the documents, and a variety of people who end up dead.

The Templar Salvation is more tightly woven than The Last Templar. It also contains fewer “talky scenes” where Tess and/or Sean explain elements of the 1203 story to present day police officers as though 800-year-old information trumps current evidence or the need to get out of the squad room with some sense of urgency. The Templar Salvation might be called “The Book That Will Not End.” Tess, Sean and Mansoor find themselves within nanoseconds of being killed (or worse) numerous times throughout the story only to escape/survive and keep on searching, fighting or running.

Nonetheless, the improbable story somehow makes for more exciting reading than The Last Templar. The Templar Salvation is a violent, tangled, twisted, groaner kind of escapist read that features the kind of over-the-top, don’t-worry-about-civilian-deaths-and-collateral-damage law enforcement that viewers of the TV series “24” tuned in every week to see.

Like agent Jack Bauer in “24,” Sean Reilly is as relentless as a Terminator in his quest for neutralizing the bad guys and possibly obtaining justice. And, like Jack, Sean keeps going, going and going even though his wounds would have killed ten normal men.

The book is a guilty pleasure.

View all my reviews

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of “Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire,” “Garden of Heaven: an Odyssey,” and “The Sun Singer.”