'Titanic' – The '60s as sacraments

Soon after "Titanic" opened in the United States, director James Cameron ventured into cyberspace to field questions from waves of stricken fans.

One mother described how her young daughter sat spellbound through the three-hour-plus romance between a first-class girl trapped in a loveless engagement with a cruel fiance and a starving artist who liberates her, then surrenders his life to save her in the icy North Atlantic. As they left the theater, the mother said her daughter noticed older girls weeping.

"It's OK, don't worry," the child said, giving one girl a hug. "Rose is with her Jack now."

"That's so sweet," wrote Cameron. Nevertheless, he told another participant in the Online Tonight session that he wouldn't answer one common question: Did the now-elderly Rose die in the last scene, to be reunited with her lover aboard the Titanic in a vision of heaven, or was she merely dreaming?

As he immersed himself in Titanic lore, Cameron said he reached one conclusion. "I think I discovered the truth of its lesson – which is all you have is today." In another public statement, he described his film in more sweeping terms. "'Titanic' is not just a cautionary tale – a myth, a parable, a metaphor for the ills of mankind. It is also a story of faith, courage, sacrifice and, above all else, love."

With receipts of $1.1 billion and rising, "Titanic" has filled a hole in the hearts of millions of romance-starved moviegoers. Whether Cameron intended to or not, Hollywood's most successful movie of all time also has changed how at least one generation views one of this century's most symbolic events.

For millions, the Titanic is now a triumphant story of how one upper-crust girl found salvation – body and soul – through sweaty sex, modern art, self-esteem lingo and social rebellion. "Titanic" is a passion play celebrating the moral values of the 1960s as sacraments. Rose sums it up by saying that she could abandon her old life and family because her forbidden lover "saved me in every way that a person can be saved."

Millions are walking their children down theater aisles, often making many such pilgrimages, in support of this cathartic message about the power of romantic love. Major religious groups that have greeted similar films with howls of protest are silent. A few people wonder why.

"'Titanic' reminds me of the distinctions between people of faith and secularists," said conservative commentator Elizabeth Farah. "While all agree that death is inevitable and very often unexpected, the religious and secularists do not agree on the behavior life's fragility should promote. Those of faith know they may meet their Maker at any moment, at which time they will account for their sins. Their fear and deep love for God inspires them in their constant struggle for righteousness. To the secularist, life is short – get what you want - when you want it, and in whatever way necessary."

The heroes of this modern "Titanic" fit into this latter category, said Farah. Their sins become virtues, because they are rebelling against people who are portrayed as even worse. This isn't just a bad movie, she added, it is "manipulative" and "fundamentally immoral."

Father Patrick Henry Reardon, a philosophy professor and Orthodox priest, goes even further in the next issue of the ecumenical journal Touchstone. He calls the movie "satanic." The people who built the Titanic were so proud of their command of technology that they boasted that God couldn't sink their ship. Today, the creators of the movie "Titanic" substitute romantic love as the highest power. Jack becomes Rose's savior and he does more than save her life.

"Had that been all that happened, I would not have complained," said Reardon. "But they made that Christ symbol into a very attractive anti-Christ. The line that set me off I believe also to have been the defining line of the film: the assertion that the sort of saving that Jack did was, ultimately, the only kind of saving possible. If that was the thesis statement of the film, then I start looking for the cloven hoof and sniffing for brimstone."

Celtic Comeback II – seeking roots in Irel

There is nothing unusual about a man with a name like Geoffrey O'Riada serving as a priest in Belfast.

But this particular clergyman will cause raised eyebrows next year when he returns to the land of his ancestors to start a mission. For Geoffrey O'Riada is a very unusual name for an Eastern Orthodox shepherd and Belfast is an unusual place to gather an Eastern Orthodox flock.

O'Riada is convinced his mission makes perfect sense when viewed through the lens of Celtic history. He also believes today's revival of interest in Celtic spirituality is a sign that many are searching for ancient roots and rites.

"The Celts had their own unique and beautiful approach to the Christian faith and were part of the one, undivided church before the split between Rome and the East," he said. "Now, a growing number of people like me believe it's time for Orthodoxy to return to the West, including to lands such as Ireland where it once thrived and produced generations of saints."

O'Riada's "Celtic Orthodox Christianity home page" on the World Wide Web features an icon of a bishop wearing green vestments and gold Celtic crosses, along with a famous prayer linked to St. Padraig, or Patrick. "May Christ be in the mouth of everyone who thinks of thee, Christ in the mouth of those who speak to thee, Christ in every eye that seeks thee, Christ in every ear that hears thy words, O blessed Padraig, our father."

The goal of O'Riada's research is to cover the history of Christianity in the British Isles – from the viewpoint of Eastern Orthodoxy – through the crushing of the Celtic church in the Norman Conquests of the 11th and 12th centuries. The site includes pages of essays, biographies of saints, prayers and a timeline of the bloody and convoluted history of Christianity among the Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English peoples. This timeline is 18 pages long and doesn't even address the rise of Protestantism.

When he reaches Belfast, O'Riada will almost be starting from scratch. There is one Eastern Orthodox parish in all of Ireland and that's a Greek parish, with a multi-ethnic congregation, in Dublin. A recent survey found 80 self-identified Orthodox Christians in Northern Ireland. There is, however, a Greek restaurant in Belfast that sells icons.

O'Riada himself is a Canadian of Irish and English descent. His father's side of the family emigrated from County Mayo in Ireland during the potato famine of 1845. He currently is a deacon and finishing his studies at Holy Cross Orthodox Seminary in Brookline, Mass.

"Our approach in this mission will not be to poach sheep from other flocks," he said. "We intend simply to live and worship as Orthodox Christians, manifesting a spiritual and liturgical life that is organically connected to the early church and to the life of the early Irish saints. ... Our desire is to invite western Christians – Protestants and Roman Catholics – to discover their roots. ... We want to become a beacon, a light on a hill."

Millions of Roman Catholics are, of course, convinced they already have solid roots into the Irish soil and most Protestants will simply see the Orthodox as another brand of Catholicism. Meanwhile, a surge of Western converts, especially in the United States, is raising questions for Orthodox leaders.

It will be impossible to take academic lessons learned from archeology and manuscripts and turn them, overnight, into a living faith practiced by people in a modern land, said O'Riada. The mission will be able to use many ancient Celtic prayers, honor Celtic saints and to embrace a legacy of Celtic art. There are ancient hymns and chants that can be blended with English-language versions of Orthodox rites.

"We are talking about trying to recover a tradition that was handed down from generation to generation. That will take time," he said. "But we can begin. We need to begin. ... The explosion in interest in Celtic Christianity reflects a profound dissatisfaction with the rationalistic and juridical forms of Christianity which have dominated the West. There is a deep thirst today for ancient, authentic faith."

Celtic comeback I – searching for roots

It happened every year in the weeks just before St. Patrick's Day.

"Without fail, publishers would start putting out the same drivel. You'd see books of Irish blessings and Irish stories and Irish saints and Irish whatever and all of it would be green. Everything would be green – the covers, the printing, everything," said Catholic writer Thomas Cahill, author of the 1995 bestseller, "How the Irish Saved Civilization."

In a strange way, it's getting harder to spot this annual surge. Somewhere along the way, the tartan tide washed in and never receded. These days, the Celts are on the march year round. There's more to this than St. Patrick's Day parades, a legacy of great literature and tenors singing songs that make people cry in their ale.

For things Celtic, this is a new age. Visit most music stores and, instead of a few offerings by the Chieftains, shoppers will find racks of new Celtic music, from ethereal lullabies to foot-stomping reels. There has been a similar surge of interest in Celtic history, fiction, art and spirituality. The latter can appeal to everyone from those seeking pop-pagan mysticism to Christian pilgrims searching for their roots in the bloody soil of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, Brittany and the Isle of Man.

Some people become interested in Celtic spirituality because they want to reject what they perceive as traditional Christianity, said Cahill. Others become fascinated with the Celtic past because they are seeking traditional Christianity.

"One reason Celtic spirituality is so attractive is that it's foreign, but not too foreign. It's familiar, but not too familiar. It's Western, but there is this sense of the Eastern to it, as well," he said. "The Celtic church offered a Christianity that was whole and undivided. It came before the division of East and West, let alone the division between Protestant and Catholic."

But there's a problem. Today, Celtic Christianity is – quite literally – in ruins. It's hard to join a church that can best be seen in the fallen remnants of ancient abbeys and in priceless, handwritten manuscripts on museum shelves. Interest in Celtic Christianity may be on the rise, but modern seekers won't be able to find congregations bearing that label in a telephone book.

Where should they go? Truth is, several churches can lay claim to some piece of the shattered Celtic cross and their claims often clash. Church history in England is as complex as a Celtic knot.

Celtic bishops took part in the first Christian councils, soon after the era of the apostles. Their churches were influenced both by missionaries from Roman Britain, such as St. Patrick, and Eastern monasticism. Celtic pilgrims traveled to Rome, but also to Jerusalem, Antioch and Constantinople. As Cahill's book notes, Celtic scribes and missionaries played a pivotal role in the preservation of Western culture and the spread of Christianity during the chaotic era after the fall of Rome. The Church of Rome gained control of England in the Norman Conquest of 1066, soon after the bitter 1054 division of Christianity into the Catholic West and the Orthodox East. Then the Church of England successfully broke with Rome in 1533. Yet, Anglicanism and its children were born out of a compromise between Rome and those who were protesting the teachings of Rome. Instead of returning to Celtic traditions, Anglicanism blended many of Rome's structures with the innovations of the surging Protestants.

Celtic Christianity remained buried in the rubble left by invaders and reformers.

"The Celtic church was suppressed and suppressed and, finally, it was crushed," said novelist Stephen Lawhead of Oxford, who is best known for weaving Celtic history and myths into his "Pendragon" cycle and "The Song of Albion" trilogy. "But that is part of the whole appeal of this. Celtic Christianity is like the fly caught in amber. It's frozen in time. It died before it could mutate into something else. This is why so many people yearn for it. This also speaks to the rootlessness that so many Americans feel."

The South: Heat, sweat, rust, bugs, mud and sin

Most movies about the South look like they were filmed in Southern California.

What's missing is heat, sweat, rust, bugs, mud and another messy reality called "sin." These movies contain sinful behavior, but nobody calls it "sin" or says folks should do anything about it. This is strange, since the real South contains zones in which people still wear Sunday clothes, carry ragged Bibles and say prayers before meals in restaurants.

"Most folks in New York and out here in California just don't know what to do with life below the New Jersey shore," said Robert Duvall, who has spent several weeks doing waves of interviews trying to explain his film "The Apostle" to whole media world. "They just can't seem to get it right. ... Everything ends up looking and sounding all wrong."

Lots of people understand that sinners can do good and that saints don't win all their battles with their demons. It's the people who really believe in sin who understand that sin, repentance and redemption are often messy subjects, said Duvall, who recently received an Oscar nomination for this performance as the flawed, but faithful, preacher E. F. "Sonny" Dewey.

"There really are preachers in jail. I've met guys like that who have done all kinds of bad things, even murder and rape," said Duvall, who wrote "The Apostle" script in long hand and directed it himself. "These guys are real people and they struggle with the good and the bad that's in their own souls. They're human. I wanted to show the reality of that struggle. ... My guy makes mistakes. But he's more good than bad. He hangs on to his faith, because it's real."

Duvall's Pentecostal preacher sums it all up one night in a showdown with God, just after losing his wife and church to a younger preacher. "I love you Lord. I love you, but I am mad at you," he shouts. "I know I'm a sinner, every once and a while, and a womanizer. But I'm your servant. I have been ever since I was a little boy and you brought me back from the dead."

A few scenes later, he bashes his rival with a baseball bat in a fatal flash of rage and flees. He's the kind of man who shouts "Glory! Glory!" as he sinks his getaway car into muddy waters and then re-baptizes himself as a reborn apostle. He defends his new interracial church with his fists, while the people sing "There's wonder-working power in the blood." As he gives a final altar call, with police-car lights flashing in the church parking lot, he tells a convert: "I'm going to jail and you're going to heaven. ... Glory be to God on high."

This character's roots run back 25 years, to a time when Duvall began visiting a church in Arkansas while doing research. He wrote the script in 1984 and spent 13 years wrestling with Hollywood's principalities and powers, trying to get it on film. Finally, he invested $5 million of his own money. Many of the people in the movie weren't acting, including a Pentecostal pastor who fasted for 24 hours before going on camera. Duvall is the star, but it's easy to spot the real preachers. Their voices soar, while the director often has the good sense to just stand and watch.

Meanwhile, Duvall is getting used to answering questions about his own faith. The son of a Methodist father and a Christian Scientist mother, he calls himself a believer, even if others on the gospel road might consider parts of his life unconventional. The key, said Duvall, is that he respects the role faith plays in the lives of millions of Pentecostal and fundamentalist believers, even if these people scare the living daylights out of Hollywood.

"A lot of the people who are praising this movie would never set foot inside one of these churches," he said. "They tell me, 'These people frighten me.' And I say, 'Why? These are good, moral people. You'd be in a lot more danger walking around in parts of New York City than you would be hanging out in these kinds of churches.' "