Constantine's Sword is well worth a look. Couple it with "Doubt" and you have a "troubled Catholicism" double header.
Constantine's Sword was written by Jim Carroll, an award-winning author whose father was a high-ranking Air Force officer, founder of the U.S. Office of Strategic Intelligence (OSI)and first leader of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Heady credentials, those, and a heavy legacy for son Jim, who became a priest, having been raised in a house with two angels -- Catholicism and the Air Force.
But neither was to be his own legacy. Instead, he would become known as a rebel in the Berrigan tradition. An image of the brothers graces one of the still montages dedicated to the watershed Vietnam years that served up young Jim's first divorce from his family heritage when he took the occasion of his father's visit to his church to deliver a sermon against the war.
Later, Carroll heard about a Jewish student's struggles with evangelicals at the Air Force Academy using ham-handed tactics to attempt spiritual imperialism, supported, astonishingly, by the general staff. Given his connections, Carroll investigated and found at the base an anti-Semitism that sent him on a journey for the origin of European hatred that took him all the way to Constantine, 4th-century Roman emperor who altered Christianity permanently by changing its symbols from the lamb and dove, representations of the prince of peace meant to calm mankind's violent proclivities, to the cross and sword, violent images of death and torture meant to do the opposite. Constantine's motivation is revealed in sordid personal peccadilloes that needed religious distraction.
The then-Reverend Ted Haggard turns out to be the prime mover of the Air Force Academy's focus on evangelical Christianity, needing sanctimonious distractions of his own after being fired by his church for involvement with a gay hooker and methamphetamines.
Carroll traces militarization of the Christianity from the time of the ruler who killed his own son and united the cross and the sword, through the Crusades to the 1930s, when Hitler's Cardinal becomes Pope Pius. He documents mythology surrounding the "Christian Soldier" and touches on eschatology driving the "left behind" craze that motivates so many modern-day evangelicals. He travels to the mountain Crusader castles along the Rhine and by examining primary source documents shows them to be anti-Semitic strongholds where Jewish pogroms occurred as well.
Carroll ends with the giant cross outside Auschwitz -- visible to anyone touring the grounds -- and in the context of this historical journey, leaves us with what could be the movie's most haunting image.
Constantine's Sword was written by Jim Carroll, an award-winning author whose father was a high-ranking Air Force officer, founder of the U.S. Office of Strategic Intelligence (OSI)and first leader of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Heady credentials, those, and a heavy legacy for son Jim, who became a priest, having been raised in a house with two angels -- Catholicism and the Air Force.
But neither was to be his own legacy. Instead, he would become known as a rebel in the Berrigan tradition. An image of the brothers graces one of the still montages dedicated to the watershed Vietnam years that served up young Jim's first divorce from his family heritage when he took the occasion of his father's visit to his church to deliver a sermon against the war.
Later, Carroll heard about a Jewish student's struggles with evangelicals at the Air Force Academy using ham-handed tactics to attempt spiritual imperialism, supported, astonishingly, by the general staff. Given his connections, Carroll investigated and found at the base an anti-Semitism that sent him on a journey for the origin of European hatred that took him all the way to Constantine, 4th-century Roman emperor who altered Christianity permanently by changing its symbols from the lamb and dove, representations of the prince of peace meant to calm mankind's violent proclivities, to the cross and sword, violent images of death and torture meant to do the opposite. Constantine's motivation is revealed in sordid personal peccadilloes that needed religious distraction.
The then-Reverend Ted Haggard turns out to be the prime mover of the Air Force Academy's focus on evangelical Christianity, needing sanctimonious distractions of his own after being fired by his church for involvement with a gay hooker and methamphetamines.
Carroll traces militarization of the Christianity from the time of the ruler who killed his own son and united the cross and the sword, through the Crusades to the 1930s, when Hitler's Cardinal becomes Pope Pius. He documents mythology surrounding the "Christian Soldier" and touches on eschatology driving the "left behind" craze that motivates so many modern-day evangelicals. He travels to the mountain Crusader castles along the Rhine and by examining primary source documents shows them to be anti-Semitic strongholds where Jewish pogroms occurred as well.
Carroll ends with the giant cross outside Auschwitz -- visible to anyone touring the grounds -- and in the context of this historical journey, leaves us with what could be the movie's most haunting image.