(The late[?] Pauline Kael used to fulfill this function for him regarding films, he tells me, though he's really more interested in movies than films, if you catch my drift...)
Anyway, he pointed out the existence of a new television show, (going against form, he does NOT think, despite a pan, more or less, that it's his cup of tea,) written up in NYTimes.
It is yet another show about Looking for Love, it doesn't sound as offensive as I Wanna Marry Harry, or Millionaire Matchmaker, or Who Wants To Marry Count Almaviva, but, whatever.
It's about using your congregation as a dating service, and I only followed the link he sent me because, completely out of character, I'd been thinking about my nephew and trying to fix him up.
WHAT??!??@?$??? you say... yentaing?
Well, with all the sibs and all the nieces and nephews, such an effort had never occurred to me, but... well, he's different.
He's just received his masters, and is living at home, and he gets up and goes to the early Mass, (the "I'llDoAnythingToEscapeThatMusic one,) with his parents, the practice about which which his older sisters were not so... zealous, shall we say?
Not that he isn't sometimes sullen about the early hour, because he is a convivial sort, to put it mildly. And he is very much a member of his generation, their adolescences extended well into their 20s.
But what captured my attention was that he was late to dinner Sunday, had been out sailing or something, came in and showered, joined us all in the dining room where we were solving all the problems of the world over desert, dished himself a meal, sat down and said grace before he began.
I don't know why, but I was very touched.
I get annoyed with him, but he is a good person. In the current, not always happy dynamic with his parents, (and in his defense, there more than one adolescent in the equation,) he is very much in the line of the first son in Matthew 21, seeming to refuse to go out to the vineyard, but always thinking better of it, and doing what is needed, what is asked... he was very, very good to my Mother, and he is very good to us, (technidiots like us do well to befriend young engineers, I think.)
Anyway, as I say, never thought about such a thing before, but was going to look for a way to drop a Theology on Tap suggestion into the conversation, nice way to meet decent people; was wishing he were more interested in music, could drag him to a CMAA event, or something...
So when Himself interrupted my thoughts by telling me that he was sending my computer a link to "It Takes a Congregation" I was amusedly startled by the synchronicity...
Well, wasn't that a long way to go, to get to a very small point, which is this:
the jackass (there's that word, again,) reviewer thinks the program tells us something real, not about current television, not about contemporary dating and mating rituals, not about modern society's instilling in people a raw desperation for their fifteen minutes of fame -- no, he thinks it tells us something about religion, (members of any religion, any denomination might as well be Amish, might as well be Rosacrucian, might as well belong to the Church of Ed Wood, so utterly OTHER is any person of faith to the likes of most NYTimes writers.
The show is utterly frivolous and is reviewed here only because it’s another development in the continuing spectacle that is religion in America.Got that?
Religion in America is "a spectacle."
And something that the Game Show Network and an online dating service cooked up is a "development" in religion that is worth noting.
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