John D Rockefeller Saved The Whales
I watched Bp Barron's Sunday homily yesterday, in which, beyond discussing the reading from Johah himself, he urged listeners to go to Fr Mapples's sermon from the 1955 film of Moby Dick on YouTube. I've embedded it above. I would have embedded the whole film as well, but YouTube won't let me, as it's age-restricted. (There are gruesome scenes of actual whales being killed, which probably carry out Melville's purpose more than that of the Hollywood version.) The actor portraying Fr Mapples is Orson Welles, by the way. I had been thinking about Moby Dick anyhow. I think I've read it five times, once as an undergraduate, once in grad school, and three times since then. I'd set it aside for some time, as I'd begun to have my doubts about how serious Melville actually was as a writer. (Joseph Conrad annotated a copy of Moby Dick and thought little of it.) On the other hand, I've had almost ten years of Catholic Bible study, and this has made ...