My complete ignorance of all things finally paid off for me earlier this week when I saw “For Greater Glory.”
You see, I had no idea what happened in Mexico at the time of the Cristero War. None. And normally you’d think that for a Catholic writer, having no knowledge of a fairly recent persecution of Catholics by our next door neighbors would be…a bad thing. But it made “For Greater Glory” incredibly exciting for me to watch.
I honestly had no idea what was going to happen next during the movie. If you had told me that the President of Mexico was going to challenge the leader of Cristo Rey to a break dancing competition for all the marbles I would’ve said “O.K.”
All I can tell you is that the movie blew me away. Absolutely blew me away.
June 1, 2012 at 5:52 pm
Matt, if you want to fill in your historical gaps about the Cristero's War and the events that led to it, read "No God Next Door". by Rev. Michael Kenny. You might want to ask Tito Edwards about it. He may have already read the book years ago. You can get it from Amazon.
June 1, 2012 at 8:01 pm
For a great audio story of the war see here: http://aotmclub.com/Media at "¡Viva Cristo Rey! The Cristeros and the Martyrs of the Mexican Revolution" (BTW, this is from a great Catholic men's group)
(It's based on actual history, ie, it is history.)
June 3, 2012 at 3:00 pm
Have not seen the movie (I rarely see movies until they're on video these days), but a couple of years ago I read "The Power and the Glory" and had the same experience. I had no idea what was going on, why the priest was in hiding, why Catholics had to have mass in secret, what the government was doing and why, etc. I had to go look stuff up. I kept thinking, "This wasn't that long ago, and it was just over the border in Mexico. Why do I have no idea what Greene is talking about????"