Sinner - a Review

They say that you can't judge a book by its cover.  However, in the case of Lino Rulli's Sinner, you probably can.

The cover presents, stark white, with the word "sinner" at the top and a pencil line drawn into an arrow, pointing at the man responsible for the work - an oddly ebullient Rulli, who seems way to excited to be tagged with that title.

But that is just what this book is about.  In Lino's own words, it's a book about him - a sinner - a "Catholic Guy" who knows his faith but struggles everywhere and all the time to live his faith right.  More often than not, he fails.  Hence, the title.  He's a Sinner.

And so are we.

Saint Augustine piously struggled with sin in the fifth century in his classic, Confessions, where he detailed his journey from depravity and perdition to Catholicism and holiness.  Yet, he never lost his sense of himself in need of God's loving mercy.  Like Lino, Augustine didn't shy away from showing his "dirty" side, although that side might not be as dirty as a voyeuristic reader might want (really, Augustine?  You stole pears, and that's what bugged you the most?).  The point of the tales is what we know already: sin is fun - that's why we do it.  It doesn't lead anywhere pleasant, but sin has to be attractive, otherwise there's no need for Confessions, and Rulli's book would be entitled Stuff I Did to Please God.

I purchased a new car this past April, and with it came a free trial of Sirius XM satellite radio.  I discovered the Catholic Channel (Sirius 129), and have been hooked on Rulli's show for my drive home from the vocations office every day.  Lino will remind many people (and particularly priests) of that friend they have who always questions stuff, gives you a hard time about this or that rule or point, but in the end is a really decent guy.  This comes across in Sinner as well.

Lino is no St. Augustine, but this is probably only due to a lack of a pear tree.  The struggles that he presents are as timeless (albeit in this modern milieu) as those that Augustine has given us over the past 1,600 years. I write this review mainly because I think that the stories he tells in the book (each one is about three-to-five pages, on average) are great fodder for youth group discussions.  If I was Oprah (and, thank God, I am not) this would be part of my book club.  Consider a few of his many tales from his life:

• Lino's dad announces that he is quitting his job and becoming an organ grinder; or how he desperately tried to become a writer for David Letterman's show; both of which Lino uses to describe how to (at least try to) discern and follow the will of God.
• a few tales of how he experienced confession at various points in his life
• his own fear of commitment and God's full commitment to us
• celebrity and sainthood, and how hard it is to choose the latter (there is a story in that chapter about meeting Sammy Hagar in a bar on spring break that I literally laughed out loud to)
• visiting an Italian (read, topless) beach, pornography, and the theology of the body.

There are many more.  Each of these would make fantastic conversation-starters for high school youth groups - and even adults, who might find other spiritual reading too unrealistically pious.  Rulli makes the struggle believable because he is honest and authentic.  And that's what we need.  Yes, the super-pious devotional reading is powerful and helpful, but the whole point of Sinner is to recognize that before we are saints, we struggle - we are sinners.

This is a fast read and well-deserving of its place atop Amazon's best-sellers lists.  I recommend it to all my friends, and I don't have to worry about their "oh-here-father-goes-again" reactions.  Just read it.

I hate sin.

But I loved Sinner.

"Noooooo!"

Anyone who has read this blog in depth knows I am a huge Star Wars geek.  I love the movies, and they have provided a cinematic backdrop for most of my life.  Also, I have not been a huge critic of George Lucas' decisions to add scenes and effects to the original trilogy because he had discovered new technology to do so.  This coming week, the Lucasfilm empire will release a long-awaited Blu Ray set of all six movies, and in true Lucas fashion, the films will present some more "changes."

Again, I don't really care what George Lucas does (Darth Vader could sing "Thank God I'm a Country Boy," as far as I'm concerned).  I do, however, have a problem with things he may have said.  In 1988, Lucas (along with pal Steven Spielberg) testified against those who would colorize classic films to make them more "modern."  Here's what he said then:

A copyright is held in trust by its owner until it ultimately reverts to public domain. American works of art belong to the American public; they are part of our cultural history.

People who alter or destroy works of art and our cultural heritage for profit or as an exercise of power are barbarians, and if the laws of the United States continue to condone this behavior, history will surely classify us as a barbaric society. The preservation of our cultural heritage may not seem to be as politically sensitive an issue as "when life begins" or "when it should be appropriately terminated," but it is important because it goes to the heart of what sets mankind apart. Creative expression is at the core of our humanness. Art is a distinctly human endeavor. We must have respect for it if we are to have any respect for the human race.

These current defacements are just the beginning. Today, engineers with their computers can add color to black-and-white movies, change the soundtrack, speed up the pace, and add or subtract material to the philosophical tastes of the copyright holder. Tomorrow, more advanced technology will be able to replace actors with "fresher faces," or alter dialogue and change the movement of the actor's lips to match. It will soon be possible to create a new "original" negative with whatever changes or alterations the copyright holder of the moment desires. The copyright holders, so far, have not been completely diligent in preserving the original negatives of films they control. In order to reconstruct old negatives, many archivists have had to go to Eastern bloc countries where American films have been better preserved.

In the future it will become even easier for old negatives to become lost and be "replaced" by new altered negatives. This would be a great loss to our society. Our cultural history must not be allowed to be rewritten.

The public's interest is ultimately dominant over all other interests. And the proof of that is that even a copyright law only permits the creators and their estate a limited amount of time to enjoy the economic fruits of that work.

In light of what he says, what he does seems rather disingenuous.  However, I am willing to leave Hollywood to its hypocrisy.   What bugs me more is his quote there.  He places a crusade to save "cultural treasures" up with the fight to preserve human life.  The arguments for respecting life from womb to tomb, then, take on a sidebar character to his self-interest of promoting film.  Here, we see the same hubris that led the Israelites to build a golden calf and worship it, the same attitudes that was condemned over and over by the prophets against those peoples oppressing Israel, and the same hypocrisy that Jesus outed when folks puffed up the Temple over the needs of those around them.

If I could see life respected in all its dignity - be it in the womb, in the streets, in prison, in a nursing home or hospital - I would gladly give up my mint-condition Boba Fett action figure (with grappling hook backpack!).  But with attitudes like this (and the apparent insincerity of them anyway), the Fett-man seems safe on my shelf.