ANGLOCAT ON The Prowl: A Deacon's Miscellany

A Sermon on Luke 13: 10-17, Delivered at St. Bartholomew’s Church, August 21, 2022 Today’s Gospel can be viewed as a purely theological document, or even another more reminder of the true purpose of the Sabbath day, and its importance in the Jewish tradition, and thus, in our own tradition as Christians.  And, although it could…

“Set Free From Bondage” A Sermon on Luke 13:10-17Delivered at St. Bartholomew’s Church, August 21, 2022. Today’s Gospel can be viewed as a purely theological document, or even another more reminder of the true purpose of the Sabbath day, and its importance in the Jewish tradition, and thus, in our own tradition as Christians.  And, although it…

A Sermon Delivered at St. Bartholomew’s Church, NYCAugust 7, 2022 Note: The historical facts of the Thomas Becket Affair are taken from my article “Command and Coercion”: Clerical Immunity, Scandal, and the Sex Abuse Crisis in the Roman Catholic Church, Journal of Law & Religion, vol 27, Issue 2, pp. 423-494 (2012). As we continue…

“Henry Please Come Home” (S. 1, ep. 9) This episode gets its own entry because it’s at once a throwback to the film, and a step forward in the development of the characters. The premise is simple: Henry Blake has impressed General Hammond by the efficiency and good results achieved by the 4077th, the highest…

S. 1, Eps. 10 & 11 Remember back in “Requiem for a Lightweight” how Trapper John ended a surprisingly nice conversation between Maj. Houlihan and Hawkeye by calling her “Frank’s bag?” Well, that slightly nasty streak comes out again in “I Hate a Mystery,” and Trapper turns it on—surprisingly—Hawkeye.   Ok, a little plot recap, for…

Delivered at St. Bartholomew’s Church, NYC, July 31, 2022 New York City is not an ascetic place.  You don’t find a lot of fasting, wearing drab clothes, or people living well below their means as an act of committing to modesty, sobriety, or simplicity.  Sometimes the Amish visit the City to sell their wares at a farmer’s…

The Matter of Mulcahy (Not Season 1’s Mulcahy; but actually is Season 1’s Mulcahy) Many years ago, when I was in high school in the 1980s, the Catholic League riled me. You see, my primary memory of the Catholic League in high school was its consistent denunciations of the television version of MASH, based on its…

S. 1, Eps 7-8: “Bananas, Crackers and Nuts”/”Cowboy” This idea of pairing up episodes has (so far) been fortuitously effective.   In the Beginning, there was the Deluge.   No, I don’t mean the biblical one, but rather a portion of “Richard Hooker’s” MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors that depicts the 4077th MASH under siege, a two…

S. 1, Eps. 5-6: The Moose/Yankee Doodle Doctor Yung Hi apparently got off lightly. It seems that the “moose” (a corruption of the Japanese word “musume” (“Girl”) was a real phenomenon. (There’s a singularly unedifying section on the relationship in Japan during the Korean War in a Korean War veteran’s online memoir, which asserts that the relationship was…

No, no; I don’t intend to force episodes together into mini-reviews. It’s just that these two go together so naturally that it’s hard not to look at them together. That’s partially because the first focuses more on Trapper John, while Hawkeye is the focus of “Chief Surgeon Who?” We start seeing some differences between the…