Product Details

• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• ASIN: B000VHPP2K
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #394,644 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

A film by Gerad Thomas Straub, 108 minutes: Subtitled Following in the footsteps of the great apostles of nonviolence - Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton and Oscar Romero - John Dear, SJ presents in The Narrow Path the challenging message of Jesus in a fresh way, speaking with new force and vision of God's plea for peace

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars AN ESSENTIAL VIDEO FOR US TO HEAR, February 9, 2009

By 

C. Scanlon "least helpful reviewer" (among us humans) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Narrow Path: Walking Toward Peace and Nonviolence with John Dear, Sj (DVD)

My only discomfort with this excellent DVD is with Gerry Straub, the producer for San Damiano Foundation films, on two points at least.

I find no discomfort at all with the Reverend Father John Dear SJ, but strong admiration, edification, renewed hope, strength and courage, meaning mediated, and resolution to action for peace and justice. He quotes a conversation with that great Catholic Cesar Chavez (see for example Cesar Chavez, the Catholic Bishops, and the Farmworkers' Struggle for Social Justice), when the young Father Dear asked the older Mr. Chavez the essential of it all, Mr. Chavez replied: "Public action. Public action. Public action." He often see glimpses far too brief of the powerful Jesuit Roman Catholic priest, the Reverend Father Daniel Berrigan SJ, he of such important theological works as The Kings and Their Gods: The Pathology of Power, as Night flight to Hanoi;: War diary with 11 poems (Perennial library P217) and The Trial of the Catonsville Nine. Father John also speaks very powerfully of his trial and long imprisonment together with Philip Berrigan (he of the powerful Prison Journals of a Priest Revolutionary, and their Holy Sacrifice of the Mass celebrated together in that tiny cell of six months or more. Gratefully Father John also relates his time in El Salvador, and lovingly unfolds our various martyrs there, including Love That Produces Hope: The Thought Of Ignacio Ellacuria, Salvador Witness: The Life And Calling of Jean Donovan and of course Archbishop Oscar Romero: A Shepherd's Diary.

Nevertheless, I question technically some production points in this film. For some reason the editor chose to interlace three different presentations of a similar sermon. Why do this? To show Father John using the same sermon three times? How does this benefit the viewer? Does it not rather cast question upon Father John, who shares here a message we must all hear, and each follow? This sermon is one which every American and every Roman Catholic must hear, and hear again, and put into public action. The intercutting serves only as distraction.

One such presentation takes place in a large academic hall, with Father John dressed in Roman collar and in black, formally addressing an overflow audience. Another takes place in the intimacy of his northern New Mexico hermitage/rectory. The third, my other source of questions for the producer/editor/cinematographer, takes place in a rather luxurious Catholic Worker House in Los Angeles (the most wealthy of any Catholic Worker House I have seen, with a large screen television behind the seated Father John).

In this third presentation of the same sermon, the one most often presented, we see a most unfortunate and constant focus upon late middle age male shanks (as Hamlet "read" to Polonius, this writer claims that old men have most weak hams, yet these two gentlemen of LA display their well proportioned naked shanks with pride), as on either side of Father John are seated two white men their sixties or fifties wearing short shorts, one barefooted as well, with either foot astride an open Bible upon the floor.

Old monks like me immediately recall the tale from Saint Francis about his horror at Sacred Scripture placed upon the floor, much as Gitmo torturers flushing another Holy Writ down the toilet as part of their process of long psychological torture of the innocent. I found the sight of this bare legged, barefooted older man seated astride a floored open Bible a strong and powerful and unfortunately irrelevant image fully distracting from Father John's excellent exhortation to peace and nonviolence, as I wanted to throttle soundly and roundly that elderly, bespectacled man of the well exercised shanks.

Therefore I say this is a DVD we MUST all hear, not see. But, hey, that's just me.

Hear this video today, and hear it once more, and go out and act. This is the true opus Dei, upon which we all shall be judged, not by our shanks, but our acts for real peace and for justice for the poor and the oppressed.

From this same producer please see also the DVD's "Patients of a Saint" about Dr. Tony in Peru, "Where Love Is" about urban Capuchins, "Embracing the Leper" about Jim Flickinger, a Franciscan who serves a leper colony in Brazil, "Rescue Me" about LA's skid row, and "When Did I See You Hungry?" narrated by Martin Sheen also available at When Did I See You Hungry?.

But above all, please, hear this present video, now.