Jesuits To Bury Philip Seymour Hoffman

Philip Seymour Hoffman's funeral will be held at a Catholic Church in Manhattan later this week in what organizers say will be a private ceremony. The funeral will be held at St. Ignatius Church on Manhattan's Upper East Side, the same church where the funerals of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and the singer Aaliyah took place. 

Link (here) to ABC News

Phil’s strength as a director of “The Last Days of Judas Iscariot,” which debuted at the Public Theater in 2005, was partially the result of his interest in, and familiarity with, the raw material of play. From the beginning, he encouraged the cast to ask questions about the Gospels and the story of Jesus and Judas. Some of this comfort had to do with his religious background. As a boy growing up in a town outside of Rochester, New York, Phil attended Sunday classes in preparation for confirmation in the Catholic Church, though his parents were not especially religious. 

“My parents were pretty liberal people, who didn’t talk about God much in the house,” he said. Early on, religion was uninviting to him. “Those Masses really turned me off,” he said. “Lots of rote repetition, pretty boring and sometimes really brutal.”

His perspective changed when one of his two sisters became active in a Christian evangelical movement, to which she still belongs today. She encouraged her brother to accompany her to meetings with her friends, and Phil went along happily. “There was something that was so heartfelt and emotional,” he said. “Nothing about it felt crazy at all. And my sister was certainly the sanest person you could ever meet. It all felt very real, very guttural, even rebellious.”

Link (here) to the full piece by Fr. James Martin, S.J. at Busted Halo