Ebert Batting for Theological Conservatives

I'm still watching Sikel and Ebert. It's nice to see Ebert sticking up for traditional Catholics in this discussion of the movie Mass Appeal, from 16:00. One of Ebert's last blog posts before his death was entitled "Why I am a Catholic", although he seemed to mean it in a purely cultural sense-- he had no expectations of an afterlife, and he said he only stopped short of calling himself an atheist because he regarded such ultimate matters as unknowable.

But it's interesting that both gentlemen, neither of whom seem religious (Siskel was Jewish, but again it seemed cultural rather than religious) were able to take religious themes seriously, as they demonstrate in many episodes. Donald Clarke, film critic and pompous windbag with the Irish Times, likes to loudly proclaim that films with religious themes mean nothing to him.