The Catholic writer F. Scott Fitzgerald concludes his great American novel “The Great Gatsby” with one of the most memorable lines in modern literature: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” 

“The Great Gatsby” celebrates its centennial this year. It’s one of many notable anniversaries for 2025, particularly among Catholic artists and cultural figures. In the spirit of Gatsby’s attachment to the past, I have compiled some of the most relevant, and as we begin the Jubilee Year of Hope, I think it’s rewarding to honor some of the people and works that make our lives as Catholics more interesting, engaging, and entertaining. 

One of the most beloved musical films ever made, Robert Wise’s production of Rodgers’ and Hammerstein’s “The Sound of Music” is 60 years old this year. Upon its release in 1965, the cinematic story of the von Trapp Family Singers became an almost instant classic. While the film is now most often televised near Christmas, Catholics of a certain age will remember well that NBC used to broadcast the movie every Easter. Julie Andrews was my first crush, and I still quote the sisters who sabotage the Nazis’ sedan: “Reverend Mother I have sinned.” Beyond the wonderful songs and the compelling story of love and escape, the film remains capable of enticing non-Catholics with its religious imagery and theme of vocation. 

Julie Andrews, Charmian Carr, Angela Cartwright, Duane Chase, Nicholas Hammond, Kym Karath, Heather Menzies-Urich and Debbie Turner star in a scene from the 1965 film “The Sound of Music.” CNS photo/Twentieth Century Fox

Perhaps the biggest cultural anniversary of all for Catholics is the 100th birthday of the great Georgia writer Flannery O’Connor on March 25. I have written so much about O’Connor over the last 15 years at the Georgia Bulletin that there is little need to repeat it here. Suffice to say that beyond her creative genius, O’Connor’s great gift was to render “the action of Grace in territory largely held by the devil” in profound and captivating stories without ever being pious or didactic. The art and the faith are seamlessly linked, much like her sense of mystery and manners. 

O’Connor was a master prose stylist; one reads her work and recognizes her as the author immediately. In painting and other visual arts, Marc Chagall had a similarly unique style. Chagall was Jewish, but his numerous works with Christian themes lead many people to believe that he was Catholic. Chagall is especially famous for his depictions of the Crucifixion, which he painted to remind people of the horror of the Holocaust and our responsibilities to our neighbor. Chagall died 40 years ago, in March of 1985. 

So much has happened in the church over the past two decades that it is difficult to believe it has been 20 years since the death of Pope John Paul II, who died on April 2 of 2005. Canonized along with Pope John XXIII in 2014, the pope was a maverick figure. For Poland, for young people, for all who endure physical suffering, he was a constant source of inspiration. I will never forget the day that he was shot, nor will I forget the forgiveness he extended to his assailant. And I cherish what he symbolized for many mainline Protestants. My late Baptist father was particularly moved by his exemplary life and his passing; I remember how sincerely he extended his sympathy to my wife and me—the only Catholics he knew—when the Pope died. 

John Paul II was also of course a great supporter of the arts. An artist himself, a poet and actor, he knew the connection between faith and the imagination and how each bolsters the other. The troubled yet dazzling F. Scott Fitzgerald, who chronicled the Jazz Age in America as a key Parisian expatriate, knew also of this bond between art and transcendence. In what remains one of our greatest modern novels, “The Great Gatsby,” Fitzgerald portrays a thoroughly American Augustinian vision of both a City of God and a City of Man. The glamour of New York City is balanced by the wasteland of the Valley of Ashes, even as a symbolic God gazes silently over it all. Published on April 10 in 1925, the book has never been out of print and is one of the most widely read novels in the country. 

Fitzgerald’s understanding of the past at work in the present is certainly applicable to the long American experience in Vietnam. The fall of Saigon 50 years ago on April 30, 1975, is one of the most vivid memories from my childhood. My father kept us home from school to watch the helicopters transport desperate refugees from the U.S. Embassy to aircraft carriers in the South China sea, where the choppers were then pushed into the ocean. Days before that evacuation, President Gerald Ford ordered Operation Babylift, which rescued thousands of children and sent them to Europe and America. If you were a child of the 1970s in Metro Atlanta, as I was, you probably remember the waves of Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian children who settled here after the end of the Vietnam War.  

The war has always had a great significance for Catholics. Many of the best books written about Vietnam are by Catholic writers, and the church in both Vietnam and the United States was deeply involved in ministry and peace-making initiatives. 

A happier commemoration is the 100th anniversary of Alfred Hitchcock’s career as a director. Hitchcock shot his first film, “The Pleasure Garden,” in 1925. Though the film didn’t screen until the following year, when he also released his early masterwork “The Lodger,” it is the first film that he made himself. Many people are surprised to learn that Hitchcock was not only Catholic, but a practicing Catholic. After his retirement and until his death, he frequently had a priest come to his home to say private Masses. Like O’Connor, Hitchcock knew that looking into the darkness is often the most profound way to see the light. 

There are two other Hitchcock anniversaries in 2025—the 65th anniversary of “Psycho” and the last film Grace Kelly made with the director who adored her. “Psycho” is one of Hitchcock’s greatest movies, but also, as the Catholic theologian and Hitchcock biographer Donald Spoto wrote, a work of great modern art. Grace Kelly was not only a practicing Catholic, but devout. She made three movies with Hitchcock including “Rear Window,” which might be the best movie Hitchcock ever made. Her final film with Hitchcock features Cary Grant in one of the director’s lighter films, “To Catch a Thief” from 1955. Kelly was not only a beautiful and talented actress. She had a benevolent and caring spirit and is frequently quoted for her insights into the nature of grace, the nurturing of the soul, and the importance of forgiveness. 

All these values are embodied in the great movie “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” which celebrates its 50th anniversary on Nov. 19. Like Chagall’s work, Milos Forman’s film adaptation of Ken Kesey’s novel is frequently mistaken for a Catholic work because it so beautifully champions the dignity of human life, even lives that are different. 

A more recent film, as great I think as Cuckoo’s Nest, is the Mexican Catholic filmmaker Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s “The Revenant.” A revisionist Western, the film adapts the true story of Hugh Glass, a fur trapper who survived a bear attack. Inarritu’s film is a meditation upon the futility of vengeance and a mystical interpretation of the Communion of Saints. It also reconsiders many stereotypes of the Western genre and understands the universality of human nature and experience. The film won a trifecta of Academy Awards for acting, directing, and cinematography. The film celebrates its 10th anniversary on Dec. 16. 

Fittingly, the year comes to a close with a work that is cherished by older generations even as it fascinates the young. Charles Schulz’s “A Charlie Brown Christmas” will be 60 on Dec. 9, the feast day of St. Juan Diego. I love knowing that the show premiered the same day the church celebrates a man who, like the Peanuts, opened himself to the possibility of mystery and wonder. 

Of course, there are other anniversaries to celebrate and recall throughout 2025, but like Grace Kelly, “I prefer not to look back with regret, but with good memories.” I have written about many of these topics in The Georgia Bulletin, which you can search through the paper’s website, and there are some here that I will cover throughout the coming year. Long past though many of these may be, they remain as relevant to me now as then and always have something new to reveal.