At Mass, Texting With God

Dear Diary:

Feb. 10 was the day after the big snowstorm’s visit to New York City, but it was Sunday, so I had to attend Mass at 8:30 a.m. at St. Bartholomew’s Roman Catholic Church in Elmhurst, Queens, almost full despite the slippery streets.

I found a seat near the front on the left-hand side of the church, which has three rows; the middle one has the most benches. As soon as I arrived, the music and singing started, and the procession, led by the celebrant, followed by two altar boys and the lector, marched towards the altar.

I was deeply engrossed in the ritual until the lector began the first reading, when from the corner of an eye I saw a young man of about 14 or 15. He was bent down low, crouching in his seat, leaning o one side by the aisle in the middle row opposite mine.

At first I thought he was sick … but wait a minute … no … with both hands and four fingers, he was texting! I became so amused and distracted by his demeanor that my attention got divided between him and the Mass. This went on until Holy Communion when he stood up like the rest of us, approached the altar and received Communion.

Back in his seat and on his way out in the recession, he continued doing it. Was he sending messages to God And was He texting back

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Julian Fellowes Discusses a Season of Comings and Goings at \'Downton Abbey\'

Giles Keyte/Carnival Film & Television Limited 2012 for MASTERPIECE. Michelle Dockery as Lady Mary and Dan Stevens as Matthew Crawley on “Downton Abbey.”

These have been  dark days for the Crawleys and their household staff at “Downton Abbey.” (And for heaven’s sake, don’t read any further if you don’t want the events of Season 3 of this PBS “Masterpiece” series spoiled for you. This goes double if you’re Maggie Smith, in which case you should really go back and start with Season 1.)

After the popular perioddrama returned this year with the arrival of Cora’s mother, Martha Levinson (played by Shirley MacLaine) and her outspoken ways, the family lost Lady Sybil (Jessica Brown Findlay), who died after giving birth, and confronted deep prejudices when they learned Thomas (Rob James-Collier) was gay.

Then, in the closing moments of Sunday’s season finale, broadcast in Britain at Christmastime, after Matthew (Dan Stevens) and Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) celebrated the birth of their first child, Matthew was killed in a car accident.

Victoria Brooks, courtesy of Carnival Films Julian Fellowes on the set of “Downton Abbey.”

These developments are all the handiwork of Julian Fellowes, the Academy Award-winning screenwriter who created and writes “Downton Abbey.” But some were twists that he chose for his characters, and others were made necessary by circumstances beyond his control. In these edited excerpts, Mr. Fellowes spoke by phone recently from his home in London about a season of comings and goings at Downton, and how he is thinking about his own exit from the show.

Q.

Was it your decision to dispense with Sybil and Matthew in the same season

A.

No. You see, in America, it’s quite standard for an actor to sign, at the beginning of a series, for five or seven years. Themaximum any British agent will allow you to have over an actor is three years. And Jessica and Dan wanted to go. The show had been very, very successful, tremendously so, and they were being offered great opportunities. Don’t think I’m saying it critically - I don’t blame them at all. I can remember when I was a young actor, and I just had this feeling it was time to go to London. I was doing repertory theater in the country, and I resigned halfway through the season. Of course, all my friends and my parents thought I was completely mad. I went up to London and I got a job in a West End show with Hayley Mills. I reminded myself of that when Jessica and Dan said they wanted to go. I thought, “Well, you can’t be that snippy because on a scaled-down version, that’s exactly what you did.”

Q.

Did you try to persuade these actors to stay on

A.

We wanted them to stay and said, “Would you just do two ! or three ! episodes And then you’re living in America or in Dublin.” But they both felt they wanted to make a clean break. When an actor playing a servant wants to leave, there isn’t really a problem - [that character gets] another job. With members of the family, once they’re not prepared to come back for any episodes at all, then it means death. Because how believable would it be that Matthew never wanted to see the baby, never wanted to see his wife And was never seen again at the estate that he was the heir to So we didn’t have any option, really. I was as sorry as everyone else.

Q.

Once you’d made your peace with their departures, how did you decide to handle them narratively

A.

With Jessica, it seemed right to give her a whole episode that was about her death. With Dan, I had hoped that we would have one episode of this fourth season that I’m writing now, so we could have ended the Christmas episode on a happy note - the baby, everythinglovely. And then kill him in the first episode of the next series. But he didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want his death to dominate the Christmas special, so that’s why we killed him at the very, very end. In a way I think it works quite well because we begin Series 4 six months later. We don’t have to do funerals and all that stuff. That’s all in the past by then.

Q.

Another story line from this season dealt with the household learning that the servant Thomas is gay. Had you decided that about him from the time you created the character

A.

He was always going to be gay. I don’t know about in America, but here, there are so many people under 40 who were hardly aware of the fact that it was actually illegal until the 1960s. Perfectly normal men and women were risking prison by making a pass at someone. Their whole life was lived in fear, and ruin and humiliation and career after career would be smacked down. I think it’s use! ful to re! mind people that many things that they take for granted, are, in terms of our history, comparatively new. But I also felt it was believable that someone living under that pressure would be quite snippy and ungenerous and untrusting. But once you understood what he was up against, you’d forgive quite a lot of that. I like to write characters where you change your mind, without them becoming different people.

Q.

The reactions from the others in the house, particularly those who disapprove so vehemently, make you see them in a new light, too.

A.

Well, I think it’s a mistake to give people modern attitudes if you want them to remain sympathetic, because I think the audience picks up on that. If Carson had said, “Oh, yes, I think it’s absolutely fine,” that’s a 2013 response. My parents didn’t have any prejudice about this at all, actually. In fact, my brother’s godfather was gay, quite publicly, which in the 50s was pretty wild. Thi was a good friend of my father’s. He was liberal. It didn’t bother him if people were homosexual. But we can forget how we were ringed in with these prejudices until really quite recently.

Q.

This season, in particular, it felt like American viewers were much more aware that “Downton” was showing first in Britain, and were having plot details spoiled months in advance. You may not be able to control this, but would you like the series be shown simultaneously in both regions

A.

Well, I would love them to be simultaneous. And my own feeling is that the thinking behind different screenings belongs to a different era. The Internet has shrunk the world.  We’re the two English-speaking countries that enjoy each other’s entertainment, it seems to me, as much as any linked countries in the world. I would vastly prefer that we all saw it together. The world is much more global. And so I look forward to the day when it changes, as I’! m sure it! will.

Q.

You’re also writing a new period drama for NBC called “The Gilded Age.”

A.

I’m not yet. I’m going to, when “Downton” finishes. But there are many hurdles that have to be cleared. You have to write the pilot, they have to decide they’re going to make it, they have to decide whether they want to pick it up. So it’s a line of ditches that lies between me and the series. But if it goes, and if I’m doing a series at NBC, I would not be able to write all of “Downton” and all of that series at the same time. I would hope that by the time all the hurdles have been cleared, the timing makes it so I can then concentrate on the new series. And if “Downton” goes on - of course that’s not my decision - then it would be with other writers. Perhaps with me supervising, but with other wrters.

Q.

Could you imagine a scenario where “Downton” continues without you

A.

I think it would be funny. But in life, you no sooner say “Oh, I’d never do such and such” than you find yourself strapped into a chair, doing it. There’s no point, really, in making pronouncements of absolutes. The only thing is, I know I would not be able to write 11 hours of “Downton” and 10 hours of “The Gilded Age,” or whatever it is, side by side.

Q.

Wouldn’t you prefer to end the series on your own terms

A.

I’d prefer to do everything on my terms. The business of life is learning that you can’t lay down the terms. My own belief is that these things have a life. And one of the tricks is to recognize when it’s time to come to an end. But we haven’t made a decision when that will be. Some things go on for 20 years, don’t they, but I just don’t see “Downton” be! ing one o! f them.

Q.

Can you say yet what the themes of this new season will be

A.

I’m not giving anything away by saying that one of the main themes is the rebuilding of Mary, that Mary has to rebuild her life in a society which is changing. We would see women’s roles in the ’20s as being very much behind women today. But it was a big advance on what it had been 30 years before. And that’s all explored in the show.

Bruce Willis Shows Strength at the Box Office

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone went kersplat in their recent attempts at renewed box-office glory, but another 1980s-era star â€" Bruce Willis â€" has shown that he’s still kicking. “A Good Day to Die Hard,” starring Mr. Willis in a role he created 25 years ago, was No. 1 at North American theaters over the weekend, taking in about $25 million. The film, which cost 20th Century Fox about $90 million to make, has sold $33.2 million in tickets since opening on Valentines Day, according to Hollywood.com, which compiles box-office data.

“Identity Thief” (Universal) was a strong second, selling about $23.4 million in tickets, for a two-week total of $70.7 million. A poorly reviewed romantic drama, “Safe Haven,” which also opened on Thursday, took in about $21.4 million over the weekend, for third place and a total of $30.3 milion; it cost Relativity Media an estimated $30 million to make. “Escape From Planet Earth,” an animated movie that cost the Weinstein Company $40 million to produce, was fourth, taking in a weak $16.1 million. “Warm Bodies” (Lionsgate) was fifth, selling about $9 million, for a three-week total of $50.2 million.

There was one notable flop: “Beautiful Creatures” (Warner Brothers) took in $7.5 million in sixth place; Alcon Entertainment spent about $50 million to make it.

Berlin Film Festival: Romanian Film Takes Top Prize

10:46 a.m. | Updated BERLIN â€" “Child’s Pose,” a film by the Romanian director Calin Peter Netzer, took the top prize, the Golden Bear, at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival on Saturday.

The story of a privileged woman whose maternal instincts kick into overdrive when her son kills a teenage boy in a car accident, “Child’s Pose” shares several hallmarks of the recently revitalized Romanian cinema, not least a focus on institutional malaise and corruption. It was written by Mr. Netzer and Razvan Radulescu, who also collaborated on the screenplays of many other acclaimed Romanian films, including “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” and “4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days.”

The runner-up prize, the Silver Bear, went to another Eastern European social drama, “An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker.” Directed by the Bosnian filmaker Danis Tanovic (best known for the Oscar-winning “No Man’s Land”) and based on actual events, the film recounts an impoverished Roma family’s struggles with an unjust health care system, and enlists the real-life couple to re-enact their plight. The male lead, Nazif Mujic, won the best actor prize.

Paulina García, the star of Sebastián Lelio’s “Gloria,” about the romantic reawakening of a Chilean divorcee, won the tightly contested best actress category. David Gordon Green won best director for “Prince Avalanche,” a buddy comedy starring Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch. And best screenplay went to Jafar Panahi and Kamboziya Partovci for one of the most talked-about films in the competition, “Closed Curtain,” a confessional, self-reflexive drama about an artist and his demons. It is the second movie, after “This Is Not a Film” (2010), that Mr. Panahi has made in defiance of a ban on filmmaking by the Iranian authorities.

The Alfred Bauer Prize for innovation, n! amed for the founder of the Berlinale, went to perhaps the most eccentric film in the competition, the French Canadian director Denis Côté’s “Vic and Flo Saw a Bear,” a darkly comic and melodramatic lesbian love story. The Australian director Kim Mordaunt won the best first feature award for “The Rocket.” And the Teddy Award for best gay-themed film went to the Polish director Malgoska Szumowska’s “In the Name of …,” about a Catholic priest struggling with his homosexuality.

Led by the Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai, whose new film, “The Grandmaster,” opened the festival, this year’s Berlinale jury included the actor Tim Robbins; the filmmakers Susanne Bier, Andreas Dresen and Athina Rachel Tsangari; the cinematographer Ellen Kuras; and the artist Shirin Neshat.

Eagerly Awaiting Release of Brazilian Evangelical\'s Autobiography

Michael Appleton for The New York Times People waited in a line that stretched for six blocks for the release of the first installment of Bishop Edir Macedo’s autobiography at a SoHo bookstore.

The crowds of young people began arriving in SoHo in the dark, pitching portable chairs and passing cups of porridge among them. By 3:30 on Saturday morning, more than 200 were waiting. As they huddled together along Prince Street, an early morning drizzle turned the pavement to glitter.

“It’s like Black Friday â€" almost,” said Brittany Francis, 17, her face shining below a streetlight outside the McNally Jackson bookstore, â€everyone camping out in the nighttime to get what they want.”

This was not the release of a smartphone. There were no Beyoncé tickets on sale, no books featuring vampires or boy wizards to be purchased. What these people wanted was to be the first in the United States to purchase the autobiography of Bishop Edir Macedo, a Pentecostal pastor with some five million followers worldwide. Tucked among those millions are 60,000 worshipers in the United States, including about 10,000 in New York and New Jersey, according to an estimate by Mr. Macedo’s church.

The release of the book, “Nothing to Lose,” originally set for Feb. 9, was rescheduled because of the snowstorm. “I almost cried,” said Leslie Guerrero, 17, of the Bronx, who arrived at midnight, parking herself in the bookstore’s doorway. “And now it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh. It’s here.’ As soon as I get on the subway, I’m going to open it and read it.”

The store finally opened at! 10. And by midmorning, the line stretched about six blocks from Prince Street to Canal Street.

Mr. Macedo, who founded the church in his native Brazil, is both revered and reviled around the world. “Nothing to Lose” is the first installment of his three-part autobiography, and it plots his trajectory from low-level lottery office employee to founder and grand master of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God.

“He’s so polemical that you’re going to get people who call him the devil incarnate,” said Andrew Chesnut, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and the author of “Born Again in Brazil,” which analyzes Brazil’s rising Pentecostal movement. “Others say, ‘Yeah, he’s avuncular: He’s like me but almost a billionaire.’”

Pentecostalism, born in a ramshackle old stable in downtown Los Angeles, is little more than a centuryold. It is a boisterous, emotional brand of Christianity characterized by a belief in supernatural healing, the power of prayer and God’s direct involvement with the lives of the redeemed. Followers often speak in tongues and participate in exorcisms. Since its inception, the movement has exploded internationally: Today, one in four Christians identifies as either Pentecostal or Charismatic, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. That amounts to about half a billion people worldwide.

In Brazil, Mr. Macedo, who turns 68 on Monday, is a superstar. He is believed to be the richest member of a clique of Brazilian Pentecostal pastors challenging the traditional dominance of the Roman Catholic Church. Several business magazines estimate that he is worth $950 million. He is the owner of Rede Record, one of the largest television networks in Brazil.

Mr. Macedo began the Universal Church in 1977 in an old funeral parlor outside of Rio de Janeiro. He opened his first outpost in ! the Unite! d States a decade later, setting up shop on the Lower East Side. Early attempts to attract Americans were not terribly successful, according to Bishop Aroldo Martins, a vice president of the church in the United States. But when leaders started preaching in Spanish, attendance swelled.

Today, American believers attend churches in 25 states, according to Mr. Martins. The Universal Church has 31 locations in New York and New Jersey alone.

Mr. Macedo preaches a brand of Pentecostalism, often called prosperity theology, which closely connects a person’s donations to the church to God’s blessings. In Brazil, Mr. Macedo is sometimes referred to as “Pedir Mais Cedo,” a play on his name, which means “ask early.”

Much of Mr. Macedo’s flock consists of immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries, former Roman Catholics who are swayed by an energetic, God-wants-to-bless-you form of Christianity that insists they can change their lives. Ms. Guerrero, who was in line for the book release, as born in Honduras, and said she identifies with the idea “that I can go from nothing to something.”

Mr. Macedo and his organization, however, have been accused of misusing billions of dollars in donations meant for charity and have been accused of exploiting worshipers.

Mr. Martins called such accusations “an orchestrated campaign to destroy and to criticize Bishop Macedo and the work of the church.”

On Saturday, several people waiting to buy Mr. Macedo’s book, which cost $20, explained what he had done for them.

Damien Jackson, 30, grew up in Atlanta. “It was rough,” he said. “I learned about drugs through my dad, and I learned about alcohol from my mom. I had no example.” Mr. Jackson said he started smoking marijuana at age 8, and moved on to cocaine, occasionally using crack. He said that at age 15, feeling fractured and lost, he passed a sign outside an Atl! anta chur! ch that read “stop suffering.”

“I said, ‘Wow, I think I need that,’” Mr. Jackson explained. “So I decided to give it a shot.”

Mr. Macedo often visited Mr. Jackson’s church, counseling him personally. Mr. Jackson now leads the church’s youth movement in New York, which has more than 700 members. “When I came to the church, no one forced me to give anything,” he said. “I had no money, and they helped me. I guess that’s how I would answer criticism.”

Mr. Macedo’s churches, like many Pentecostal institutions, hold Friday night ceremonies in which a pastor casts out evil spirits from afflicted parishioners. The church shies away from the word “exorcism,” preferring “deliverance.”

As believers waited to buy books, much of the praise revolved around miracles wrought by these ceremonies.

Jamil Ahmad, 20, said he grew up in Brooklyn in a strict Muslim household, and that he converted to Christianity as a teenager. He said he developed lupus-like smptoms when he was about 14. When a doctor told him and his mother to come in for test results, they instead went to the church. “I was cured,” he said, “by strict faith and sacrifice.” He never received the results.

Another believer, a 26-year-old man who attends the Universal Church on Fourth Avenue and Dean Street in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, said the church cured his mother of AIDS, and that she did not receive treatment. “We’re not rejecting science,” said Yunus Seifullah, 28, of the Bronx, another convert from Islam. “But at the same time, we put our faith in God. We know at the end of the day, it’s God that’s going to help us.”

Mr. Macedo’s autobiography has already been published in Portuguese and Spanish. The McNally Jackson store was selling those editions on Saturday as well as the English-language version. The second installment of the autobiography is to be published in August.