'The Nativity Story' Movie Problematic for Catholics, "Unsuitable" for Young Children

LifeSiteNews.com ^ | 12/4/2006 | John-Henry Westen

[Pyro7480]

'The Nativity Story' Movie Problematic for Catholics, "Unsuitable" for Young Children

By John-Henry Westen

NEW YORK, December 4, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A review of New Line Cinema's The Nativity story by Fr. Angelo Mary Geiger of the Franciscans of the Immaculate in the United States, points out that the film, which opened December 1, misinterprets scripture from a Catholic perspective.

While Fr. Geiger admits that he found the film is "in general, to be a pious and reverential presentation of the Christmas mystery." He adds however, that "not only does the movie get the Virgin Birth wrong, it thoroughly Protestantizes its portrayal of Our Lady."

In Isaiah 7:14 the Bible predicts the coming of the Messiah saying: "Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel." Fr. Geiger, in an video blog post, explains that the Catholic Church has taught for over 2000 years that the referenced Scripture showed that Mary would not only conceive the child miraculously, but would give birth to the child miraculously - keeping her physical virginity intact during the birth.

The film, he suggests, in portraying a natural, painful birth of Christ, thus denies the truth of the virginal and miraculous birth of Christ, which, he notes, the Fathers of the Church compared to light passing through glass without breaking it. Fr. Geiger quoted the fourth century St. Augustine on the matter saying. "That same power which brought the body of the young man through closed doors, brought the body of the infant forth from the inviolate womb of the mother."

Fr. Geiger contrasts The Nativity Story with The Passion of the Christ, noting that with the latter, Catholics and Protestants could agree to support it. He suggests, however, that the latter is "a virtual coup against Catholic Mariology".

The characterization of Mary further debases her as Fr. Geiger relates in his review. "Mary in The Nativity lacks depth and stature, and becomes the subject of a treatment on teenage psychology."

Beyond the non-miraculous birth, the biggest let-down for Catholics comes from Director Catherine Hardwicke's own words. Hardwicke explains her rationale in an interview: "We wanted her [Mary] to feel accessible to a young teenager, so she wouldn't seem so far away from their life that it had no meaning for them. I wanted them to see Mary as a girl, as a teenager at first, not perfectly pious from the very first moment. So you see Mary going through stuff with her parents where they say, 'You're going to marry this guy, and these are the rules you have to follow.' Her father is telling her that she's not to have sex with Joseph for a year-and Joseph is standing right there."

Comments Fr. Geiger, "it is rather disconcerting to see Our Blessed Mother portrayed with 'attitude;' asserting herself in a rather anachronistic rebellion against an arranged marriage, choosing her words carefully with her parents, and posing meaningful silences toward those who do not understand her."

Fr. Geiger adds that the film also contains "an overly graphic scene of St. Elizabeth giving birth," which is "just not suitable, in my opinion, for young children to view."

Despite its flaws Fr. Geiger, after viewing the film, also has some good things to say about it. "Today, one must commend any sincere attempt to put Christ back into Christmas, and this film is certainly one of them," he says. "The Nativity Story in no way compares to the masterpiece which is The Passion of the Christ, but it is at least sincere, untainted by cynicism, and a worthy effort by Hollywood to end the prejudice against Christianity in the public square."

And, in addition to a good portrait of St. Joseph, the film offers "at least one cinematic and spiritual triumph" in portraying the Visitation of Mary to St. Elizabeth. "Although the Magnificat is relegated to a kind of epilogue at the movie's end, the meeting between Mary and Elizabeth is otherwise faithful to the scriptures and quite poignant. In a separate scene, the two women experience the concurrent movement of their children in utero and share deeply in each other's joy. I can't think of another piece of celluloid that illustrates the dignity of the unborn child better than this."

See Fr. Geiger's full review here:
http://airmaria.com/

[Alamo-Girl]

Hmmm... that's an engaging meditation, MHGinTN! Thank you so much for sharing it!

[MHGinTN]

Did you get a chance yet to do some reading at yada yahweh? The foundation book 1, chapter ‘hayam’ would interest you since it deals with the first sentence in Genesis and an approx. 15 billion year reference frame.

[Alamo-Girl]

No, I haven't read Yada Yahweh - but it looks interesting. Will do, thank you!

If it comes out to about 15 billion years, it'll be close to what I've summarized here at post 12,710

[hosepipe]

Groovey lineal display mat at #12,880.. thanks..
Kinda makes sense.. if there even is such a thing called time..

[fortheDeclaration]

John. 3:5 is not speaking of water Baptism "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit" (John 3:5)

Yes, first you are born of water-physical life and then you need to be born again-by the Holy Spirit (1Cor.12:13).

The context of the passage is two births and water baptism isn't in the passage.

So if you think that water Baptism saved you, you are greatly deceived and are still lost in your sins Thanks for your analysis, but I am Orthodox, and we don't believe salvation is a 'moment.'

It seems that you believe water baptism had something to do with your salvation, which it doesn't.

One is saved by faith in the completed work of Christ (1Cor.15:3-5) and water baptism is a figure of that.(1Pe. 3:21).

[fortheDeclaration]

The work that I cited showed that the Davidic kingdom is regarded by historians to be as it is stated in the Old Testament historical works No, it's regarded by some, die-hard (ever-shrinking number of) historians despite an embarrassing lack of any evidence. Out of 43 kings they managed to find some proof of nine of them. There is no evidence whatsoever that the Jews were ever in Egypt, that Jerusalem was anything but a ranch city, that the walls of Jericho did not come tumbling down, and that the Israelites did not take the land of Canaan by force.

Sorry, but the historical evidence says otherwise.

Too bad, so sad. Got to keep up!

Yes, it seems that you have not read the recent evidence, but choose to remain blind to the truth.

You need to get out of the 19th century

LOL!

Funny, but true.

[fortheDeclaration]

John. 3:5 is not speaking of water Baptism. This is getting to be comical.

Do you see the word baptism anywhere?

Nicodemos brings up the subject of being reborn and Christ states that a man must be born of water (physical birth) and Spirit (spiritual birth).

There is no water baptism in John 3:5.

Some people are going to laugh themselves right into hell.

[fortheDeclaration]

Thus, H20 always forms water and can be tested and proven You just like to argue for the sake of argument? Of course H2O always forms water. The formula for H2O, the atoms are part of that working model.

No, but the scientific method proves that H2O always becomes water.

But atoms and electrons are not little 'balls' as they are depicted. They can be represented as such for various reasons, and they behave as if they were bouncy little balls for us to be able to visualize them.

And what has that to do with the correct scientific method?

Either science can prove something or it can't with its own experiential method.

What it can't prove with that method it can only hypothesize about.

Christ ascended into the heavens, which means He went up and when He returns, He will descend

You are amazing! What's up in Israel is down in Australia. just where "up" is the heaven? And how is Christ sitting to the "right" of the Father when the Father is a Spirit. These are allegorical, not literal descriptions.

No, it is amazing that anyone could actually believe what you do!

Christ went up from Jerusalem and will come down to Jerusalem

Yes, the 'right hand' is a metaphorical expression for the seat of power, but Christ is in heaven with the Father on a real throne.

So? That does not contradict the Genesis account at all.

Yes, they are older then the earth.

And Genesis never states how old the Universe is, only that the creation on the earth occurred in six days.

It would seem that your Church has a better understanding on this than you do

I am willing to believe that too, but their teaching is not as convincing as it should be.

Well, it seems we have come full circle to where this discussion began.

I stated that you had no authority over you except your own opinion.

And that is clearly the truth, since you reject scripture and your own Church's views and any other evidence that goes against the opinions you have decided upon.

[Forest Keeper]

Well, Abraham was asked to put his faith to a test. We see the same with Job. The common thread in all of them is: God knows that we have faith, but God wants us to show it by works.

Right. Works are a SHOW of faith already held. Abraham already had 25 years of faith when he showed it yet again at the altar with Issac.

In Exodus, God knew which houses were Jewish, but He wanted the Jews to mark them anyway to show their faith. Certainly God didn't need the markers (as He knows what's in our hearts)! But he wanted them.

Sure, God wants obedience. Certainly this story was an excellent lesson that obedience is life-saving, in this case literally. :) Also, I think God wanted the story preserved for all future generations to learn from. This story is PACKED.

Thus, in 2:24, James says "Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only." If this seems irreconcilable with +Paul from the Protestant point of view, it is! [which is why Luther has so much difficulty with +James]

You've been saying it right this whole post, faith saves and is showed, or manifested in works. Paul has no problem with this.

Thus [James] says "lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls" [1:21]. Notice that he says the word is able. There is no guarantee.

Yes, the word IS power and is ABLE to save. But there is no "guarantee" that everyone who reads it or knows it is saved. We all know that many regular and knowledgeable churchgoers do not wind up in Heaven. The word to focus on here is "receive". That is done through faith by grace, which comes only from God. This is another outward call.

And in 2:14 +James says "What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him?"

Yes, we are talking about a man who SAYS he has faith. That faith may be true or it may not. One strong evidence of true faith is works. And, all those with true faith WILL produce works. A man who says he has faith, but then does no works, bears false fruit and therefore has a false faith. It does not save him.

James uses the term "saved" as the end-of-times Judgment and not a moment ...

The uses are not mutually exclusive. We are saved at Judgment day, and we are saved when we accept Christ, and we are saved when God so predestined it from the foundations. It depends on how you look at it. They are all true, but none refer to a process.

[.30Carbine]

...the finger print of life...

Lovely phrasing bump.

[fortheDeclaration]

Tel dan at best confirms that there was a Davidian line, but it does nothing to show the size of David’s kingdom. The less gullable will tlel you that the two pieces of the document are not a perfect match and could very well be not one and the same document.

What can be said about these modern assaults on the Bible’s legitimacy? Is it valid to use archaeology in support of the historicity of the Bible and if so, is this record a witness for or against the accuracy of the text?

While archaeology is of great help to our understanding the Bible, the biblical evidence in the text must be given priority over the archaeological evidence from the field. The reason for this is the inherent limitations of archaeology. The primary limitation of archaeology is the extremely fragmentary nature of the archaeological evidence.

Only a fraction of what is made or what is written survives. Most of the great Near Eastern archives were destroyed in antiquity through wars, looters, natural disasters or the ravages of time. To this we must add the limitation that less than 2% of sites in Israel have been excavated and hundreds more will never be excavated due to lack of access or resources and destruction through building projects, military maneuvers, and pillaging by Bedouins.

Even when this small percentage of sites are excavated, only a fraction of the site is actually examined, and then only a percentage of what is excavated is ever published. Of the 500,000 cuneiform texts that are known to have been discovered over the past 100 years, only 10% have ever been published.

Such limitations in archaeology should caution historians, social scientists, and theologians from drawing unwarranted conclusions concerning the biblical text based on the paucity of archaeological remains.(emphasis mine)

However, once we assess the proper purpose of archaeology and acknowledge its limitations, we can successfully compare its material evidence to the biblical record.

As the 21st century unfolds I believe that we will see much greater confirmations of the Bible from the archaeological remains than we have seen from the previous two centuries combined.

We have the technology with ground-penetrating radar to make discoveries even before we dig, and if in the days to come Israel gains access to previously politically sensitive areas for excavation the secrets of the Temple Mount itself may be disclosed.

Nevertheless, the lines of evidence, which we have already presented, demonstrate the historical reliability of the Bible and defend its legitimacy as the Word of God for yet another generation of believers.

Thus, as Sir Frederic G. Kenyon, the renown British classical scholar and director of the British Museum, said in summing up the evidence for the Bible: "The Christian can take the whole Bible in his hand and say without fear or hesitation that he holds in it the true Word of God, handed down without essential loss from generation to generation throughout the centuries."8

http://www.imja.com/Archeology.html

[fortheDeclaration]

Yes, we are talking about a man who SAYS he has faith. That faith may be true or it may not. One strong evidence of true faith is works. And, all those with true faith WILL produce works. A man who says he has faith, but then does no works, bears false fruit and therefore has a false faith. It does not save him.

This is all true, but note that James never says what a man is saved from!

A 'dead' faith cannot save one from physical death as stated in Jn.15:2, God will remove those not producing fruit.

Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away:

Moreover, one can have a 'dead faith' and still be saved as shown by 2Tim.2:13, 'if we believe not, yet he abideth faithful; he cannot deny himself', indicating a believer who has lost his faith, yet remains saved.

Sometimes being 'saved' refers to physical life when Peter cried to the Lord to save him from drowning in Matthew 14:30 when he walked on water.

Rehab showed her faith by her actions and it saved her and her family from death.

[fortheDeclaration]

What can I say: using biased (biblical and Jewish) sources of course David's Empire will be gerat...but that's just like-minded people patting each other on the shoulder. Facts are a little different: biblical archeology is just about defunct.

Ofcourse, it is always easy to attack the sources when they disagree with your own conclusions.

Skeptical archeology always goes by what hasn't been found yet, but when something is found it always supports what the Bible says.

[Forest Keeper]

+Paul preaches sola fide because it is the very minimum required. The Protestant error is that it claims faith to be all that is required.

In light of the above, may I ask what exactly you believe the Protestant term "Sola Fide" means? If your below is the interpretation, then I do not think it means what you think it means. :)

In the historical context, +Paul expected the end of times to come at any moment, and faith was a must in order for the coverts to be baptized. Under such urgency, works of faith simply had a secondary meaning to him.

Paul was correct, the end of times may come at any moment. But, I expect you mean that Paul thought that the end times were imminent to his time. I don't agree with that, but for the sake of argument, let's say that is correct. In that case, if Paul thought it was imminent, then why does he say NOTHING of specifically baptizing infants before it's too late? Converts could convert using their own free wills, so the argument goes, i.e., it was on them. Infants were completely helpless and innocent, their salvations were completely out of their hands. Why then, does Paul not scream from the mountain tops "Baptize your infants to save their souls while there's still time!!!"? I know the answer. :)

Paul knew that several of the fledgling churches weren't fully with the program yet, so the standard answer of "well everyone already knew to do that so it wasn't necessary to say in the Bible" doesn't work. Time was of the essence, yet he was silent.

[fortheDeclaration]

Hippo and Carthage were local councils Yes, but they reflected the accepted unchallenged till the Reformation truth. No Bibles were produced without the disputed books. In the East, where Trent did not have jurisdiction, likewise, the conmplete canon has been in use continually.

Until Trent, those books were viewed even by many RCC theologians as secondarly works, not equal to scripture.

The chapter in James 2 is not speaking of eternal salvation at all This is your opinion, and you are wrong. "Dead" (James 2:20, 26) is dead for eternity.

And where do you see eternity spoken about anywhere in the passage?

That is your opinion and it doesn't fit the scriptures.

both Athanasius and Jerome (to name just two) rejected Old Testament books that were not written in Hebrew

Still their opinions were not such because they were following Jamnia. Again, show me a Bible that did not have the disputed books prior to Luther.

Other reasons for non-inclusion are numerous. Even early Catholic Church leaders who were familiar with the Hebrew texts clearly distinguish Canonical and Apocrypha writings. The writings of Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Jerome, and Bishop Melito of Sardis (170 A.D.) indicate a recognition of the difference between inspired Holy text and the Apocrypha. Church leaders such as Origen, Tertullian, and Hilary of Poitiersand Hilary of Poitiers, exclude the Apocrypha from Sacred canon by their count of books. As stated, the Apocrypha was never even declared authoritative scripture by the Catholic Church itself until the council of Trent some fifteen hundred years after Christ established the Church. And despite some catholic objections, and claims that these were always part of canon, the facts speak for themselves. This is even clearly admitted in the New Catholic Encyclopedia which states:

St. Jerome distinguished between canonical books and ecclesiastical books. The latter he judged were circulated by the Church as good spiritual reading but were not recognized as authoritative Scripture. The situation remained unclear in the ensuing centuries...For example, John of Damascus, Gregory the Great, Walafrid, Nicolas of Lyra and Tostado continued to doubt the canonicity of the deuterocanonical books. According to Catholic doctrine, the proximate criterion of the biblical canon is the infallible decision of the Church. This decision was not given until rather late in the history of the Church at the Council of Trent. The Council of Trent definitively settled the matter of the Old Testament Canon. That this had not been done previously is apparent from the uncertainty that persisted up to the time of Trent (The New Catholic Encyclopedia, The Canon).

And so we see this idea that these books were always part of Holy canon is totally unfounded. And in agreement with the consent of the fathers, and of scholarly examination, Protestants likewise reject the apocryphal books as canonical. The question is, can men make uninspired text, God inspired Canon, simply by proclaiming it so at a council in 1546? The answer is no.

http://members.aol.com/twarren13/apoc.html

not private in the sense that they are my 'opinions'.

Point is, I don't care what they are -- they are not the teaching of any apostolic authority. I am here to explain what the Catholic Church teaches, and to explain why.

Oh, I thought you were here to tell us what the scripture says, not to avoid it with Church dogma.

Your own Catholic Bible (NAB) refutes your use for 1Cor.3:13 and purgatory.

Christ never even uses the term Mother for Mary, and when she comes to get Him, with His brethren, He refuses to leave and doesn't even go to her. (Mat.12:46-50)

Jesus calls His mother "woman", apparently, to indicate her significance in the light of Genesis 3:15. The episode of Matthew 12 tells us that Jesus chose to be with His church rather than with His immediate family; He urged others to do the same (Luke 9:61-62).

Yes and that included the 'Queen of heaven' herself!

Imagine ignoring Mary that way!

I thought she had a special relationship with Him!

The passage does not say that doing good works result in eternal life, it says, those who seek eternal life by doing good works will find it.

OK...

his good works did not save him, he had to receive the Gospel by faith to be saved.

Indeed, we are not saved by works alone, just like we are not saved by faith alone.

No, works do not show at all regarding salvation anywhere.

Works show up as a result of salvation.

Nowhere is eternal damnation mentioned, only physical death.

I explained that. You are wrong: physical death is only mentioned at the end of the chapter in a simile: "even as the body without the spirit is dead; so also faith without works is dead". Dead faith is eternal damnation.

No, you tried to explain it away.

Nowhere is eternal life spoken of at all in James 2, what is spoken of is showing ones faith by works, not being saved by faith and works, which Paul says is impossible.

Abraham was saved in Gen.15, not Gen.22

Do you contradict St. James or not? St. James says that Abraham was "justified by works, offering up Isaac his son upon the altar ... faith did co-operate with his works; and by works faith was made perfect". This is exactly what the Church teaches: faith co-operates with works and together are necessary for salvation.

No, it is you is contridicting St.Paul by denying what he clearly says regarding faith and works, they are antithetical in regards to salvation, because salvation is by grace, therefore it must be by faith (Rom.4:17).

Abraham's justification was his proof that he was indeed a 'Friend of God' by his actions, but his faith preceded that action, it did not add to it (Heb.11:17)

No one disagrees that faith can be increased by works

Ah. Well, that is just barely Catholic then. You still incorrectly insist that all works are swept aside by St. Paul when the scripture does not say so. They are works for reward of one kind or another that he talks about.

All works are swept aside regarding salvation, but works show ones faith in one's Christian walk.

A work is a result of a strong faith and as one faith increases he sees it bear fruit which in turn increases his faith in the scriptures that he is trusting in. (we walk by faith, not by sight)

you do not understand the Baptist view of Sanctification.

Yawn. Probably not.

Well, then you do not understand the true Biblical view of sanctification and 'you err not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God.'

Know what. You just babble on with your old arguments from roughly that point in your post on. I got more interesting stuff to do. You have a question, ask. Ciao, peace be with you.

And you just go on rejecting what is clearly written in scriptures, preferring the darkness to the light.

[fortheDeclaration]

+Paul preaches sola fide because it is the very minimum required. The Protestant error is that it claims faith to be all that is required. In light of the above, may I ask what exactly you believe the Protestant term "Sola Fide" means? If your below is the interpretation, then I do not think it means what you think it means. :)

But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.(Rom.4:3)

Nothing could be more clear-Sola Fide-Only faith.

[Alamo-Girl]

I’m glad you enjoyed NASA’s graphic at 12,880.

But it occurs to me this morning, that I didn’t make it clear that the graph is a timeline intended to give a sense of what happened over the last 13.7 billion years.

In terms of actual size, beyond the far left is void, then a singularity and the far right, the size of the universe today, can be visualized this way:

The universe is 156 billion light years wide.

Light travels at 186,282.397 miles per second
Which is 670,616,629.384 miles per hour.
Which is 5,865,696,000,000 miles per year

Therefore the distance traveled by light in a year times 156 billion years =

A universe that is 915,048,576,000,000,000,000,000 miles wide

Also, you’ll no doubt note that the early universe inflated faster than the speed of light – which is the speed limit of the universe.

As with so many other physics issues, the answer is in the geometry of space/time. Here’s a brief explanation from the Department of Energy’s Physics Archive

name Tracy J.
status student
grade 9-12
location WA

Question - I just finished reading an amazing book by Dr. Stephen Hawking (A Brief History of Time). The book was great, but I still have a few questions about Einstein's theory of relativity, specifically of how nothing can travel faster than light. According to one scientist, when the "Big Bang" occurred the universe multiplied itself by 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 in just a fraction of a second.

Now considering light only travels at 186,000 miles per second, I would think that when the "Big Bang" occurred wouldn't the particles have traveled much faster than the speed of light, which would therefore contradict Einstein's theory of relativity?

This question has been puzzling me for quite some time and I would very much appreciate if you could answer it for me.

This question may have a simple answer, but I have only just started reading about astrophysics, and astronomy. So I am not very well educated on relativity and astrophysics yet.

....

Dear Tracy,

A very good question with a rather subtle answer which I have spent some time mulling over without, I feel, achieving full understanding.

The basic answer, however, is quite simple. Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light through space. This does not, however, limit the speed at which space can expand. In the first 1E-35 seconds (that is 0.00..(34 zeroes)..01 seconds after the big bang the universe expanded to a diameter of something like 1 meter carrying all matter with it. So it was expanding something like 3E26 (that is 3 followed by 26 zeroes) times faster than the speed of light! And that includes the matter that was just sitting there at rest in space.

Although it is not moving relative to space (whatever that means), a piece of matter can be increasing its distance from another piece of matter at speeds much faster than the speed of light if the space is expanding rapidly enough.

An analogy may help (though analogies are never completely accurate). You have undoubtedly heard of the two dimensional model for the expansion of space where little bugs are sitting on the surface of a balloon as it is being blown up. The separation between the bugs can clearly increase even though the bugs are sitting still.

Best, Dick Plano, Professor of Physics emeritus, Rutgers University

[kosta50]

Thank you too, A-G, as always, for your interesting posts.

A-G, Ayn Sof is a Kabbalistic concept. I am a Christian, not a universalist. Buddhism and Hinduism have fascinating cosmological concepts as well. I believe we have everything we need spiritually in the life of the Church without having to delve into non-Christian and pagan mysticisms.

The last part of your post caught my attention. It says that:

"the desire [?] arose [?] in Him to reveal Himself" [!]

This would imply this "void" has passions, and is not timeless. It indicates that God developed a need that He didn't have from all eternity. That is not a Christian belief of God.

[blue-duncan]

“Really?”

Act 2:33 Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear.”

Eph.1:20-22, “Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church,”

[kosta50]

Your graphic was interesting, especially since it shows the universe expanidng in one direction!

But regarding the letter of the professor who says:

In the first 1E-35 seconds (that is 0.00..(34 zeroes)..01 seconds after the big bang the universe expanded to a diameter of something like 1 meter carrying all matter with it. So it was expanding something like 3E26 (that is 3 followed by 26 zeroes) times faster than the speed of light! And that includes the matter that was just sitting there at rest in space.

What matter could remain matter (i.e. atomic bonds would remain intact!) at that heat and force and not evaoprate and be turn into pure energey?

These are all conjectures. Just as it is a conjecture that there is dark matter (but it makes the formula work just right). If the space has background tamperature, and is not absolute zero, it means it has matter in it. If so, the bodies flying through the space at high velocities would collide with that matter all the time, resulting in light or some other readiomagnetic radiation being emitted (and detected).

Areas where there is matter, we have evidence of light, such as various hydrogen clouds collapsing towards a center of gravity as they form stars. The glow resulting from collinsions of atoms at high speed appears as light (greenish to the eye, but mostly in the invisible red spectrum captured on film).

The Rosetta Nebula. A collapsing hydrogen cloud emits characteristic red glow on film as its atoms collide at high speed in the process of forming a star