Posted on 12/04/2006 7:52:47 PM PST by 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/
Once the new agers get hold of something they pervert it and give it a horrible reputation. How sad! The Jewish Kabbalah is ancient - it is the oral tradition of Jewish mysticism.
AISH: Jewish Kaballah 101: What is Kaballah? By Rabbi Shimon Leiberman
Most people have heard something or other about Kabbalah. But it is highly unlikely that what is going around in the general marketplace posing as Kabbalah is anywhere close to the real thing.
What most people have been exposed to is a smorgasbord of pop psychology and self-help that pretends to have some connection to Jewish mysticism, but it rarely, if ever, does.
It is easy to see how people are fooled. In most disciplines, you expect to know and understand something after studying it. But when it comes to mysticism, people expect to be mystified. So they are willing to accept incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo. Kabbalah is supposed to be mysterious and enigmatic. It's mysticism after all!
So much nonsense is presented in the name of Kabbalah, it is important to have some sort of forum where people can find the basic understandings that they crave.
In this series, we will attempt to present the central ideas of Jewish mysticism in a methodical and intelligent manner, minimizing abstruse terminology and shying away from a sense of the incomprehensible.
According to Kabbalah, the true essence of G-d is so transcendent that it cannot be described, except with reference to what it is not. This true essence of G-d is known as Ein Sof, which literally means "without end," which encompasses the idea of His lack of boundaries in both time and space. In this truest form, the Ein Sof is so transcendent that It cannot have any direct interaction with the universe. The Ein Sof interacts with the universe through ten emanations from this essence, known as the Ten Sefirot. …
Readings in this area should be undertaken with extreme caution. There is entirely too much literature out there under the name "Kabbalah" that has little or nothing to do with the true Jewish teachings on this subject. Any book on the subject of practical Kabbalah should be disregarded immediately; no legitimate source would ever make such teachings available to a faceless mass audience. Books written by Christians should be viewed with extreme skepticism, because many Christian sources have reinterpreted Kabbalah to fit into Christian dogma.
Either you haven’t been to one or have chosen to forget what one is like. They were laying around drinking and eating and debating what their places of authority were going to be in the promised kingdom. They had no idea about eating the body or drinking the blood of Jesus. It was a gathering like all the rest and the back and forth was what you would expect in a fraternity party. It was a testing of “machismo”; a “oneupmanship”. I imagine Jesus’ slapping His forehead in wonder that these were the people the Father had entrusted His church to. He was probably happy that the Holy Spirit was coming and would get the blame for the potential trouble they would get into. An hour later He, in frustration, had to dismiss them in the face of trial with “go back to sleep”. I remember doing that with my sons, trying to get them up to rake the yard.
Even at His ascension they were still lusting after their places in the kingdom wondering when it was coming so they could start preparing for the furnishings of their castles. They had to be told over and over again to quit wasting time fishing for fish and start fishing for men. This is no different than what Paul experienced at Corinth, although that was more like a co-ed fraternity/sorority party. There he told them to grow up.
Post 12,897 was attempting to explain the graph a bit further.
BD, I am aware of what the Bible says. The issue is of reading it literally.
First, Paul always says that God raised Christ from the dead. The Nicene Creed, which reflects the understanding of the Church, says that Christ "rose" on the thrid day. In fact, Paul and Acts (with Paul's influence) always asserts that God raised Christ.
It seems that Chirst can do nothing on His own according to Paul. His Christology is obviously not that of the Trinitarian dogma.
More importantly, he says that God seated Christ to the right of Him in heavenly places (not place), suggesting that even though Chirst is bodily in heaven, He is somehow in different "places" at the same time.
(Note: the Orthodox Church maintains that the inside of the Church during Divine Liturgy is "heaven on earth." That would make it possible, and biblically defensible, to say that Christ is physically present in the Eucharist!)
The other issue is God, who is a Spirit, having a literal right "side" and sitting [?] on a "real" throne. Can we address this in a civilized manner without resorting to Kabbalah and ad hominem?
The Book of Enoch is quoted but it is not cosnidered Scripture (except in Ethiopia). Thatr's a separate topic.
The New Testament really doesn't delve much into Kabbalah. It may be Jewish and it is ancient oral Law, but it doesn't seem to be of much interest to the Apostles.
According to Kabbalah, the true essence of G-d is so transcendent that it cannot be described, except with reference to what it is not
Yes, of course. If God is everything we and the rest of the universe is not, then only by denying what we are can be hint at what God is. This is known as the apophatic knowledge and it forms the backbone of Eastern Ortodox theology.
The Ein Sof interacts with the universe through ten emanations from this essence, known as the Ten Sefirot
We call Ten Sefirot miracles.
Books written by Christians should be viewed with extreme skepticism, because many Christian sources have reinterpreted Kabbalah to fit into Christian dogma
One more reason Christians should stay away from Kabbalah. It's not their mysticism any more than Buddhist or Hindu is, no matter how fascinating they may be because they do not lead to Christ. Ayn Sof is a distant, alien god, as all other gods are.
“Can we address this in a civilized manner without resorting to Kabbalah and ad hominem?”
I don’t understand what you are talking about.
In His glorified body He was “flesh and bones” able to be seen, touched and felt. Though material objects did not hinder Him (doors) He was still voluntarily limited by the physical, though glorified, body. He met people in specific geographical places. He ate food and drank with them. He told the disciples He was going away and they would not see Him again until the kingdom, and it was a good thing since then the Holy Spirit would come and bring all things He had taught them to their remembrance. This voluntary taking upon Himself the form of a man was part of the plan from eternity to be economically subordinate to the Father but did nothing to diminish His deity.
What if this is wrong.. As the TOE could be wrong about beginnings maybe the Big Bang only seems logical from observation from 3rd dimensional vantage point(s)(vistas)..
My musing that their is a Spiritual Dimension.. could change both systems.. Whats possible in the Spiritual Dimension could exceed 3rd dimension physics.. The Bible shows proof there may be a Spiritual Dimension(Lazarus, Jesus, Enoch, Moses), the book of revelation, other things..
Mixing the 3rd dimension and the Spiritual dimension could be a witch's brew of logic.. of frog's tongues and bird gizzards.. Calculating Universal things requires more zeros than my head can hold.. d;-)
Indeed, Enoch was not included in the various canons even though it was cherished by Jews and Christians alike back in the day. Evidently it was the theme of angels and demons that led Filastrius to condemn it as heresy and Rabbi Simeon ben Jochai to pronounce a curse on anyone who believed it.
OTOH, Athenagoras thought Enoch was a true prophet – and many other church fathers supported Enoch: Tatian, Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Origen and Lactantius to name a few
Protestants reject the books of the Apocrypha and the Catechises, Catholics accept those but reject the books of the Pseudegraphra and I would imagine, the Talmud which of course the Jews accept while rejecting others. Meanwhile the Protestants and the Catholics and the Jews all accept the Torah and the Prophets.
But each has a different “official” doctrine or explanation based largely upon what is allowed in the "toolset."
Meanwhile, I’m over here – footloose and fancy-free – exploring wherever I am compelled to look. My prayer is to know everything God wants me to know, but no more.
One of the advantages of eschewing the doctrines and traditions of mortal men is that I follow wherever the Spirit leads, without guilt or shame. So if I am drawn to the Pseudepigrapha (including Enoch) - I read it – ditto for the Talmud, Catechises, Jewish Kabbalah, science or whatever.
But I take nothing as Truth unless the Spirit personally authenticates it to me.
As if to underscore the importance of the canon, He faithfully authenticates all of the books of Scripture. And yet He sets off an alarm within me when something is lost – such as God’s name, The Rock from the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32 – or added, such as the word “most” to an erroneous quote from the NASB translation of Luke 1:42 in reference to Mary but not Jesus.
So I trust God, I believe Him, I count on Him – not men.
A central leaning He has given me is that God the Father has indeed revealed Himself in four ways: through His only begotten son Jesus Christ, through the indwelling Holy Spirit, through the Scriptures and through His Creation.
All of His revelations agree – thus I rejoice that the ancient Jewish Kabbalah’s understanding of creation ended up being “spot on” with cosmology since the 1960's. Before that, the science community would have dismissed their insights with a brisk wave of the hand.
Not surprising though, after all, the Jews have been at it for millennia. LOL!
I do however very strongly agree with you that Christians should stay away from any thing or any where except as the Spirit leads – because exploring such things of one’s own will can lead to grievous, spiritual error - e.g. new age philosophy.
Oh, and the underscoring by the Holy Spirit (which is always confirmed in Scripture) for the book of Enoch is in the original Greek of Luke 9:35 (emphasis mine.)
kai fwnh egeneto ek ths nefelhs legousa outos estin o uios mou o eklelegmenos autou akouete
Other translations:
Then a voice came out of the cloud, saying, "This is My Son, {My} Chosen One; listen to Him!" - NASB
Ditto on the caution for anyone researching the Kabbalah. Most of what is on the net is new age mysticism - go to the Jewish sites, e.g. AISH, to avoid the perversions.
My musing that their is a Spiritual Dimension.. could change both systems.. Whats possible in the Spiritual Dimension could exceed 3rd dimension physics.. The Bible shows proof there may be a Spiritual Dimension(Lazarus, Jesus, Enoch, Moses), the book of revelation, other things..
As a famed biologist recently mused, reality could be the consequence of observation per se - IOW, an illusion.
The "stage play" metaphor could be the reality.
We'll see ...
But for now, this is what physical reality "looks like" from the space/time coordinates of today's scientists. And it does indeed comport very well with Scripture, by my spiritual understanding of the matters involved.
What would physics look like in the 2nd dimension?..
Hello kosta50! Yes; but of course this is an illusion. The only way one can get to the notion that man can solve everything is by "reducing" the universe to the "size" of his tools (so to speak). Put another way, the tools are designed for investigations into finite nature -- that which is in space and time and subject to observation via direct sense perception (as extended technologically). Man has become the measure here -- or even, man's tools have become the measure here. What the measure can't reach is assumed to be not really existing.
The irony is that no physicist has ever seen, say, an atom! That is, atoms are not direct observables; so the "satellite model" that hosepipe recently referred to was constructed so that the mind could image this thing called atom.... As early as the 1920s physicists realized that the satellite model had no foundation in fact. It was simply an attempt to visualize the unvisualizeable. But in so doing, we falsify actual nature: This is what we mean by a "reduction of reality."
The Enlightenment philosophes were a huge part of our modern problem, as you note. LaPlace and Comte instantly come to mind. LaPlace so reduced reality that he could imagine it as something he could stand entirely outside of -- which is of course impossible. But in order for the observer to see the universe "whole," in the manner of a discrete entity that can be made an object of investigation, he is required to stand outside of it. He reduces the world to an object within his powers and subject to his control. Or rather, the illusion of control....
Consistent with this process of "objectifying the universe," of reducing it to a size that it is tractable for his observational tools, LaPlace also systematically replaced the Christian theological virtues of faith, hope, and love by moving them into a context of deterministic mathematics. Now we Christians all know that the theological virtues cannot be regarded as something amenable to scientific or mathematical investigation: How are they in any way discrete "observables" such that the scientific method could have anything to do with them? That question is not answered. But LaPlace helpfully writes, "The reason I am [doing] this is that people are believing things that they ought not to believe [!!!! sez he], and I'm going to give you a calculus that's going to structure your believing." In other words, LaPlace insists that you believe what he believes -- he is the self-selected "representative man" and the [totalizing] authority for all the rest of us. To give you an idea of what such reductions look like, LaPlace reduces hope to the formula "What should you bet on? What's a reasonable bet, and what's not?" In other words, hope must be made relentlessly "reasonable."
Darwinism -- quite aside from whatever merit it has as science -- has also played a tremendous role in "reducing" the universe, and in revolutionizing the idea of man. As Eric Voegelin notes [in "The Drama of Humanity," 1967, in Vol. 33 of his collected works], Darwinist evolution theory makes man into a function of nature. That's all. But he's the "top of the heap," evolutionally speaking.
Voegelin writes:
“Beyond the things that exist in time and space, there is not, in addition, a world that exists in a further time and space. The world, the expression ‘world,’ is an idea. The world does not exist…. If you have the world as an absolute, instead of the former realities [e.g., a transcendent God and an immanent world [immanent in the sense of “inside” 4D spacetime], man becomes a function of the world, and God becomes a function of man….Recently we've been inquiring into the nature of time. Voegelin has some useful advice on this subject: “…one has to develop a conception of time that is not a floating dimension, empty, but, as in modern physics, a parameter of something that exists. But it is consciousness that exists, and consciousness has a peculiar parameter that is called the timeless in time.”“When we say man is a function of the world, we may think specifically of the role that the theory of evolution has [played in making] man into a function of the world. Because the theory of evolution – not as a scientific [theory] but in the broader ideological sense, in which we usually speak of evolution – reduces man to the hitherto last outgrowth of a natural evolution, beginning from some beginnings and, through the chain of organic being, ultimately culminating in man. Man is a function of that nature which is in evolution, the last product of it….
“Kant has given the reason why a theory of evolution cannot serve to make man a function of nature and of this world…. If you put man as the last item in a chain of evolution, you can…trace back, in some way, to life in its simplest forms, [to] organic, or animal matter. You can then demonstrate that this organic life may have its origin in a chain of vegetative life going back [further in time]. You may then say that vegetative life has its origin in a chain of various forms of inorganic [matter], until you come to the last element of atomic physics, or something like that. That is, you do not have a beginning of man. You cannot explain man by arbitrarily putting a beginning somewhere within that chain. But if you take evolution seriously, you always have to go back further into the vegetative, into the inorganic part, and so on, [until] you come to the question of the matrix of a matter which potentially contains all evolution.
“But still you are faced with the question, Where does that matter come from, [who] devised it, and endowed it with the kind of evolution that led it, in the end, to culminate in man?... a theory of evolution does not furnish an explanation of man, it only shoves it back to an imaginary beginning…. Only when [these] premises are not questioned can the argument of evolution work….
“The next point is that God is a function of man. That point [became acute] in the nineteenth century with Feuerbach’s ‘psychology of projection.’ All religious ideas, especially the idea of God, were conceived by Feuerbach as a projection of contents of the human mind into a beyond…. The psychological explanation of religious ideas is the vehicle by which God and the religious ideas are transformed into functions of the human psyche. Here you have the first spectrum of constructions that are used when the world is erected into an absolute entity. That is, the idea of the world is made into an entity, what Whitehead has called ‘the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.’…
“…Feuerbach still left the matter at the level of the psychology of projections, while Marx more consistently said, ‘Why should we project? Let us pull these projections back into ourselves where they started!’ That means: Let us pull divinity back into our humanity and thereby become gods, or if not gods at least supermen. The expression ‘superman’ was used by Marx to designate the man who has pulled the projection of God back into himself. [Hegel had already done this, in his Phaenomenologie.] The same term was then used by Nietzsche for practically the same purpose…. Therewith, the revolt of man becomes visible as a revolt against God. God is pulled back into man, and divinized man becomes the center of all [reality] as he did in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries….
“Marx considered religion to be the opiate of the people, then later, in the formulation of Raymond Aron, Marxism is opium for the intellectual, and now the people take opium straight!”
Just some food for thought! Thank you so much for writing, kosta50!
Unless he has multiple bodies that are being sliced up and turned into bread and wine he can't be in the communion bread and wine.
I'm so glad you raised LaPlace - that way of thinking has metastasized throughout science, politics and culture. Seems to me that modern man does not realize he is on the brink of destroying himself from within.
So then, physics is a 3 dimensional attribute of 3 dimensional beings?..
My point about 2 dimensional reality is that physics would have little to say since it (1 spatial + 1 temporal dimension) would only be a line. Three dimensional reality (2 spatial + 1 temporal dimension) would be a plane, "flatland."
Note, in the book Flatland time is not a dimension - so two dimensional reality would be the plane, 1 dimension would be the line, the sphere is from the 3 dimensional world, etc.
I know what you said.. My point; is we are frogs in a well on this planet.. (all of us) and are like blind men in a room with an elephant.. using physics to measure and formulate what we cannot observe from our perspective(s).. A worthy task but limited.. I do have a contrary side to me.. Don't know where that comes from..
Some might believe Jesus is in the flesh even Now... (i.e. a fleshly God)
Most humans see themselves as flesh not spirit.. in that case they anthropomorphize themselves.. which voids the term(oxymoron).. No doubt Jesus' ministry proved he was more than flesh and called out for others to be more than flesh..
Anthropomorphizing Spirit to Flesh is a gross error.. (Screwtape Letters)
Not only anthropomorphizing God but each other of us..
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