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/
Christ was a Second Adam in the sense that he was perfect man as well as God.
The devil doubted that Christ was a perfect God and a perfect man in one Person. If he believed it, he would not have tried to tempt Him.
No, Christ had free will and could have rejected the Cross.(Nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou will-Mat.26:39)
He was tempted in all ways that we are, but without sin.(Heb.4:15)
The temptation was for Christ to use His own Deity and not to depend on the Father (make stones into bread-no mere man could do that)...As for Christ's baptism, that had to do with the offical beginning of His earthly ministry, hence the Holy Spirit and the Father were both present
The Holy Trinity is eternally one in essence and inseparably Father-Son-Holy Spirit. There was never a "time" when the Word was not with the Father, or the Holy Spirit with them. Christ's "own" divinity is not "His" own; there is only one divinity, one nature that is divine.
True, the Second Person of the Trinity was never separated from the Father and Holy Ghost, being in heaven with them as well as on earth in the flesh on earth (Jn.3:13)
Thus, we have the 'mystery of Godliness' (1Tim.3:16)
The Gospel was written without a clear understanding or revelation of the Holy Trinity (thus the refrences to HS descending on Christ at Baptism and "leading" Him intot he desert), just as the Apostles did not fully believe or understand Christ's mission or, for that matter, who He really was, from the beginning. That gradually changed in time.
The revelation of the Trinity was totally accurate, even if the there was not a complete understanding at the time of what the Trinity was.
That was a mystery revealed to the church (Col.2:9).
It has often seemed to me, in Scripture that
God, tends, when describing someone as perfect
to be speaking to the attitude of their heart vs every detail of their behavior.
It still boggles my mind that any authentic believers could construe Mary as sinless.
If ANY human could be sinless, then Christ’s death was unnecessary.
Oh I certainly agree with you there, kosta50! Indeed, it turns out you and I really don't disagree about much.
But this "closure" business: I am pretty sure there is none to be had! First of all, there is no "certainty" in a contingent world. Secondly, and of vastly greater importance, is the seeming fact that religion and theology address precisely those questions that must ever remain "open": That is, the relations that obtain between God and man, world and society, which comprehend the eternal questions that man has asked since the dawn of humanity. Science and unaided reason are no helps in this domain.
I am a devoted student of Eric Voegelin, who says that truth is never a final possession of mankind, but always an open, on-going quest in which all the generations of man -- past, present, and future -- participate.
Ptolemy in his day represented a very great advance. With the advent of improved observational tools, his work has subsequently been built upon, with revisions, with the result of greater precision and accuracy of scientific measurement. Yet in all likelihood, there will be other advances in the future, built on the stage of the present scientific accomplishments. Just as was the case with Ptolemy, who was after all a leading scientist of his time....
You wrote: "Your complementary theory, besides being based on human perceptions and logic, only indicates that we cannot grasp the Creation." We cannot grasp it "once and for all," as if it were already "completed" in time. It is not: the Creation plays out in a temporal process, which is to say it has a future about which we presently know little if anything.
But the credit for the complementary theory goes to Bohr. That's his brainchild! Though I have taken it very much to heart, and look for complementarities everywhere these days. :^) It's actually been quite liberating -- as Bohr's and Einstein's great biographer, Abraham Pais said it was ("Personally I have found the complementary way of thinking liberating.") Hey, it sure beats having to think like a digital machine! ("Yes/No, true/false, black/white, 0/1.")
All complementarity really says is although you can know the state of two apparently mutually-exclusive things that together form a system, you cannot know them both at one and the same time. In physics, this plays out into Heisenberg's uncertainty principle (or as Bohr preferred to call it, the indeterminacy principle). Following Bohr, I do not believe that the complementarity relations apply only to physics, but are actually quite general in nature. Indeed, Bohr saw applications in psychology, biology, and anthropology (for starters).
You wrote:
It really doesn't matter what we grasp, for none of it is of any consequence to the Creation. We are a bunch of primates with souls, wholly incapable of intellectually absorbing what we are faced with, with or without Spirit.I do disagree with you here, kosta!!! Just because we can't see the whole ball of wax entire, doesn't mean we can't know anything about the whole ball of wax (which is actually a work in progress, so to speak). And I imagine that what and how we think is amazingly consequential to the unfoldment of divine reality....
It would take a book to explain that. But then, my very dear friend Alamo-Girl and I are working on one, working title: "God and the Observer problem." God willing, we'll finish it some day. :^)
It's been delightful chatting with you, kosta! Thank you so much for writing!
“It still boggles my mind that any authentic believers could construe Mary as sinless.”
Rather substanialy the majority of Christians, being Latins and Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox, do exactly that, Q!
“If ANY human could be sinless, then Christ’s death was unnecessary.”
Oh, not at all. In fact no matter if one ascribes to the Western atonement theory of salvation or the Eastern resurrectional concept, the result is the same. The perfect effect of Christ’s death is a sinless life through a perfect response to grace...which is just what the Theotokos did.
What a fascinating piece of information, Kolokotronis! But why do you "tend to agree with those old timers?" John is a man after my own heart -- and clearly, you love him too.
Yet to love John does not mean one ought to disparage Paul. They look pretty "complementary" to me: Both reveal God's Truth.
Thank you ever so much for the link to +John Chrysostomos!
“But why do you “tend to agree with those old timers?”
+John’s theology is very complex and relies on concepts which were not back then, nor for that matter now, part of the knowledge base of the average person. We see this even here on FR, though in great measure that is as a result of truly awful English translations of his gospel. In the early Church the laity were both allowed and encouraged to read +John after baptism and chrismation but even then only under the guidance of a spiritual father for some time.
“Yet to love John does not mean one ought to disparage Paul.”
No, of course not. My antipathy for +Paul is sui generis! :)
“Thank you ever so much for the link to +John Chrysostomos!”
You are welcome. I tell people who are about to get married to read Homily XX...as I was directed to read it many years ago.
And all praise to you, Kolokotronis, for passing along that advice! Hope lots of folks out there in "the marrying state" will avail themselves of it.
Of course, such would be a most rude awakening and rebuke to the fem-libs out there. But then they are self-deranged anyway, and so possibly hopeless. :^)
As for the putative cultural inaccessibility of John's Gospel way back when (i.e., in the period of which we are presently speaking): Any student of Plato would have felt very much "at home" with John, beloved apostle, in this speaking of the very greatest, of the most tremendous things ordained by God (Plato's "Beyond"), as directly experienced and contemplated in the human psyche: the "site and sensorium" of conscious experience that Plato called the Metaxy, the "In-Between" of human experiential reality....
Oh. I can see how/why such issues should complicate theology....
Still, I am unable to discern any conflict between the Platonic insights and those of the dispensation inaugurated by the Crucifixion.
Have you noticed any such, dear Kolokotronis?
Yup, and you probably deserved it. :)
Many of my fondest memories...are of the times I spent with them. Just thinking of them makes me smile. What a blessing they are to us!
My sentiment just the same. :)
In a spiritual sense, they are (spiritual) facts. We all know what love is but we cannot put it in words adequately or all inclusively, we cannot give a shape, color, dimentions. Love and mercy did not come from the rocks or the clouds. It is something we don't encounter in nature, where necessity justifies everything.
True. These churches were Catholic, and the scriptures were complete, with the Deuterocanons.
The rest of your post is not worth time responding.
Th Great commission is given to the Church. As lay Catholic, I have a part in it.
Yes, -- although the sacrifice of Christ made this grand scheme possible.
No, the sacrifice of Christ made this grand scheme. Period.
I can... Love is exactely and expressly sacrifice..
Whatever you love you will sacrifice for..
Whatever you do not love you will not sacrifice for..
Sacrifice(love) is in degrees. Love is not a feeling its a deed..
It is rather clear, is it not, that Romans 5 speaks of some sin, connects it to Adam, and attaches it to all or nearly all regardless of their personal behavior? I cannot shake the impression that all the Orthodox Church is rejecting is the term, while accepting the essence.
Well, it is a hypothesis, and I do not argue with hypotheses. There is nothing in the scripture that would compel this view. The descriptions I mentioned are deliberately sweeping: "perfect", "filled with grace", "without blame".
I see that Kolokotronis replied, for which I am very grateful. I couldn't have answer any better.
It was GOD Himself through the Angel Gabriel in Luke 1:28. If GOD said “Hail, full of Grace, the Lord is with thee”, in the same verse, could Mary have been ‘full of grace’ or ‘blessed’ or have the ‘Lord with her’, had she been stained by original sin?
Brother, our Churches have been at this for a long time and this is going to be a tough one. We have learned, despite our few but very profound theological differences, to love one another and in many ways and on many occasions , act as if there has never been a millennial split between us.
I will answer you insofar as my Church teaches it, and has taught forever, and everywhere.
We did not inherit our ancestral parent's 'sin,' but their mortal nature, which is a consequence of their sin. Thus, the only thing we have from the is their mortality, and mortality is not sin, but an effect of sin.
Grace does not make us immortal. The grace we receive at Holy Baptism is adoption into the Church, where we can, in Eucharistic life, return to God and become immortal. Our Lord did not die on the Cross to make us immortal, but to make it possible for us to become immortal. As we sing nowadays "Christ is Risen from the dead, trampling death by death, and to those in graves bestowing life."
The Orthodox teach and have always taught that Mary was made favorable to God as the Annunciation occurred. Immacyulate Conception is meaningless to us, because she was still mortal.
Adam and Eve were created neither mortal nor immortal. I don't think that was the case with the "Second Eve." We believe that she died. The Catholic Curch is silent on that.
One Catholic Freeper once said that she was "baptized" at her own conception. That would not make her a "goddess" any more than it make us, but that would certainly enable her to choose not to sin.
I actually don't have a problem with that, but it is not Scriptural, and there is no consensus patrum on that issue. What evidence do we have that she received grace at her own conception?
We do know that when the Angel addressed her she was full of grace. The rest is speculation.
Luther and Erasmus: The Controversy Concerning the Bondage of the Will
lol.
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