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/
If you take that attitude, I'll ask you to stop using our book.
[:-)=====
To the "false seers", yes. So?
So far, which part of "Catholic offshoots [...] want to deify Mary literally [and they] petitioned the Pope to do just that" do you still claim to be a true statement?
As a Non-Catholic Christian, I don't see why, other than mentioning that she is Jesus' mother, Mary has to play into a sound understanding of Christology. You know the councils well. People went back and forth between is He all God and no man? Is He part God and part man? Is He all man carrying the Attributes of God? Etc., etc.,
At that time, using the term Theotokos MAY have helped clarify somthing - though I still believe Mother of Jesus suffices. Today, with Mary as Co-Redemptrix, Mediatrix, Advocate, Savior, and Creator of the Sabbath (as many Catholics believe), calling her Mother of God is just one more loaded term we could do without. Look at the discussion! We have folks denying that she ever felt pain when Jesus was born. She felt pain during His lifetime. A sword pierced through her heart too as His mother. But, we can't even let her be a normal human being and have to ascribe things to her that the Bible never does.
Such is a horrible injustice to God. To think that the God of the Universe, who sanctifies us, couldn't use a vessel like us (with original and other sin), sanctify it and bless her as the bearer of His Son? No. We have to have Mary not only being sinless but being immaculately conceived as well. It isn't right and it takes glory away from God by creating an alternate object of devotion. We are never told to be devoted to anyone other than God Himself. The Holy Spirit, when he came wouldn't even testify of His person but of Christ alone. And we are supposed to sanctify things to Mary's honor and glory?
She was a woman. A beautiful and holy woman. But just a woman. She wasn't higher than the rest of us. She wasn't sinless. She was blessed and faithful and we should admire her but not to the point that she becomes the object of our devotion.
No, airesiV means "choosing," "making a choice." In ecclesiastical application, it refers to those who make a choice that is different from the Church doctrine. There is no judgment or derogatory personal connotation in it. In other words it's not name-calling.
Also, the standard translation for orthodoxy is "right belief"
Orthodoxy means "straight" "upright" orqo and "glory," "praise" doxa, ortho-doxa.
In Church Slavonic Православие (Pravoslavie, from pravo upright, straight, and slava, praise, or glory).
And the idea that a limitless and eternal God would appear in time and limited in space, enter her womb like light through the glass is of course perfectly factual and credible.
If her pregnancy was without physical entry, why would a Birth lacking physical exit not be possible? That would be when a viable diploid egg was present
A 'viable diploid egg' is an oxymoron, spunkets. An egg is a haploid, by definition, and the fact that women lose at least one every month (if not fertilized) during their menstrual age means it's not viable.
None of it.
Mary is God Dogma
A new movement of Catholics is calling for the proclamation of a dogma elevating Mary to the status of God. This effort is being led by a Marian visionary who claims to have received visions of the Blessed Virgin way back 1994. The visionary's group, MARY-IS-GOD CATHOLIC MOVEMENT (MIGCM), claims Marian Divinity to be the real third secret of Fatima.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_Dogmas#Mary_is_God_Dogma
As an Orthodox Christian, I do not change doctrines or terminology to fit fashion. The mind of the Church understands 'Theotokos' to clarify and guard the same truths now as in 431, 'Christotokos' still denys them. Nor does the Church insist that the canon of Scripture, our primary written testimony to Christ, to God, and to the history of our salvation is exhaustive.
Some of your complaints about Latin mariology are just, though you probably frame them for the wrong reasons. We Orthodox regard the 'Immaculate Conception' as a jury-rigged fix to paper over a disconnect between the Latin (mis)understanding of Ancestral Sin (termed 'Original Sin' in the West) and the Church's long teaching concerning Mary's purity. While we're at it, though Mary was, indeed, assumed bodily into heaven, it was after her death (a point the Latin declaration of the dogma of the Assumption deliberately leaves ambiguous, as a large faction among the Latins hold that she did not die. As I understand it, it was concern for a hoped for reunion with the Orthodox that restrained the Pope, who himself held the view that Mary did not die, from including language to that effect in the proclaimation.)
There is an Orthodox objection particularly to the conjunction of the Immaculate Conception and a deathless bodily assumption, as it makes Mary nature not ours, but a pre-lapsarian Adamic nature. 'Not assumed, not redeemed' was the cry of the Fathers against monothelitism and monergianism, on which basis, I would argue that Mary's nature being other than ours vitiates the basis of our salvation as effectively as separating Christ's person or denying either of His natures.
Nonetheless, the tradition of the Church is that Mary (and the Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist John), while not sinless in the sense that Christ is sinless, nonetheless did not commit personal sin. (I have a dispute with my priest, who takes the more extreme view that this includes involuntary sins as well as voluntary sins, while I incline to the view that it includes only voluntary sins.) It has also, always been the understanding of the Church, East and West, that she was preserved from the pangs of childbirth (which the Fathers associate with the passions and the engendering of children through sexual intercourse, so if you'd like a Scriptural text to support the Church's position, look in Genesis), but experienced their anguish and more when the 'sword pierced through her heart' seeing Him on the Cross.
LOL! I forgot about that one. :)
I didn't say that it was.
You are late on the conversation.
A bunch of so-called Protestant groups were named as not believing in the Trinity early on.
I said that some offshoots of Catholicism have petitioned the Pope to deify Mary. I'm not sure at this point regarding that actual petioning of the Pope, but apparently this is a movement Benedict is aware of and the Cardinal there in the Philippines is being looked to for an "official" answer from Rome.
Read v. 35, "For whosoever shall do the will of God, he is my brother, and my sister, and mother."
not in this passage, or John 7. In this passage, the distinction is made between his bros, as in related and close to Mary and all others.
In John 7, I agree, the likely reference is to relatives.
The term may apply to cousin.
OK, but I don't think Jesus referred to John the Baptist as a relative in any particular way. Why? I offered some ideas, but the simple answer is, we don't know.
Thank you, that is all I needed.
This "Mary is God" is a joke, either intended or not, better ignored.
As a non-Eastern Orthodox Christian, I see none of these things in the Mary of Scripture, so I reject them.
In theological circles, one may do well leaving it as Mother of God. But we live in a generation that doesn't even understand what the Incarnation is and think that Jesus is just some guy on a cross or just a baby in a manger that we think of twice a year. Things have to be clear if the gospel is to reach people. They have to be broken down. I understand that by calling her Mother of God you do not mean that she preceded Christ's divinity. But would a non-theologian realize that? Someone pics up a book just on Mary. It isn't particularly a theological book, but it offers a devotion to her as Mother of God. What are they going to think?
Paul, when he preached to the Athenians, broke it down into their language. The language was unequivocal.
In this day and age of sound bites, we don't always have that luxury.
Jesus. All God. All Man. Born of a Virgin. Crucified to pay the penalty for our sinning. Resurrected to give us life. Sitting at the right hand of the Father interceding for us. Coming again for us in power and Glory.
I don't think they are joking though. It is sad. But there is a group of Catholics who want to make Mary God.
The MIGCM is a heresy and its author is Dominic Sanchez Falar of Cebu City, Philippines. I am not certian how many "followers" he has. His greatest "strength" is the Internet, which he floods with his agendas.
There are about 1.2 billion Catholics in the world. A dozen self-ordained female "priests" and a crock in the Pilippines is hardly worth a mention, unless it is part of another agenda.
You can probably find "Catholics" who believe in anything on that basis, and have a website to prove it. There are, however, about 1 billion Catholics, and all believe in the Marian dogmas, without a slightest inclination to deify her.
What is the "membership" in this group? How many peope are verifiably backing this heresy?
I don't know. All I know is that articles that I have read have said it is popular in the Philippines.
The Catholic and Orthodox operate based on the councils of the Church and episcopal decisions. Our primary function is to preserve the truths once taught. "Mother of God" is one of them; it was not chosen in 5c. for frivolous reasons, and people had very serious misunderstandings about the Christian faith then. If the Evangelicals do not want to teach that, why no one is forcing you. Neither Reader David or I, I assure you, plan to spend days on end arguing with the Evangelicals what to teach their flock.
If, however, someone is going to look at our teachings and erroneously conclude from them that Mary is God, or preexisted Christ, or what have you, we will correct them. This is why we have the Catechism.
It's credible to me, because the story checks out. The facts are the evidence that support the story. There is Isaiah's testimony and that contained in the Gospels. I don't take what's said about the virgin birth based solely on what is written about it alone. Jesus claimed to be God. He's the only one in history that ever showed up in person and did so. It's His claim that I've looked at and evaluated for truth. With that, the rest fits in.
The miraculous birth doesn't fit in at all. There's no testimony of it written in scripture and it doesn't make sense to me. It would in fact say that God did not become man. There's no point to being carried and born of woman if God's just going to beam out anyway. It's illogical. Also, all I've seen that justifies the claim is that her hymen remained intact. That's also ridiculous to me. There's no point to it. I suppose the afterbirth beamed out too.
" If her pregnancy was without physical entry, why would a Birth lacking physical exit not be possible?"
The physical entry refers to intercourse only. In order for the birth to occur, something physical had to happen. What it was in particular, I don't know. Now a physical exit is not possible, because Jesus was a real physical baby subject to the laws of physics. As long as He became a man, he remained one in the same way as all other men. Of course the conception was also subject to the laws of physics, that does not mean I know the particulars.
" A 'viable diploid egg' is an oxymoron, spunkets. An egg is a haploid, by definition,"
Normally the diploid egg is called a fertilized egg. In this case, I just called it a viable diploid egg, because it wasn't fertilized in any humanly capable way. Those things split and become zygotes, and so on...
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