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/
When did Bishop Menatios live, by the way?
It has been stated more than once by RC posters that your justification is not dependent on works. Are you stating this, or are you saying that your justification is contingent on works and that unless you continue throughout your life doing works you will lose your salvation. Please answer this and then we can get into parsing a definition of works.
Mother of Christ is fine. Mother of God is more precise, that is all. We do not object to the first, but you object to the second.
huge growth in understanding
Christian disunity of cosmic proportions thank to your Sola Scriptura superstition is not what I would call growth in understanding.
But someone prayed for you many a Rosary. If Christendom stopped praying, the universe would stop. This is why monasticism is vital in our lives.
The Christian Canon was formalized at the Carthage councils, presided by St. Augistine, in early 5c. There has not been a single Old Testament since without the Deuterocanons ever since in the Church, East of west. Trent confirmed it because "your guys" were quick with a scissors when the Word of God told you what you did not want to hear.
You know better than repeat this nonsense, by the way. It has been thouroughly debated with you.
We should fear and tremble, scripture says. Worry? Let Mr. Edwards "worry".
Tell you what, you do the fear and trembling, maybe you should create some rituals to help calm you from all that fear and trembling. I'm going to go forward and proudly proclaim Christ.
"When did Bishop Menatios live, by the way?"
I know he was alive in the late 20th century. He may still be.
Personally I don't separate faith and works - as I define works. I don't think they can be separated. But that's me.
I'm in over my head in the theology of justification particularly as its developed in Protestantism. I'm just trying to find a real and usable definition of "works" as in "saved by works" that's the big no-no. How do you differentiate it from other non-works activity, mental or physical.
If I try to come up with a differentiator, I'd say: Any activity done for the purpose our own personal reward, in an attempt to control God. Or something like that.
I don't think there's debate over the OT "works of law" criteria. The question of "works" as used in this topic is a larger category, I think?
So that's what I'm asking. Or trying to.
had to deal with such a cheeky question . . . . and his reply was that Holy Spirit had fallen on the folks concerned and he saw no reason to restrict the rest of the Christian experiences from those whom Holy Spirit had anointed, ordained, blessed etc.
I'll take Holy Spirit's anointing, ordaining, blessing, flowing through
compared to ANY laying on of hands and ceremonies from/by ALL the Cardinals, Popes and Bishops of ALL Christian sects from the last 2,000 years, COMBINED.
This is not rocket science. It is not that hard to wrap one's understanding around
. . . unless unScriptural, unGodly biases are barring the door.
Acts 19:15 And the evil spirit answered and said, Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are ye?
In the situation as in the above verse, one wants HOLY SPIRIT to be anointing and leading one, not some certificate from some dry, dead, hollow, fleshly focused, tradition bound hierarchy, bureaucracy, structure.
As this verse illustrates . . .
Romans 2:29
But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.
As that verse illustrates . . . it is again HOLY SPIRIT that is key, crucial, critical, essential--not the praise, sanction, rubber stamp of men.
Is there some higher calling than this?
Romans 8:14
For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.
And this:
Romans 8:16
The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:
And here, Peter himself is affirming the priesthood of all Believers:
1 Peter 2:5
Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.
BTW, I've administered the wine and the bread as The Lord's Supper to a Mary Knoll nun with her priest's blessing as she was considering it merely a memmento [Oh dear! How Scriptural!] of His death vs the real flesh and blood. Interesting, that.
As many of our Catholic friends here will attest to, I rarely, if ever, am accused of holding back anything. Catholicism started to take a doctrinal turn for the worst around 600 AD and finally corrupted itself with its humanistic ideals by 1200 AD. IF it is still a Christian religion, it is on life support and in great need of an infusion of TRUE Augustinian doctrine. It doesn't need anymore "miracles" of Mary; rather it needs a doctrinal miracle. Does that help?
But, it is good to know that you all are going to heaven even if you commit 5000 mortal sins between now and death.
Those who have been slaved to sin and mercifully set free from our bondage do not wish to return to our bondage. It is as Peter (your first Pope) stated when asked by our Lord Jesus, "Do you also wish to go away." Peter answered what every true Christian would answer, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life." (John 6:68)
What is the fabric of spacetime? It's not geometry. Geometry is only a representation of the fabric of space. The dimensions have an associated metric, that depends on the local energy density. That metric is simply a "virtual ruler", which sets the unit length of the dimension.
The fabric is the vacuum. Space is really a 4d fluid. One geometry that can be used to decribe it is a hypercube. The fabric representation of a sheet distorted in 3d, is used for visualization purposes. It's really a 4d fluid that's expanding, and that's the vacuum. That's the real part. The geometry is just a mathematical repressentation of it.
Sticking with "fabric", for visualization purposes. Gravitation is an energy that stretches a sheet in 2 dimensions, into a third dimension. In that picture, the changing metric of the fluid space, is represented by a changing metric for the third dimension, at each point on the sheet. This visualization contains only one dimensional metric which changes according to some energy density. The other 2 remain fixed. In the representation for the real fluid, the metric for all the dimensions change.
Notice in the fabric representation, the fabric is strtched. That means the fibers of the fabric are in tension, if there's any energy to distort it. The energy is contained as potential energy in the stretched fibers. It is negative energy. Note that no gravitons eminate from any energy density. If they did, they would carry all the energy away as negative momentum. Gravitons are particles of negative momentum that appear in the sheet when the distorting energy is applied. The negative energy in the sheet came as a result of doing work on the sheet. There's an equal "disappearance" of positive energy somewhere. So the total sum must remain zero.
In the universe, the total positive energy, that consists of energy, mass, dark matter and dark energy, is almost exactly balanced by the negative energy of the gravitational field. The sum is almost exactly zero. The same is true in the vacuum, the sum of the energy is almost exactly zero. The sum of the slight differences from the observable universe, and the vacuum is zero. The vacuum gravitates very slightly.
Consider the virtual particles that pop out of the vacuum as particle pairs. The pair is negative energy moving backwards in time and postive energy moving forwards in time. They appear to us as paticles moving forwards in time, of equal positive energy and opposite charges. It takes a postive amount of energy, such as a photon equal to twice the energy of either particle and a massive particle for momentum conservation to pop them out parmanently, so they can be seen. Conservation of E.
Now there's no reason that these particles ahould not be seen as equivalent positive energy in the vacuum and gravitate as such. That's the nature of the Cosmological constant problem. The particle pair in the vacuum does not gravitate, except as above. The total energy in the vacuum in all the possible particle pairs is ~10100, but we see only a tiny bit of that energy, something very close to zero. So, there's an apparent missing amout of negative energy and momentum, that is unaccounted for. That missing negative energy is what Randell's high gravitational coupling constant and "gravitons off the brane" is about. Those gravitons off the brain, are in the vacuum.
Particle models don't incorporate gravity, so such models as are contained in the standard model are asymptotic theories. They approach a representation of reality to a very high degree, but "blow up at high interaction orders, because the gravitational effects in the vacuum are not accounted for. The stadard model itself also has a vacuum that has a cosmological constant, ~1085 to big.
Getting back to outdents. An outdent is just the same plot, or graph upside down. What really happens is that the tension, or negative energy in the fabric changes. In the case of the 4d fluid vacuum, which is a superposition of all possible particle states, including the 85 orders of magnitude "missing" gravity, an expansion of that fluid, requires an increase in energy, that increase in energy appears as a decrease in the negative energy of the gravitational field. The expansion, thus accelerates. Note the decreasing gravitational field means the positive energy of the universe is decreasing. It's returning to the vacuum. From the beginning, throughout, and at the end, the total energy is zero.
Normally in particle physics, when a large vacuum energy is created by a brokem symmetry. It's tossed, or ignored, because only the real particles matter. Gravitation is not considered in the interactions, so there's no effect, other than that they are asymptotic theories. In string theory the same problem still arises. When the effective energy content of the vacuum is set to tiny, a broken symmetry bumps it right back up to over 1050. "I suspect you see energy/matter being the cause of the expansion of space/time."
I see it as a phase transition. Like a bubble forming in a pot of boiling water. The new vacuum fluid and it's contents, the visible universe, are headed back to the original condition. In this case, it's like a phase transition that propagates like a ballon, through the original vacuum(space). It's more of a propagation of a phase distubance in the original vacuuum.
"I see energy/matter being created as the universe expands "
Conservation of energy applies. The total must be zero. The orignal phase transition was a separation, a parting. It is on it's way back to the original vacuum. That's the waters God hovered over in Gen 1. They contained the empty and formless Earth. The vacuum is a superposition of all possible vacuums, thus it is not a water, but the waters. Then God said, let there be light, which was the beginning of the phase transition, that separated night and day. This is the beginning of inflation when some original symmetry was broken. The original phase transition is what will propagate as the surface of a bubble and be the sky.
" In either case, space/time and energy/matter are phenomenons of the expanded universe."
The universe expands at ~c. That is the propagation velocity of a disturbance through the vacuum. The surface of the bubble moves at ~c. There's no way I can think of to determine what the elocity actually is, other than it's close to c. All the energy contained in the visible universe as carried as if it were impurities carried along with a phase disturbance as in zone refining. In zone refining, a pure metal containing some impurities is purified by producing a melted zone that travels through the bar from end to end. The impurity concentration in the vacuum is about 10-30g/cm3, that's the density of the whole visible universe. So, I don't see it as some do. They have a front that travels at c, and into nothing, that came from something that popped out of no where. That's not physically possible according to their own model, or logic. That's done to simplify the matter, to look at and understand parts of the picture. It doesn't give a complete picture.
"You are perceiving extra-dimensions as compactified (string theory) whereas I am perceiving expanded dimension(s) from the big bang (higher dimensional dynamics.) Perhaps that is why you have confidence in CERN’s upcoming test to observe the so far undetected Higgs field/boson?"
There is no real difference as far as the phenomina, only the representations differ, and both representations are mathematically equivalent by mapping one into the other. Vassa's (5d,2t) mapps directly to a string theory of 10d, or 11d. They are just different ways of looking at the same reality. Neither one of these are too accurate though, just remarkably close in some aspects. Regarding the Higgs, it will be observed, only particulars of it could vary, like it's exact E. So, a compactified string theory, gives what looks like a Higgs, the std model does, and so does Vaffa's (5d,2t) in the interaction, it's in the mappings that show they are mathematically equivalent, asymtotic representations.
"what we consider to be “real.”"
We can only use representations of the reality to know and understand it. The physics is really the reality itself. The physical theories are just representations of it.
I didn't finish the reply to 7900. I take Gen 3 as parable and the characters Adam and Eve are there to explain why we are here. Each individual is represented by Adam and Eve. It was not only that God wanted to reveal Himself. He also wanted to give the gift of life. It was a gift of love. He wanted all men to reveal themselves. They were to choose where they would live. The characters Adam and Eve couldn't do that, per Ezekiel 18. Would they choose Him, or would they prefer some other set of values. Those that live in Heaven, would choose values like the Holy Spirit. Those that choose other values, unlike those held by the Holy Spirit, would live with others like them.
God put the world on the stage, so that they would in turn reveal themselves. It was to be mutual, they were made in His image and likeness, not in His Holy Spirit. They'd have to choose and develope their own spirit, with the gifts given, including free will.
" We cannot clearly see the spiritual reality from here which is to say, while yet in the flesh."
I think we can. That's why He came to teach. Some recognized Him, others did not. It's that stage thing and each was to reveal themselves. John 9 gives a good example of characters revealing themselves. Matt 11:25,
"At that time Jesus said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children."
Luke 8:17,
"For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open. "
I don't think naturalism has anything to do with the stage play. It's those things that concern the relations amoung sentient rational beings that do. That is what the stage play is about. Naturalism is just a side show. In the end, the anthropic principle applies. Nature is just what it takes for us to be here. The recognition of God depends on looking at what He has to say, not what nature has to say.
In the parable of the garden, the fruit was eaten, yet neither of them had what they attempted to take, which was the bread of life. The gifts given in Gen 1:26-27 must be used to determine how they will chew and digest the bread of life, and how they do the same with, or whether they prefer the bread of someone else.
I think Earthlings are going to have to head out to the high heavens if they're going avoid the sun's red giant phase, and go all the way to the big rip. Being that the we are only a part of that universe, and I see no reason God should limit his love in such a way to include only one planet as the only stage in the whole universe, the great part of which can't be seen, there may be others that get rescued from the big rip. LOL! Just a musing...
Wow. Thanks.
About as much of a stretch as timer's posts but somewhat more comprehensible at least in spots!
Thanks.
That knowledge is a hope that we are His; being certain is presumptious.
Even so, I would respectfully disagree on the need for a pressure valve.
I think the idea I had was that there are lots of currents, flows, pressures, urgings desires, blah blah blah. For example, the way some people talk, if we DON'T officially call Mary co-redemptrix, the price of oil will go up or some other terrible thing will happen.
So, if we can stipulate just for this example, that there might be a good reason (as opposed to a bad reason, like keeping oil cheap) to give that title to Mary, the vast, creaky, machinery of the Vatican, maybe even in some ways because it's a bureaucracy, can get all sort of methodical and say, "Our Holiness, we have a list of umpty-ump reasons why it's NOT a good idea, and umpty-ump plus one arguments in favor, so we recommend doing nothing at this time." A little plodding now and again is a great governor on whim disguised as inspiration.
But all that is introduction to asking if you would care to say more about the good and bad aspects of pressure valves.
It really is a quite different view, radically different.
I think I could say for both the RC and EO that a clear indication someone is not a saint is that they claim to be.
With one correction "There is that which is not of God." The Creation is not God. What God created was good. Evil is not a creature of God. God did not create evil. Evil does not exist. If all mankind suddenly turned to God, evil would "vanish" instantly.
as LONG as one holds onto the guiding principle that everything we say is wrong
Oh, I agree wholeheartedly.
Do you have a comment on "Knowing (or seeing) isn't causing"?
I am not sure where this comes from. It's a sweeping generalization. Please elaborate.
Annalex, you preach another gospel. Salvation is by grace through faith and not of works. Period.
Your arguments do not stand the test of Scripture. You ignore the vast majority to twist a minority. It is another gospel Annalex.
Christ's salvation was a gift. If we do one thing to contribute to it it isn't a gift any more, it is recompense.
Christ paid the debt in full. How dare anyone say it wasn't enough or complete.
Mother of Christ is fine. Mother of God is more precise, that is all. We do not object to the first, but you object to the second.
This is an example of why, after 8000 posts later, some people just refuse to be swayed or see common sense, despite being given Bible verses that make this all crystal clear and not worth arguing over...
And it came to pass, that when Elizabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the infant leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost: And she cried out with a loud voice, and said: Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? Luke 1:41-43
I would like to hear an explanation that Mary is the Mother of something OTHER than God in this verse... WHO is the Lord of Elizabeth here, other than God???
Annalex, this is why I rarely post here anymore. Apparently, "Mother of God" is wrong because Catholics call Mary the Mother of God, so some feel they must argue against it for a minimum of 5000 posts, further dividing the Temple of God. (see 1 Cor 3:17 for what's in store for such dividers of the Body of Christ)..
Regards
Yes, faith comes from God, but we must answer the call. God does not compel us to answer.
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