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/
Agreed. I've used it plenty often.
I've been rightly accused in my past . . . and may be again . . .
of praying so thoroughly, exaustively, meticuously, obsessively that there must have been some element of thinking that by my thoroughness, I would compel God to act.
NOT SO! Like most Loving Father's, He's eager to act when doing so is in our best interests.
And, once, Mother's "JESUS HELP US" was sufficient prayer to stop the twister (small tornado) born tin roofing material from touching our humble hut.
LOL.
I suppose I could search through dogpile.com
Glad there is prayer for healing and miracles etc. evidently with fruitful effect.
Excellent.
If you understand then even a small portion about Beauty, maybe this is a way to begin a small understanding of what RCs feel about the beautiful objects in our Church and faith. (I'm speaking of art; the EO can speak authoratively about Iconography.)
In creating Beauty we are cooperating with God, it is God's Beauty through us - we are instruments of Divine Will, and the Infinite communicating, touching us, through His Beauty - through nature or through the visual arts.
We should not deny or shut down our senses, rather open them up, purify them and use them to know and grow closer in union with the divine.
Thanks for your reply.
Further, because of Blogger's evident scholarship and sincerity, I am now coming to question the possibility of proving anything from Scripture -- that is, of providing a proof which would persuade a disinterested third party (if we could find such a person). I mean, they trot out their texts, and especially since once I read them pretty much as they read them, they just do not persuade any longer.
We trot out our texts, and if they come close to looking like a coherent and persuasive argument, suddenly we learn we have to study the Bible in its entirety to see the coherence of how it says what they say it says. And since they've been studying it much longer than we, why we might as well take their word. If we knew Scripture as they know Scripture we'd know that Sola Scriptura and Sola Fide are right. So they say.
But I think lining up excerpts like artillery, won't work. I see "works" and "merit" as further mercies and gifts God showers on me. That evidently drives them so much to distraction that they, or some of them, feel driven to rise up against even the mention of such a notion, which they hold so dreadful that any amount of mockery, cruelty, and mischaracterization or just plain stultifying repetition is justified in speaking against it.
And we fall into the same trap and yield to the same temptation.
Too bad.
"Thanks for your kind reply . . . however, from my perspective, the above is not a kind part.
I and those of my perspective are no more outside THE CHURCH UNIVERSAL, than you are."
I meant no offense. I was using the term The Church in the way it has been traditionally used since +Ignatius of Antioch to mean what are now collectively the Latin, Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches.
As for The Church as it is finally determined at the Final Judgment, well you may be absolutely right. On another thread, I posted this comment from +Symeon the New Theologian (11th century), one of my favorite saints:
"The Church is the body of Christ, His bride, the world to come, and the temple of God. The members of His body are all the saints. However, not all of the saints who will please God have yet appeared, nor yet is the whole body of Christ thus complete, nor the world to come yet filled. I say this about God's Church. There are, though, many unbelievers in the world today who will believe in Christ; many sinners and debauched who will repent and change their lives; many undecided who will be persuaded. There are many, a great many, up to the sound of the last trumpet, who will prove well-pleasing to God and who have not yet been born. All those who are foreknown by God must be born, come into being, before the world beyond our world, the world of the Church, of the first-born, of the heavenly Jerusalem, is filled up. Then shall the end come and the fullness of the body of Christ be complete."
I have no quarrel with beauty pointing us to God. The Heavens do quite well at that.
I toured the Vatican somewhat extensively in the days I was there. I have some respect for beauty as a testimony to God the Author of Beauty.
And, having written the remaining colorful post above about objects, I probably have little or nothing else left of value to say about that.
Thanks for your kind posts.
I believe you'll find through DNA research that ALL races of men come from the same basic patterns. Granted, there are local, even racial variations, even down to individual DNA "footprints"; but ALL the people living on the earth go back genetically to ONE common EVE. The interpretation that WE are adam and eve's children and everybody ELSE is somehow of inferior stock, is RACIST.
I see it as the "flat earth" philosophy : #1 : The earth is FLAT. #2 : Our people are the most SUPERIOR of all peoples living on this flat earth. #3 : I'm the most important person of my people(WELL! My MOTHER thinks so!). #4 : Therefore I AM GOD(so saith the infant in the cradle).
So, a bit of humility here : get that self centered NONSENSE out of your head, KEEP it out. Globally you and I and everyone else on this ROUND planet are pisant WORMS walking around on the bottom of an ocean of air, and the earth is but a mere dust mote in the VAST universe. Find reality, avoid fantasy; it leads NOWHERE.
The REAL story of NOAH later...
Amen, silverlings. When one demands to be called Master or Father, he puts himself above others. Jesus never put himself above others. HE was truly a servant and worthy of being our father, brother, friend because He served humanity.
Makes sense. 'Course where I live it'd be seven miles to the next house in the 'village' but..
Actually a small "mission" I believe they call it is a mere five miles or so away. I couldn't make it but some Anglican friends visited there last weekend for a talk and a "Chant Sing-Along". Somehow I'm guessing they don't have sing-alongs in Greece.
I could dig it! As long as the shoes are pointy toes and spike heels (LOL).
Think of all the ways you could have expressed disagreement. You could have said,"I disagree and I disapprove." But you used what some call a "minced oath", an expression of contempt, as if to say,"That opinion is garbage."
Please think of that when you suggest we have a cruel "tone of voice".
I think I understand. And, it's not a huge problem . . .to me.
It's just that when folks sling arrows about our perspective being insulting, hateful etc . . . one kind of would like the other side to see how things strike us from our perspective on such matters.
THanks for your kind and understanding reply.
You do have quite a way with words, bro! LOL.
"Somehow I'm guessing they don't have sing-alongs in Greece."
Not that I've seen. Mostly we dance while someone else sings. :)
A "Chant Sing-a-Long" eh? Well, I suppose one could call much of the DL that.
Technically, "free gift" is not even a redundancy, as I explained earlier. When I answered, I took you to mean that "free" was a superfluous adjective. In common usage, there is nothing wrong with "jumbo shrimp" as an oxymoron. For a purest, the phrase "bitter-sweet" might do. My favorite example of a redundancy is "born-again Christian". :)
Would you say,
Or is it only hurtful when Catholics say things like that? It's not the perspective I object to, but the manner of expressing it, as though only a fool would disagree and those who do should be laughed at for their opinions
As far as I'm concerned, to take part in this conversation has not only meant being called a liar, but being condescended to and talked down to, and, worse than that, it has meant enduring gratuitously mean mockery repeated over and over again and then when I protest, being told that it was done out of love or a sense of divine mission.
After I tried to approach each of you gently, you minimized your own offensive language and now complain about offensive language used against you or your viewpoint.
Can we maybe commit ourselves to trying a little harder?
I like to think . . . I'm reasonably gentle and mild unless and until provoked by some outrageousness or another.
Nevertheless, I still have tried hard to keep it on the issues and perspectives as I've seen things and not on personalities and individuals--mostly, I think pretty successfully.
Given the 3,000 hours of intense group experience, and given my personality etc. I tend to be extremely expressive and more than a little "in your face" in my style.
To me--it's all reasonable fair communications wihtout ranchor or ill will toward anyone.
Nevertheless, when a double standard is clearly cropping up and some rank brazen hypocrisy and blindness appears, then I'm likely to get more vivid in my communications. But I don't do it out of the blue without being provoked into it.
Then, typically, from my observation, the finger pointing, whining and thin-skinned wailing begins. Strikes me as very underwhelming and disingenuous.
I don't think you can find a case where I've responded vividly with biting satire unless there was either a preposterous assertion offered or a hypocritical, brazen double standard thrown in my lap.
If folks want gentleness and calm reasonableness from me . . . it's pretty easy to trigger. Ask Dr. Eckleburg.
There may be [though I doubt it] and odd time where I wax fiesty just because the topic triggers it with no personalities involved per se. But I think those posts are pretty clearly responding to issues and ideas instead of personalities.
I still think that in an open forum like this--especially with strong emotions about religion--folks ought not speak up with chips on their shoulders nor thin skinned.
BTW, Guffaws to the max is many orders of magnitude gentler than
'used of satan to lure folks to hell'
And, I think if someone's perspective is too delicate to stand being laughed at, it's probably too delicate to share on such an open forum.
In the earliest years hereon, I was assaulted ruthlessly, visciously, harshly virtually for breathing and having an opinion from my perspective about much of anything.
And, a lot of tiems, I earned it. There was more of an attitude in those days of--if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
But in other venues, I often earned the harsh rebukes I got. I deserved to be laughed to derision. So what. I learned and grew from it.
Isn't that the objective?
Regardless of what the other person MAY have intended from their darker side, consciously or un?
I don't recall saying anything hurtful to you, Mad Dawg, but if I did, I apologize. Sometimes it's not what some of these protestant haters say but the 'tone' in which they say it and they're usually pretty condescending and nasty. NO one is in a perfect or 'one true church.' We're all pilgrims on a journey to God and I, for one, as well as many of the Christian protestants here, want to see people of all religions 'make it' and not depend on their traditions. Mxxx
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