Posted on 01/25/2002 7:34:05 AM PST by patent
JIM Caviezel takes the sex out of sex symbol.Well, he'd like to, anyway. The rising star of Hollywood hits and drooling Internet fan sites is a devout Roman Catholic who says his faith forbids him from getting randy on camera.
This is the man who starred in last year's "Angel Eyes" only after J. Lo agreed to keep it on during their premarital lovemaking.
"I just said, 'Look, put a top on her,' " Caviezel told The Post. " 'I'm gonna keep my shorts on, she's gonna keep hers on. Get the camera and shoot around it.' And that's out of devotion, love and respect to my wife."
In L.A. recently, where the 33-year-old lives with his wife, Kerri, a high-school English teacher, he spoke of his latest, "The Count of Monte Cristo," the Disney feature opening Friday. And he was quick to explain why this "Monte" wasn't full.
"You're never gonna see my butt on film unless I'm in the Holocaust, walking around," said the Washington state native, who had 10 years of Catholic schooling.
"I have a hard time getting naked on film. I don't believe in it. I don't think it's right. In my faith, I'm taught that abstinence is important."
It's almost unheard of for someone so old-fashioned to make it so far through Hollywood's starmaking machinery without a jam-up. Yet Caviezel, plucked from nowhere to star in 1998's "The Thin Red Line," has mounted a left-field assault on Tinseltown's A-list with his morals intact.
Dagmara Dominczyk remembers how nervous her "Cristo" love interest seemed just before their PG-13 sex scene.
"Jim took me aside and said, 'You know, I'm married and very faithful,' " says the Polish-born beauty. "And I said, 'Jim, it's a Disney movie. I'm not gonna grab your crotch!' "
In "The Count of Monte Cristo," the 12th cinematic adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' 1844 novel, Caviezel plays Edmond Dantes, a French sailor unfairly labeled a traitor by former friends and acquaintances who, each for different reasons, conspire to have him locked up.
Transformed by 13 years of prison beatings into a vengeful psychopath who looks like American Taliban John Walker, Dantes orchestrates a brilliant escape. Then he disguises himself as a count and begins offing his betrayers one by one.
"Death is too good for them!" Dantes sneers.
Caviezel has no problem with the violence, since he doesn't consider it gratuitous. But he's not thrilled with the message - that vengeance can be exacted without paying the ultimate price.
That said, he added, "I don't expect anyone else to agree with my views.
"But I wouldn't be where I am today, I wouldn't have had the courage to do what I'm doing now, if I hadn't had the direction of something greater than me."
I can't help you with the original Greek or Hebrew from which have been translated into English as "fornicate." But as for the English meaning itself (according to Merriam-Webster):
Main Entry: for·ni·ca·tion
Pronunciation: "for-n&-'kA-sh&n
Function: noun
Date: 14th century
: consensual sexual intercourse between two persons not married to each other -- compare ADULTERY
TC
Huh? --
Getting a better "understanding" now?
Values bump!
Caviezel talked about making The Count of Monte Cristo. I am not a good recounter, but I'll try. His chauffeur would make the sign of the cross every time they passed a church. Caviezel asked him about it and the guy said it was something his father would do and have him do. If he was sleeping his father would wake him and he would make the sign of the cross. A few days or weeks later, Caviezel asked the chauffeur if he would pray the rosary with him. The chauffeur agreed and they would pray the rosary every day on the way to or from the set. Then he told of a day on the set where in the scene he is supposed to look up at the ceiling while pondering some difficult decision (I haven't read the book). Well, the room the scene is shot in has a white ceiling. Caviezel asks the director what is he supposed to be looking at. The director points him to another room and it turns out that the picture that Caviezel will be "looking" at is a painting of the Coronation of Mary! Caviezel was quite pleased with that, but he didn't want to make too big a deal of it with the director because he knew that the director wasn't Catholic.
Anyway, I may try to see a matinee showing of the movie. It actually looked pretty good in the clips they showed.
regards
for·ni·ca·tion (fôrn-kshn)
n.
Sexual intercourse between partners who are not married to each other.Word History: The word fornication had a lowly beginning suitable to what has long been the low moral status of the act to which it refers. The Latin word fornix, from which fornicti, the ancestor of fornication, is derived, meant a vault, an arch. The term also referred to a vaulted cellar or similar place where prostitutes plied their trade. This sense of fornix in Late Latin yielded the verb fornicr, to commit fornication, from which is derived fornicti, whoredom, fornication. Our word is first recorded in Middle English about 1303.
There really isn't any debate between Bible scholars on this issue. Common consensus among Bible scholars of all languages that the Bible condemns sexual relations outside of marriage. Unless scholars translating the Bible into languages as diverse as French, Greek, Russian, Spanish, German, Hebrew, and English have all made the same kind of translation error in their repsective languages, it's unlikely you've made a real discovery here.
But if you're still in doubt, there are Biblical scholars on FR that could help you with the Greek and Hebrew original sources if you're so inclined.
I just can't help my cynicism.
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