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/
True it so easy to forget.. that..
Fiction MUST BE very logical to us, Reality does not have to be logical to us, at all..
“The price to the faithful has been much, much higher because so often now, armed with Aristotelian logic, believers demand that God must be logical – and thus they anthropomorphize God, missing the power of God.”
Bingo! And that anthropomorphization of God coupled with “logic” (not rationality) has produced a view of the divine economy of salvation which is, whether Latin or Protestant, profoundly different from that of Eastern Christianity. Its not so much that anthropomorphization per se of God causes the problem. The OT is full of that. Its the combination of an overblown anthropomorphization, itself a product of Aristotelian logic as you point out, with Aristotelian logic itself which has caused what we in the East see as having great potential for error or at a minimum a distortion of what exactly “salvation” or “theosis” means. Aristotelian logic is ALWAYS the product of human thought processes. Of course God gave us rational minds to use them, but it does not follow that the logic our rational minds can use will allow us to understand or even come close to fully explaining even the divine economy of salvation, let alone God Himself.
My usual example of the phenomenon on this forum is the never-ending debate over predestination v. free will, which is to say that Aristotle's law of the excluded middle cannot be applied to God. He gives us both prophesy (and fulfilled prophesy) - and commandments. It is not an either/or.
We are participants in this continuum, and so to that extent we say that we are "in" time. But many have direct experiences of timelessness. So paradoxically, humans directly experience both time and timelessness. As T. S. Eliot said, human life is lived at the intersection of time and timelessness (eternity). That is the specific form of our humanity.
Thank you so much for your amazingly informative and thought-provoking essay/post, Alamo-Girl!
Forgive me for a petty remark: And there's not a durned thing that Richard Dawkins can do about it! God is absolutely in charge....
Thanks you so much for your kind words, dearest sister, and for this lovely post.
Indeed, that is an exquisitely beautiful hymn, dear Kolokotronis! Thank you so much!!!
” My usual example of the phenomenon on this forum is the never-ending debate over predestination v. free will,....”
That’s an excellent example of what I am talking about. In the theology of the Greek Fathers, there is no conflict at all between free will as an element of our natures as being created in the image of God and what scripture says about what the West calls predestination. Creating a mutual exclusivity as between the two is the result of all sorts of influences, all human I might add. Aristotelian logic is one of them. On the one hand, we attempt to apply human logic to explain, without actually fully understanding, divine purpose while on the other we use that same logic to deny that we are created in the image of God by denying free will. Conversely we can accept, logically, that as beings created in the image of God we ipso facto have free will and at the same time exclude the possibility of election at some point as the subject of divine foreknowledge.
And I'd venture to say that many Christians are like me - more aware of being alive in timelessness than being alive in time.
Because I eschew all the doctrines and traditions of men across the board, I can and do simplify such matters to this: a thing is true because God says it.
And the corollary is that if something does not make sense to me, it is my carnal failing alone. Thus, I "hit the knees" begging forgiveness for my pride and listen quietly and patiently as the Spirit leads me whereever He wants me to go.
Aristotle's preoccupation was with "creature." His "departure" from Plato pretty much consisted of making creaturely form immanent to the creature (to put it crudely, a "bottom-up" approach). The idea of transcendent, universal form is eclipsed (the "top-down" approach). His focus on individual creature to some extent loses the greater context in which creatures exist, which is transcendent Being (ousia).
For Plato, the "being things" exist because they are participations in divine Being. This insight, while not entirely lost in Aristotle, is downplayed.
I certainly agree that Aristotelian logic is not the instrument of choice for any valid knowledge of God. Its method requires entities about which valid propositions can be constructed. But God Himself is not such an "entity." God is not, nor can be, an "object" of an intending consciousness, which can be directly and comprehensively observed, about which valid propositional statements can be made....
For God is (strictly speaking) "non-existent reality" -- by which I mean He is not subject to the categories of space and time but is, as Plato said, "Beyond" (i.e., utterly transcendent to) the world (or Cosmos). Neither Aristotelian logic nor the scientific method can deal with this tremendous immensity.
Yet still some people demand to have "proof of the existence of God" on the basis of precisely such instruments of thought. As Eric Voegelin has written, "'The existence of God is in doubt because there is no doubt about the existence of the fool'; that is the only reason the existence of God is in doubt." Yet the fact that God doesn't reduce to the size of the capabilities of methodological naturalism is the excuse for the claims that he isn't really real. So the takeaway is: Stop looking for a fiction!
I find this fascinating. For you know, "you have to know that certain things are true in order not to want to know that they are true." This isn't ignorance; this is a refusal to apperceive.
This to me explains the Dawkins mentality on the subject of God. The "God is dead" crowd always seem nervously loitering about His supposed coffin, like so many would-be undertakers, trying to assure themselves that He is, indeed, STILL dead. LOLOL!!!!!
“’The existence of God is in doubt because there is no doubt about the existence of the fool’; that is the only reason the existence of God is in doubt.”
Now THAT’s a line to remember!
No, no, no!
Please never be sorry about such—ALWAYS elaborate! I love it.
In the eternities(some day) it will be refreshing to not care a wit about what time it is.. but be more concerned with the “timing” of a matter..
= = =
Indeed.
And, over my 60 years, THE LORD’S EXCEEDINGLY COMPLEX timING masterfulness has been one of the incredibly convincing evidences of His EXISTENCE and CAREFULNESS and LOVE about/toward me and many others in my observational range.
What’s the pain about this time, MD? More feet operations?
God’s best Peace, Wholeness, Healing, Provision, Comfort, Presence to you and yours.
Thanks for your kind greeting.
A fundamental asymmetry appears to be built into the very heart of reality.
= = =
Thanks for this wonderful post.
RE the above sentence . . . It may be that asymetry is necessary for A DYNAMIC flow—for anything beyond static stillness/death/deadness . . . or that may be true in all that exists THAT WE HAVE ANY PAST/PRESENT/FUTURE connection to . . . or . . .
So we should never wring our hands, but count it all joy!
Maranatha, Jesus!
= = =
INDEED.
Thx.
Well put. I agree rather wholesale.
INDEED.
Then, the enemy further pollutes the well by messing parenting up so much for so many that we/they grow up with intense obsessive compulsive needs to try and cram God into tiny tidy white little FIERCELY EITHER/OR boxes
. . .
which, of course, are different than a long list of brothers and sisters that are suspected intensely of NOT being brothers and sisters because they don't FIT into OUR particularly tiny tidy whitey little FIERCELY EITHER/OR boxes . . . .
Therefore, the enemy wins again because such hostile perspectives offer little possibility of unbelievers knowing we are Christians by our love.
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