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/
"Oh, I never intended to dismiss His divine nature, I just meant to distinguish it against His human nature. I don't think it subtracts anything from Christ or Mary if the pregnancy was as it goes with us, and if Mary felt normal birth pains. Since divine Christ was never born, I associate the birth with His human side."
Oh, FK, no, no, no! That's heresy. Its very, very close to Arianism.
"The final end of Orthodoxy is pure knowledge of the two dogmas of faith - the Trinity and the Duality; to contemplate and know the Trinity as indivisible and yet not merged together; to know the Duality as the two natures of Christ joined in one person - that is, to know and to profess one's faith in the Son of God both before incarnation, and after incarnation, to praise Him in His two natures and wills unmerged, the one Divine and the other human." +Gregory of Sinai
Occasionally. After all, it's all us Protestants have. It makes our lives so much simplier.
Those pastries will do it to you every time. They didn't make it easy on me this week at work. Everyone was having year end Christmas parties. So, one person brought fudge, and two groups that I am involved with went out to nice restaurants. At the Italian restaurant, I confess, I could not resist the Tiramisu! Blew my WW Points to shreds that day! LOL!
Best wishes on your weight loss! You're doing well!
"You look at the scriptures?
Occasionally. After all, it's all us Protestants have. It makes our lives so much simplier."
You guys have it sooooo easy! God made it hard for us Levantine types, what with all the stuff the Fathers wrote (32 volumes, I think, in the latest Ante and Post Nicene Fathers set...and that doesn't cover all of it my any means.) Because we're so nasty and Xenophobic, we passed it on to our near neighbors the Slavs, who also need all the spiritual help they can get so maybe we did them a favor. We tried with you Westerners, but the Latins just boiled it all down to canon law and the rest of you got your underwear in a knot over that and simply decided to read the bible and chuck the rules. But then again, you're much busier than we are and probably wouldn't have time to read all the stuff we do...and of course, as I have said, we do need it more than you guys! :)
No doubt about that. And we thank you (Greeks) every day for it.
I am not doing anything except quoting the text. Anything sexual was in your own mind. I never used the word, nor does the text.
ping to 1606
Actually, we do know that Mary became pregnant in time for the prophet John to leap in his mother's womb at her presence with Jesus already in her womb.
So we do know that it was a relatively normal pregnancy.
I fail to see how John the Baptist leaping in Elizabeth's womb correlates to the Virgin Mary having a "normal" pregnancy.
We are told that it happened at what was probably the 5-6 month mark of Elizabeth's pregnancy. In any case, we are told that Jesus was already in Mary's womb at that time.
Therefore, we know that there was some amount of gestation taking place because Mary stayed with Elizabeth for 3 months. She then returned home. It was some time after that that she gave birth to Jesus.
What are you talking about? My side won that debate handily. :) We went around and around about "sufficiency" and "profitable", and what "so that" means. I'm still confident. :)
The Catholic Church has never claimed that Tradition can contradict the Bible. You're not going to get away with strawmen here.
I never said that the RCC claimed its Tradition COULD contradict the Bible. I said that it DID contradict the Bible despite its claims. Luther and the other Reformers recognized that. If Tradition did not contradict the scripture there would have been MUCH less need for the Reformation.
No degree of open-mindedness can make x contradict y. If x contradicts y, then no matter how close-minded one is, x still contradicts y.
What you say is true in fact, but not in claim. A fact remains a fact, regardless. An open mind can claim something is a fact when it is not. That's what I'm talking about.
Some of more recent discussion is illustrating the inherent and inseparable link between Mariology and Christology. Error in one leads to error in the other.
Thanks for the link. I had no problem at all with most of it. What jumped out at me was this at the end of the intro:
... Each has his own need; each his own desire or expectation, and each finds his or her own particular spiritual need satisfied and fulfilled in Our Lord and in the Mother of God. So too, each generation of Orthodox, and each particular person who has prayed the Akathist, has found in this hymn an inspired means of expressing gratitude and praise to the Mother of God for what she has accomplished for their salvation.(emphasis added)
With my background, the first section above appears to put Mary and Christ on an equal footing. In the second section, I'm not sure what the view is about what Mary actually "accomplished" for our salvation. The latter concern was bolstered by a line from Ikos 11:
"Rejoice, Thou Who blottest out the stain of sin."
I haven't jumped to any conclusions, as I remember that sometimes there is wording that would tend to lead an outsider today to the wrong idea about what is meant.
Regarding my original concern that it looked like Mary was being venerated as a "thing" rather than as a human, I did not see that in the portions I read of the hymn you showed me. Maybe part of my view was due to Kosta's statement that Mary's womb WAS a tabernacle, rather than it being LIKE a tabernacle figuratively. I have no trouble at all with the idea that Mary was a holy person, I fully agree. I just sensed a portrayal of her as being more of a holy object.
BTW, I noticed that many words in the hymn were partially underlined, and some were fully underlined. I couldn't figure out why that was.
and
"Rejoice, Thou Who blottest out the stain of sin."
I am not at all surprised that these comments sprang out at you. The first sentence insofar as it relates to Panagia is an observation that among Orthodox people there is a devotion to the Most Holy Theotokos very like that we have to our own natural mothers. I've told stories here of how she comforted me as a homesick kid away from home for the first time, and ever since in those fox holes of life. What I find is the embrace of a mother. My wife spent all of one Great Lent chanting this Akathist as her father lay dying. She found a mother who was also a woman who also suffered great anguish, someone who "understood" her. Others experience variations on these themes. Where does this devotion come from, scriptually? If it matters, Jn.19:26-27. We think its simply a Δορο του Θεου, a gift of God to us, people who need that gift.
The second sentence refers to her role in the Incarnation of the Word, without which there would have been no salvation. Its really as simple as that. The other quoted line means the same thing. "BTW, I noticed that many words in the hymn were partially underlined, and some were fully underlined. I couldn't figure out why that was." I suspect its just some formatting thing. It has no significance to the Hymn.
Point duly taken, but you're acting like some of us menfolk had any say in the matter. :) As to whether or not I was going to be in the delivery room, I made a very informed choice. (I was informed of my choice.) I was just thinking of the kids, since I did want them to have a father. :)
LOLOL.
My husband nearly had to be revived the first time. No one told him the heart monitor on the baby stops at a certain point at the very end of the birth, and when he didn't hear it beeping, he thought our baby had died.
He's been happy ever since.
Ignatius does not say "of a normal type". He says that Christ was "really born", as we also are "really born". That says absolutely nothing about whether Mary endured pain in the birth or whether Mary's virginity was preserved through the birth.
If that's true then his word choice was extraordinarily poor. However, this would be in full accordance with other writings of the Magisterium in terms of scripture interpretation. I understand the part that all of scripture was written in secret code, but now we have the Fathers' themselves also writing in secret code. Who interprets them? :)
The context of Ignatius is absolutely clear to me. He was describing the humanity of Jesus and pointing out that His birth was of the same kind as our own. It makes no sense whatsoever to me that his real meaning was "Jesus was fully human. In fact, He spent some time in the womb. However, the similarities end there because He was magically transported out of Mary's womb, and Mary had no birth pains." This is not credible. Let's look at a passage yet again:
He was carried in the womb, even as we are, for the usual period of time; and was really born, as we also are; and was in reality nourished with milk, and partook of common meat and drink, even as we do. ..."
So, you are saying that for the first one, it means He was in the womb just like we are. However, for the second one, a totally different metric applies because the birth process was not like ours at all. You say the only thing that matters is that He was born at all, by any supernatural method, totally unlike us. However again, in the third one, we go back to everything being normal and like us again.
If all this is true, then I suppose that would make Ignatius among the most cryptic authors in the history of literature, second only to the Apostles themselves, according to the interpretations of their writings we get from the Magisterium. :)
You have to be careful to read the fathers carefully, and not make them say what you want them to say, but let them say only what they are trying to say.
I'll never trust the actual words of a Father again. :)
"(I was informed of my choice.)"
See, there's the problem. You didn't read the whole verse. What does the last phrase say? Huh? Next time, in your most obsequious voice just say, "honey, I can't because it would be sin to go against my better judgment." (You may need to practice this in front of the mirror a few times to get the right tone of sincerity down. She will understand, trust me! Don't forget to remind the doctor to give her morphine for the pain. It does funny things to the memory.
Gen. 3:16, "Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee"
I wasn't thinking in these terms when I commented about the "next world". I actually have no idea if there is any standardized thinking concerning the "Millennium" in either Catholicism or Orthodoxy. There surely is NOT among Protestants, even Reformed ones. I suppose I would consider myself "Pre-mil", although by no means am I a finger-wagger on the subject of eschatology. :) In any case, whether we are talking about the New Jerusalem, or "celestial" Heaven, I still don't think it would be possible for another Fall in either. That is, if there even IS a difference between New Jerusalem and "celestial" Heaven. Many do not believe there is. Many also do not believe that New Jerusalem could actually be "ON" earth, since the dimensions given would put the vast majority of it in outer space. I've never studied it in depth.
... A new, and reformed world, where everyone loves God with all his heart and mind and soul and his neighbor as himself. We are actually capable of creating such a world if all of humanity truly loved God.
I respectfully disagree. The only possibility for all humanity to truly love God would be via God's direct intervention and decree. We would not be capable.
We have been given more than enough blessings and showered with all sorts of abilities and skills to make this world a true paradise on earth, where there will be no fear, no violence and eventually no death.
New Jerusalem will be headed by Christ Himself, not the prince of this world. There will be no comparison to anything humans could come up with.
When we are given new bodies, we will not be floating around in the universe.
Why not? Our new bodies may or may not be subject to any sense of gravity in Heaven. I don't have any information either way, but I see both possibilities as being open.
I respectfully disagree. The only possibility for all humanity to truly love God would be via God's direct intervention and decree. We would not be capable."
He did, FK. Its called the Incarnation. Well, its time that you read this:
http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/history/ath-inc.htm
This is a foundational work of Christianity by one of the greatest Fathers. Let me know what you think.
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