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/
Thanks for the pics and info. It is a beautiful church.
Yes, there is. This link gives the new one, which is common and showed up ~1975. Here' one link, that shows what I should have seen, but saw the "new" version instead. The use of the word eternal is irrational, the use of "before all worlds" is not. Jesus was more than just capacity, which is all "eternal generation" could refer to. Generation is an action, which requires that it occur in time. The earliest time it could logically happen is by decision after the first ponderings of creation. There would be no logical reason to "generate" one's person, before they pondered doing so.
"Arius's "there was when the Son was not" is heresy. "
I don't know much at all about what Arius said, or the details. What I do know is that Arius claimed Jesus was a creation, which is wrong. Here's a link to what Arius said. "the Arian, though he did not come straight down from the Gnostic, pursued a line of argument and taught a view which the speculations of the Gnostic had made familiar. He described the Son as a second, or inferior God, standing midway between the First Cause and creatures;" This doen't even resemble what I said.
"And no, God does not need to exist in time. Time is a created thing."
Time in this world is a created thing. Time in God's Heaven is not created, nor is it the same thing. In order to exist at all, time is required. In order to use the word "eternal", time is required. In order to create, time is required. Just because no one can read God's clock does not mean it's not running.
"Any appeal to physics is appealing to created things, which only by an improper analogy have any application to theology per se."
If God is real, then their must be an underlying physics. It was known in the OT, that no one could see the Father, or they would die. That's, because of the physics. The Church fathers refer to the physics of God as "substance". If there's no substance, then there's nothing. The physics of this world are not to be mistaken as the physics of heaven. The physics of this world are represented by the cherubim waiving the flaming sword in Gen 3.
"Physics may have some relevance to economy, but not to theology. "
Physics has no relevance to economics, other than the intellectual conception and the phenomenas studied rely on the underlying physics to exist at all. The "physics" is the reality, not the math. The physics refers to the "substance", it's nature and interactions. The math applies to both. In the case of physics, it is physical theory. The theory is not the physics, it represents the physics.
What happens to time when speed increases approaching the speed of light?
A very deep verse of scripture.. indeed..
Very good treatment of several subjects in post #7900..
Paul surely visited the seventh heavens to have received that bit of verbiage above..
As well as most of the epistle to the Ephesians...
Time is geometry. It is a dimension and there may be more than one temporal dimension (Vafa, Wesson).
Time is relative to space such that, for instance, while a week passes in the vicinity of a black hole simultaneously 40 years may pass on earth.
And if you were to travel through space at a constant acceleration of one earth gravity, while 25.3 years elapsed on your voyage, 5x1010 years would elapse on earth.
And, ta da, 6 equivalent days at the inception space/time coordinates of this universe are equal to approximately 15 billion years from our space/time coordinates. (Inflationary Theory and Relativity)
Special relativity looks at space/time as a cube, general relativity on the other hand looks at the fabric of space/time as warped, curved space.
Massive (high positive gravity) objects are indentations in space/time. Thus an object must achieve escape velocity to get out of the indentation, and the paths of objects approaching nearby will be bent by the indentations. Even light bends.
The equivalence principle derives from the Newtonian notion that all objects fall with the same acceleration and thus how fast an object accelerates (inertial mass) and gravitational mass are the same. Thus falling towards gravity, indentations in of space/time (general relativity) and velocity are equivalent. In the strong version, even gravitational “self-energy” must follow the same rule.
God. Matt 19:8-9, "Jesus replied, "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery."
Where I am welcome. :)
"which school or denomination teaches the theology you're arguing for or explaining? "
The school of the Lord. John 6:45, "It is written in the Prophets: 'They will all be taught by God.'[Isaiah 54:13]"
For ANY Apostolic to accuse a Protestant, especially a Reformed one, of taking power from Christ is the ULTIMATE of Chutzpah. It is your belief system that transfers supernatural powers away from God and puts them into the hands of men. A FEW examples are forgiveness of sins, "salvation" through the Church, small group infallibility (in your case --- one-man infallibility for the RCs), and efficacious prayers to Mary and the rest of the Saints (all humans who are no longer physically alive). You believe all these things are BY humans, alive or dead. We believe all of them usurp God's sovereign domain, the very basis of your accusation against us.
While I would agree that the Orthodox are not as deep in error as the Roman Catholics on this, you still have ZERO standing to accuse us of taking power from Christ. A fundamental definition of our faith is giving ALL power to God. It is you who fervently reject that idea.
Bump to the whole post, and this especially lovely conclusion, so worthy of repetition, dear sister!
Ah. The First Church of Spunkets.
Thanks for your reply.
God, as usually described transcends physics. Hence metaphysics.
In order to exist at all, time is required.
True for finite, changing, material existence. Not true for infinite, non-material. In theology, 'eternal' means "existing outside all relations of time; not subject to change."
You are making basic category errors in addition to gross reductionism.
I think this is a case when a caricature is defeated by pointing to the photograph. Well, yes, the President does not really have ears and nose that long. But is the caricature pointing to a truth? Your hair-splitting "not infallibility but confidence" shows that the caricature is truthful as far as caricatures go.
One of my problems is that many of the arguments from some of you all are only against the caricatures. (See further below.) :)
If I am hair-splitting, then you appear to be saying that confidence may not be had without infallibility. I disagree. In my view, infallibility is only at a divine level. I do not claim any burning-bush experiences, and I do not claim a monopolistic Bat-Phone hot-line to God. I don't even claim that when I take a vote among my buddies that I somehow have these things. Instead of all that, I simply claim confidence. The point is that I do not claim what you claim for your hierarchs AT ALL. The Holy Spirit DOES lead me individually, but in no way does that mean I have all truth today, yesterday, or tomorrow. Your Church, OTOH, does claim that for all time. MASSIVE difference.
We say the Spirit leads us in sanctification, a lifelong process. For you, there is no sanctification of the Church, it is always, and for all time, perfect and infallible. This is not hair-splitting, these are opposite views.
The serious issue is indeed not that you have a multiplicity of leaders who claim succession of Peter, singularly represent the Church, and have primacy over bishops (the functional description of papacy), but, like Kolokotronis said, that you have multiplicity of doctrinally autonomous churches. A Catholic sums it up as each one is a pope. An Orthodox would sum it up as each one is a church. These are all idiomatic expression of the truth that you would not deny: that in Protestantism the lines of authority do not converge at the top.
I do not deny your last clause. But here, you are attacking a caricature. Therefore, your idiomatic expressions are NOT OF the truth. You are lumping in all Protestants together in order to defeat all of them together. It would be identical to my declaring that Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy are BOTH definitionally wrong because you are not in communion with each other. I doubt you would see that as a fair argument. As I have said so many times, I do not speak for all Protestants, NOR do I think I should have to, in order to defend the beliefs I do have.
BTW, I do not think the Orthodox would say that each Protestant is his own church. They deny that we even worship in a church (small "c"). If anything, I think they would have to say that each Protestant is his own "assembly". :)
Your claim that they converge at the scripture is a slogan. They do not. Several foundational points of Protestantism are not scripture. Sola scriptura and sola fide, for example, are a peculiar, strained interpretation of some passages, and completely bizarre inversion of the plain text of some other passages. On your fundamentals you converge in the interpretation of the scripture, and you choose the least natural interpretation of it.
Even among Reformers, NONE here claim that all interpretations among us lead to the same conclusion, even though all are directed toward scripture. Of course the vast majority of our interpretations DO lead to the same interpretation, but we are not infallible. This does not defeat Sola Scriptura. Sola Scriptura is our base, just as the Church's interpretations are your base. You can't tell me that you aren't still learning about your own Church's pronouncements of truth, along with the writings of the Fathers. The same idea applies to us. We are still learning too, as the Holy Spirit leads us.
I find it highly ironic that you would be complaining about the plain text of scripture. You cannot seriously look me in the eye and say that you favor it more than we do. It isn't even close. To us, plain meaning is foundational, and interpretation is done when necessary. For you, Tradition is foundational, and interpretation is done ALL the time as a necessity.
Remember my hypothetical challenge from several months ago. I proposed putting 100 spiritually-neutral, but intelligent people in a room with a Bible. They had to read it cover to cover and then answer a series of fair questions to discern what their respective understandings of "faith" were. I boldly proclaimed that the weight of the evidence would clearly show a leaning MUCH MUCH more toward Reformed theology than Apostolic. I stand by that today. The reason is that ALL we use is the Bible. We don't have to make it match Tradition or anything else. If your faith was really close to the plain meaning of scripture, then you wouldn't need Tradition to interpret it to the degree it does.
In fact, a few knowledgeable Catholics have admitted to me on these threads that without the Roman Catholic "lens" (Tradition) on scripture, that the Bible could even be a dangerous book to read. We would say no similar thing, for while teaching would normally be required to reach the same beliefs I have, a "blind" reading of the plain text will bring the average person a great distance closer to Reformed beliefs than Catholic ones.
On everything else you simply do not converge at all: some believe in free will, others don't, some are "arminian" others "calvinist"; some adopt modern sexual ethics and others don't; some have rudimental sacramentality of praxis, others don't; your eschatological views -- all based on the same supposedly perspicuous scripture -- cannot be more diverse.
Here again, you are lumping in all Protestants into the same pot. I do not condone nor endorse any Protestants with "modern sexual ethics". I do not speak for them.
I do not know enough about "rudimental sacramentality of praxis" among Protestants to really comment on it at length. Infant Baptism doesn't bother me so much, but a church with priests literally forgiving sins would. :)
On eschatology, I have asked a number of times for the official RC view of it, and I have never gotten a clear answer. That tells me that you guys are all over the map about it just like we are. :) So, unless I can be corrected, I don't think it's fair to criticize even general Protestantism for not being unified on this issue.
However, after all of the above, you do raise a very legitimate issue on Arminianism vs. Calvinism. There can be no denying that this is a large issue for us. I lament it, but it is nonetheless THERE. I haven't thought through all the details yet to know if it is a fairly accurate comparison, but what comes to my mind is Roman Catholicism vs. Orthodoxy. I thought of this from observing how the two pairs argue with and against each other. I'm leery of opening up this train of thought, but the similarities I noticed were pretty interesting to me. Perhaps it is best to just see what happens. :)
Also appeals to authority -- even Protestant authority -- do not work with you, because the authority stops at the individual sovereignly interpreting the scripture under the leadership, he claims, of the Holy Ghost. This is a level of conceit no pope of Rome would claim. By this measure you are not all popes, you are all Holy Ghosts.
Well, I will agree that there is no Protestant authority in the form of an only human man, living or dead. That's obvious. However, I disagree that for us the authority stops at the individual. We say the authority stops at scripture. Now, if the attitude of people like me was that we interpret scripture, as led, and that was the end of it, then you would have a point. But we don't. I have always maintained my willingness to reevaluate any of my views if someone could show me a better scriptural understanding than the one I had. Please believe me that this is not some irrelevant platitude, it has actually happened to me, right here on FR. I flipped like a pancake once I was shown a higher truth supported by more relevant scripture. That's why I don't think the buck stops with us as individuals, and I don't think "conceit" is an accurate word to use here to describe our outlook.
BTW, you said that the pope would never claim the conceit of the following: "the authority stops at the individual sovereignly interpreting the scripture under the leadership, he claims, of the Holy Ghost." To be frank, if someone had asked me to describe the Catholic position of the pope's authority, I could have easily used words like this. How would you correct them in the case of ex Cathedra?
I'd be happy to respond, but could you put this in a little more context to my 7,479 ? Your statement surprises me.
Had Pope Clement been a bit more familiar with scripture he would have understood that the priesthood of Aaron was an imperfect (and eventually corrupt) priesthood. The writer of Hebrews understood this where he compares Christ as our high priest after the order of Melchisedec-not Aaron. (Heb 4-5)
Hardly.
The Romans put their faith in one man.
The reformers in themselves (not unlike Satanists who view selfishness as the ideal).
The Orthodox acknowledge only 1 head of the church; Christ.
Verse 17 just says he went to Arabia, it doesn't say what he did there.
It is implied in verse 16, but I agree that it is ambiguous (as are many of his verses). That's why i say that reading +Paul is like eating fish with lots of bones — tiresome.
As to "his gospel", Paul says in verse 11 that the gospel he preached is not of man
"In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel." (Rom 2:16)
"Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ" (Rom 16:25)
Not only does he speak of his gospel, but his statements sound very Gnostic here.
Yes, it does. And so does his statement "For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel," (1 Cor 1:17)
Apparently he was not aware of Matthew 28:19
depends on which part of the NT you choose to believe, since the account of this 'Council' are not identical.
However, I do believe that he initiated it issue. In effect, they did break God's Laws when they dispensed with circumcision. removal of dietary restrictions was 'justified'with an account of +Peter's 'vision,' while in some sort of a "trans," of God allowing it. In doing so, the Church created a new religion, with +Paul as its author. We could argue that this was the religion the Jews should have been following all along, but that's another story.
By asserting that God did not fully reveal Himself to the Jews, we can assert that Christianity is only a "more perfect" (I am borrowing this oxymoron from a very famous state document) form of the faith of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But, that's not why God told the prophet He would give a New Covenant.
Rather, the New Covenant was to replace the Old Covenant made imperfect by the unbelieving Jews. There was no hint of any "foreshadowing" in that promise.
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