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/
It was through her devotion and love that she chose not to sin and remained pure in her heart all her life. We do not subscribe to the Immaculate Conception because we do not subscribe to the idea of the "original sin" as the West does, which necessitates the dogma of Immaculate Conception.
Kosta,
Hello. Hope all is well with you. Been busy on some other forums that are more heavily populated with Protestants.
Rather than argue, I would like to point out a catholic Tradition that preceded the Schism, one that you may, as an Orthodox Christian, recall as a teaching of the entire Church - that Mary was the New Eve. This ancient teaching, at LEAST as early as Justin the Martyr (150 AD) explains that Mary is pure, just as Adam, Eve, and Jesus were born pure. God untied the knot of disobedience in the same manner as it was tied. Thus, we (Latins) continue to believe that Mary AND Eve were born pure and without sin. I had presumed that Orthodox ALSO believed this ancient teaching. This idea came about before Original sin was more fully defined by Latins. Is this not correct?
As you may recall, original sin is not sin per sec by our definition, but a lack of God's grace in man. This life within us is awakened upon our being born again (John 3:5)in Baptism. This definition I believe you will find more agreeable with theosis.
As to Annalex's previous question regarding Mary and a painless birth, that is theological opinion, just like whether Mary died or not. Frankly, I don't see why God would prevent Mary from enduring such suffering, because it is through suffering that we are closest to Christ - and it is through suffering that we will be glorified (Rom 8:17). That is my personal opinion. If Mary suffered at the foot of the cross, why not at child-birth of Jesus? I think some theologians may be trying too hard to secure Jesus' divinity through such a painless birth. Recall, Jesus willfully was born in squalor - as my tagline points to the reason. With this in mind, I do not believe that Mary (nor Jesus) was spared this pain, considering their surroundings.
Brother in Christ
In the Bible, it is obvious that Virgin Mary was always Virgin, and she only had one child: Jesus Christ, our Savior.
On this I would have to strongly disagree. The Bible names many of Jesus' siblings, and references His sisters. The citations have already been given. As to John being given the care of Mary, John was the one Jesus loved. In addition, he was the only one physically THERE. Jesus' siblings fled with the rest of them. The choice belonged to Jesus, and Jesus Himself was not subject to following any custom.
Saints, Popes, Ecumenical Councils, even the Progenitors of the Protestant Reformation are all wrong.
It's a shame, but they were all wrong. Scripture contradicts the idea of Mary's perpetual virginity. Now, if for some reason it was important to you all that Mary was left-handed, then I would be much less inclined to argue about it. :)
If everyone else who has ever lived is wrong and only you are right, what might that reveal about your ideas?
In referring to "everyone else who has ever lived", you must mean "... except for the hundreds of millions of Christians who never believed that Mary was a perpetual virgin". It reveals to me that I agree with those hundreds of millions, and much more importantly, the Bible.
I didn't mean to imply that all was fun. Just that, and maybe beautiful isn't the right word here, since Adam and Eve who came into being by the Will of God and contributed nothing to this creative act, His Creature's struggle begins in earnest the moment God decrees that his time to enter the world has come. And it's moving to imagine Our Lord's struggle too, beginning in earnest as he enters the human family.
And speaking of struggles, I've got to take a test in a couple of hours. I haven't had to take a real, bonafide test in years, I'd forgotten how butterflies feel.
So you work with him, following his lead. At that point, it's his show.
That's beautiful, Dr. E.
I didn't take it that way AG. I remember attending a Lamaze class and having these midwives tell us what a beautiful experience it was, husband and wife watching the birth of their first child. My wife bought into all this to the point of wanting not to have our son in the hospital but at home where one could be surrounded by candles, rose petals and beautiful music.
“Bah, humbug.”, Harley said. The ever practical, detach and unemotional Harley told her I would be with her during the birthing procedures but I was insistent on doctors and specialists being around in a hospital environment. The labor went terribly wrong and a team of doctors rushed in to correct the problems. (They told me to go stand in a corner for which I was more than happy to do.) Fortunately, everything was solved but my poor wife was miserable for about a month afterward and found out that you can’t believe everything you hear in a Lamaze class.
I think it's a matter of record.
However, to say Peter was the point man for the formation of Christ's Church to Peter was a Roman Catholic does not follow of necessity.
Lithos is the word for little stone or pebble
And, I'll bet you don't know what it is :)
Jesus didn't think much of His family then. He ignored His siblings and sent Ol' Mom off to live with John. I wonner what Ol' Mom though of that or what her other children thought about the slap in the face.
Mary was the New Eve. This ancient teaching, at LEAST as early as Justin the Martyr (150 AD) explains that Mary is pure, just as Adam, Eve, and Jesus were born pure
Thus, we (Latins) continue to believe that Mary AND Eve were born pure and without sin. I had presumed that Orthodox ALSO believed this ancient teaching. This idea came about before Original sin was more fully defined by Latins. Is this not correct?
The Orthodox contiune to believe, as they apparently believed all along, that Mary was born as all of us are, without Grace, with a fallen nature inherited from our ancestral parents. Rather than calling it "guilty," we consider our state comparable to grave illness in need of a physician who can cure us.
Just as a real patient must cleave to his physician and follow physician's directives, so too do spiritual patients have to follow Christ's commandments in order to heal spirtually and live. They cannot do it on their own, and disobedience will not only make things worse, but – if it persists – will result in death. Hence the cooperative relationship, where God leads and we follow, but in order for that to happen we must have complete trust in our physician and a will to follow him.
In that sense, Mary was no different than any one of us. She stands out from the rest of us because she – more than anyone else – known to us chose to trust God and put Him first in everything.
We all say that if we pray and cleave to God we will resist sin more effectively. Well, her devotion to God was just as the Commandments says, with all her heart, soul and mind. In other words, she achieved teosis above and beyond any other saint. Her theosis was the expression of her free will and faith, both of which were stronger than anyone else's that we know of.
By seeing her as no different than any of one us, she gives us hope that we too can follow in her steps, even imperfectly. Immaculate Conception takes away that hope, as none of us are filled with Grace at the moment of our conception. Immaculate Conception makes Eve a strager to humanity, rather than our role model; it makes her someone endowed with the strength and purity to resits evil that makind lost with the from grace.
I never did like comparing Christ Jesus to "second Adam" and Mary to "second Eve," as the comparison is somewhat troubling to me, but – as you point out – that's the comparison the Church Fathers used.
The obvious objection is based on the fact that Adam and Eve were husband and wife and not Son and Mother. The second one is that Adam was not divne and human.
Remember that Adam still had a potential to sin, based on his free will, and in fact did sin, whereas Christ, most will tell you, had no such "option." Thus, the Church will will tell you that there was no such possibility in Christ's humanity, which is unique only to Him.
If Mary's flesh was no different than Eve's pre-fall flesh, Christ's human nature would still be capable of sinning, for the pre-fall Eve also had a potential to sin and in fact did sin.
Implying that the "second pair" was able to resists sin, and in fact did, would mean that somehow they were a better and improved model from the prototype. God doesn't have process-improvement strategy.
If Chirst is "second Adam," He would be a creature. For Adam was fully human, but he was not also divine. Adam had one nature and one will, both capable of sin.
If Christ were "second Adam," He would not have died because He did not sin, as "first Adam" would not have died if he had not sinned. We all agree that Jesus died on the Cross not because he had to but becase He willed it.
That in itself is somewhat torubling, Jo, because self-willed death is what the Church abhorrs. Now we can all argue that Christ "had" to die, whether He willed it or not, because it was necessary for the fulfilment of God's plan, etc. I wll leave that for another thread.
As you may recall, original sin is not sin per se by our definition, but a lack of God's grace in man. This life within us is awakened upon our being born again (John 3:5)in Baptism. This definition I believe you will find more agreeable with theosis
Yes, first the cross and then the crown is something that has been repeated many times, but God is not the Creator of pain and suffering. God created the Paradise for His creatures to live in harmony and comfort, free of desease and pain and suffering, in other words – in bliss.
We brought pain and suffering upon us by resisting God. God is good and only bestows blessings. What we do with them is another story. And, yes, those who suffered because of Christ are glorified, but the root cause of suffeirng and detah is sin, not God. I don't see why Mary would have to suffer in her childbirth, especially if she was, as you believe, a pre-fall Eve, and therefore free form the curse of painful childbearing.
as pain in childbirth is specified directly as punishment for sin it seems to be contrary to logic to think Sinless Mary suffered in childbirth. There is nothing contrary to common sense about a Mother experiencing unimaginable suffering watching her son's Passion and Death on the Cross
I didn't know the controversy surrounding that Book lasted that long.
Amen!
Here's another hypothesis. Mary did not truly understand who JESUS was until AFTER the crucifixion.
I don't know. What is it?
"I didn't know the controversy surrounding that Book lasted that long."
The controversy exists to an extent even to this day. For example, nothing from Revelations is ever read at any Divine Liturgy.
"Mary in heaven would always tell us to venerate her Son instead of herself. We would expect this from a mother proud of her Son."
I suspect that she would tell us to worship her Son, not merely venerate him. The distinction is an important one. As to whether or not she would want us to venerate her, well that's a different matter. At first blush her humility would seem to militate against that. Yet if the Latins and we Orthodox are right, veneration of her helps us take our eye off ourselves and to better focus the eye of the soul, the nous, on Christ and the Most Holy Theotokos always points us to Christ. Now if she was indeed like us, born with a propensity to sin as a daughter of Adam, yet did not sin and thus attained theosis in this life, she is our perfect example, the ultimate human object of emulation. This is one of the reasons why Orthodoxy has rejected the Latin Church dogma of the Immaculate Conception, since it makes her ontologically different from the rest of us. Here's a comment by +Bartholomeus I on the subject given in a recent interview:
"The Catholic Church this year celebrates the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. How does the Eastern Christian and Byzantine Tradition celebrate the Conception of Mary and her full and immaculate holiness?
Bartholomew I: The Catholic Church found that it needed to institute a new dogma for Christendom about one thousand and eight hundred years after the appearance of the Christianity, because it had accepted a perception of original sin – a mistaken one for us Orthodox – according to which original sin passes on a moral stain or a legal responsibility to the descendants of Adam, instead of that recognized as correct by the Orthodox faith – according to which the sin transmitted through inheritance the corruption, caused by the separation of mankind from the uncreated grace of God, which makes him live spiritually and in the flesh. Mankind shaped in the image of God, with the possibility and destiny of being like to God, by freely choosing love towards Him and obedience to his commandments, can even after the fall of Adam and Eve become friend of God according to intention; then God sanctifies them, as he sanctified many of the progenitors before Christ, even if the accomplishment of their ransom from corruption, that is their salvation, was achieved after the incarnation of Christ and through Him.
In consequence, according to the Orthodox faith, Mary the All-holy Mother of God was not conceived exempt from the corruption of original sin, but loved God above of all things and obeyed his commandments, and thus was sanctified by God through Jesus Christ who incarnated himself of her. She obeyed Him like one of the faithful, and addressed herself to Him with a Mother’s trust. Her holiness and purity were not blemished by the corruption, handed on to her by original sin as to every man, precisely because she was reborn in Christ like all the saints, sanctified above every saint.
Her reinstatement in the condition prior to the Fall did not necessarily take place at the moment of her conception. We believe that it happened afterwards, as consequence of the progress in her of the action of the uncreated divine grace through the visit of the Holy Spirit, which brought about the conception of the Lord within her, purifying her from every stain.
As already said, original sin weighs on the descendants of Adam and of Eve as corruption, and not as legal responsibility or moral stain. The sin brought hereditary corruption and not a hereditary legal responsibility or a hereditary moral stain. In consequence the All-holy participated in the hereditary corruption, like all mankind, but with her love for God and her purity – understood as an imperturbable and unhesitating dedication of her love to God alone – she succeeded, through the grace of God, in sanctifying herself in Christ and making herself worthy of becoming the house of God, as God wants all us human beings to become. Therefore we in the Orthodox Church honor the All-holy Mother of God above all the saints, albeit we don’t accept the new dogma of her Immaculate Conception. The non-acceptance of this dogma in no way diminishes our love and veneration of the All-holy Mother of God."
I am assuming that this is because there is a debate whether or not it is truly "inspired".
I agree completely. I can't imagine anyone on the thread would want to do anything, but worship our Saviour Jesus Christ.
The non-acceptance of this dogma in no way diminishes our love and veneration of the All-holy Mother of God."
As a Baptist, and I suspect my Protestant brother and sisters would agree, I don't disagree with this except for the All-holy. The veneration in some sects sure looks like it has changed into cult worship though.
But, you see, Mary did what we can't do – love God with all her heart and mind and soul. There was no other devotion in her life, but God.
No doubt that Mary loved G-d will all her heart, mind and soul. But everything else you said is speculation. It IS possible to love G-d with your heart, mind and soul AND have beautiful G-d santioned sex with your spouse. I'm like this....... if it can't be found in scripture, I'm not going to put my faith in it. What about this scripture?
Mathew 13:55-56 Is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things?
Why would Jesus be called Mary and Joseph's FIRSTBORN son? I see those in the scripture so, more than likely, Mary went on to do what married women do, that is to procreate with her husband. That doesn't make her sinful, it makes her normal but still highly favored of G-d.
"The veneration in some sects sure looks like it has changed into cult worship though."
I agree, though I must say I have never seen this in Orthodoxy. I am very concerned when I hear our Latin brethren, at least some of them, refer to Panagia (by the way, that means The All Holy One) as the "Co Redemptrix". While I think I know what is meant by that when used by recognized Latin theologians and its likely OK, its use by otherwise theologically uneducated persons, given the mindset created by the Latin Church with dogmas like the Immaculate Conception which appear, even to theologically educated non-Latin Christians, as an elevation of the Theotokos to an ontological level above and beyond humanity, lays the foundation for a grave danger of heresy, of the creation of a "Goddess".
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