'The Nativity Story' Movie Problematic for Catholics, "Unsuitable" for Young Children

'The Nativity Story' Movie Problematic for Catholics, "Unsuitable" for Young Children

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."

Here's the problem, B and its such a problem that frankly when we Catholics and Orthodox say that we seem to worship a different God from you Protestants, its not just hyperbole.

Our basic beliefs about theosis are totally different, indeed our conception of the state of man both before and after the Fall, the reason for the Incarnation, the sacrifice on the Cross, the descent into the place of the dead and the Resurrection are all different. What we believe, The Church has always believed. I can't say that there weren't people in the early days of Christianity who believed what you do, but I have never read any such thing. The early Fathers, the liturgists who put together the Divine Liturgies of both the East and the West, whose successors later assembled the canon of the NT, read the same words you do and came to the understanding that +John Chrysostomos did. +John Chrysostomos is a one off example. What I posted expresses the consensus patrum as preserved in The Church.

When you speak of predestination, we don't understand you; when you speak of being "saved" and mean something different from Theosis or salvation as the Latin Church says, we don't understand you. When you say that God chose before all time, say, one of five human beings for eternity with Him and the rest he damns to hell, we don't understand you. You firmly believe that the passage in question establishes that once you accept Christ as your savior, you're in His hand and can't ever "fall or jump" out until the time you are sanctified and by then you're, I assume, dead and your soul is with God. Allow me to suggest that this theology is a necessary consequence of your concepts of election and predestination, the perfect nature of Adam & Eve prior to the Fall and the utter depravity of man after the Fall. In such a theological universe, salvation is a given for the elect, damnation for the rest and of course, since its a lock, there really is no need, it seems to me, to even speak of being secure in God's hand or the perseverence of the saints or how faith is manifest in works. Indeed, one wonders why there are scriptures at all. If the elect are the elect from before all time, what's the point of the scriptures? They have nothing useful to teach the elect and the damned are lost anyway.

The only theological construct in which the scriptures can have any meaning is one within which all men are created with the potential, not the certainty, of all to fulfill God's purposes in making their creation, that they be in the image and likeness of Himself. In such a system, everyone who would fulfill God's plan of creation must freely respond to the grace which God pours out on everyone and everything. The scriptures teach us how to respond and equally importantly, how not to respond, which is to say, to reject God's call.

The Church is keenly aware of sin and its consequences in the world. It never ceases to remind us that we are sinners and calls us to repentence. For true reformed Protestants, what point would there be in ever speaking of sin? Is it a tenet of that system that once saved one cannot/won't sin? Is it rather that one can sin but the sin is immediately forgiven and there are no consequences either to the individual or society or creation of that sin? After all, once we're in God's hand, we're there forever, right? Aside from creating false hope in the hearts of the damned, what is the point of the scriptures in the system you clearly hold to?

The Fathers taught us that God gave us a "second chance" when He died on the Cross and destroyed the power we gave death over us through sin, a second chance at seizing the same opportunity He graced Adam & Eve with at their creation and which they lost when they sinned. Its no answer to say that God predestined the Fall and the Incarnation to fix what He had set up in the first place. Its no answer to say that the elect/saints, secure in the hand of God, must persevere because they are predestined to persevere because they are the elect/saints.

You don't work to be innocent of a crime, either you are or you are not. You don't work to be righteous, either you are or you are not.

A double Amen, if that's allowed.

This is where Faith really comes into play. We naturally fall away from it, that's what is meant by the heart being curved in on itself. I wouldn't believe anyone who said that they did in fact believe every second of every day; unbelief -that is falling back into patterns that any one could recognize as believing we created ourselves- infects everyone, as far as I can see. I distrust people who say they have no prejudices in much the same way.

I was just reading an article on the 'trap' that inerrancy sets for believers. Supposedly, the trap is that once doubt about inerrancy sets in a domino effect occurs causing all other doctrinal beliefs to fall away too.

I think that it will be the Evangelical Community that will reinvigorate a Christianity that has been infected by post-moderninsm or moral relativism: it takes Faith, a true belief, to stay with Inerrancy. If God can't really part the Red-Sea, because man says he can't, then the Incarnation doesn't stand much better of a chance of being truth, if what is really driving the whole thing is what is possible by what we know?

Who among us has the capacity to take any observation contra-Scripture and examine it with such expertise that not one whit of faith needs to be imparted to those who state the observation to be not only theoretic but applicable? Should I give my faith to man or to God? I'm going with God.

I just got the Complete Jewish Bible by David Stern. I don't seem to ever be able to have enough versions. I have the King James, of course, The New English, the New Jerusalem and now this one. I like knowing all the Jewish names of the prophets, you can see in some instances how they came to be called who they were called in Enlgish translation. Jeremiah is a good example of this. I have to say though, that nothing surpasses the King James for its elegance and beauty of language.

I wonder if when Jesus gave us the Lord's Prayer, if he didn't give us in that all that we really needed to know even doctrinally. Being chosen seems to be in there, the rule and composition of faith and hope and charity seem to be there too.

Amen.

Doube amen. I learned this from my son who read it and understood it even better than I did.

"It's all there in the Sermon on the Mount, isn't it?" he said to me. And so it is.

"They will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

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