That's My Church: The Big Sigh Edition*

Sigh. Don't we, perhaps, have better things to do, o' pointy chapeaued ones?

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican on Wednesday condemned the film "The Golden Compass," which some have called anti-Christian, saying it promotes a cold and hopeless world without God.

In a long editorial, the Vatican newspaper l'Osservatore Romano, also slammed Philip Pullman, the bestselling author of the book on which the family fantasy movie is based.

It was the Vatican's most stinging broadside against an author and a film since it roundly condemned "The Da Vinci Code" in 2005 and 2006.

"In Pullman's world, hope simply does not exist, because there is no salvation but only personal, individualistic capacity to control the situation and dominate events," the editorial said.

{...}The Vatican newspaper said "honest" viewers would find it "devoid of any particular emotion apart from a great chill."

{...}The Vatican newspaper said the film and Pullman's writings showed that "when man tries to eliminate God from his horizon, everything is reduced, made sad, cold and inhumane."

The U.S.-based Catholic League, a conservative group, has urged Christians not to see the movie, saying that its objective was "to bash Christianity and promote atheism" to children.

The Vatican newspaper called the movie "the most anti-Christmas film possible" and said that it was "consoling" that its first weekend ticket sales were a disappointing $26 million.{...}

I hadn't commented on this "Whole here we go again, it's another DaVinci Code" thingymabob, because the Vatican hadn't chimed in directly. But now that they have, well, it's time to revisit ground we've covered many, many times before.

Whilst sighing loudly.

First off, I don't take anything the Catholic League has to say seriously, because, to steal a line from Kathy Griffin, it appears the organization is one guy who has mad emailing/press release-issuing skillz. Second, I'm a little tired of the Vatican feeling threatened by works of fiction. Man up, for Heaven's sakes, because God only knows that there are plenty of men in the Vatican---there should be some spare testosterone floating around there somewhere. I fail to see why the Church would be so threatened by works of fiction that it felt the need to slam them into a wall, much like a wrestler would in a WWE pay-per-view extravaganza, and, furthermore, blatantly ask people to boycott them. It's a move that screams you have no faith in what you're preaching, and that you're afraid, somehow, sometime in the future, people will see that there's just a man behind the curtain and not the Great and Powerful Oz. Stop it. You're making asses out of yourselves. You're supposed to be above this sort of thing.

If someone's faith is so threatened by the mere thought of people going to see a movie based on a book with heavy atheist themes, then you don't really have much faith, do you? That it's the pointy chapeaued ones who apparently don't have much faith in people to view the movie, simply for entertainment's sake, and to not come out of the movie theater as a flaming atheist, ready to rush right over to Barnes and Noble to pick up Richard Dawkins' latest 'God is Dead, You Idiots' screed, is, well, disturbing.

Do I not have ANY readers in Vatican City? For Heaven's sake people, stop making fools out of yourselves!

*My apologies to Robbo for stealing his schtick.

Posted by Kathy at December 19, 2007 12:55 PM | TrackBack