“[P]hantasmagorical cocktail of inventions”
As the Vatican flips out and condemns a new film by the makers of “The Da Vinci Code” and bans them from accessing the Vatican, churches and other sites around Italy.
Vatican bans Dan Brown film Angels & Demons from Rome churches
The Vatican has banned the makers of Angels & Demons, the latest Dan Brown thriller to be filmed, from shooting scenes not only in the Vatican but in any church in Rome on the ground that it is “an offence against God” and “wounds common religious feelings”.
Archbishop Velasio De Paolis, head of the Vatican’s Prefecture for Economic Affairs, said that the author had “turned the Gospels upside down to poison the faith. It would be unacceptable to transform churches into film sets so that his blasphemous novels can be made into mendacious films in the name of business.” […]
“When a film is about the saints or about stories regarding the Church’s artistic values, then we give permission without any doubts,” Father Fibbi told the TV listings magazine Sorrisi e Canzoni (Smiles and Songs). “But when it is a question of content which does not relate to traditional religious criteria, then our doors are closed.”
Now if they would just apply that same passion and rejection of child molester priests and their enablers…
1. Angels and Demons has nothing to do with the Gospels. It’s about the Illuminati.
2. Even if this were a “punishment” for The Da Vinci Code, it really is dumb because even fans of the book who aren’t religious (such as myself) know that it’s a WORK OF FICTION.
Or is the Church becoming like Laura Mallory with Harry Potter – can’t tell the difference between fiction and reality?
And this is surprising as well, because a higher up in the Church responsible for scientific research came out a few weeks ago and stated that belief in E.T.s, or even their proven existence, would not at all effect Catholic belief and that the two beliefs can exist in harmony with one another. Which is exactly how I was taught evolution in Catholic school (and why I can’t grasp the problem other Christians have with that concept).
So in one breath, they show how “enlightened” they are and in another they act like they did 500 years ago.
Give me a break!
And you are right Tammy – they need to “clean house” regarding the molesters before they start pointing finger at people. He without sin can cast the first stone, right?
I disagree with that movie makers should be allowed to use church facilities. Believers take their faith far more seriously than she seems to know. We act as we did thousands of years ago, not 500. Our country affords movie makers their right to express their views in film but the right does not extend to the use of church facilities (or mosques or synagogues). I also believe that offenders of others rights (child molesters) should be turned over to the proper authorities, no matter what faith or denomination they belong to.
First off, the Catholic Church like any other organization has the right to refuse the use of their property for any reason or no reason what so ever. The fact is that Brown ( I happen to like his books ) has a history of attacking the Catholic Church which would make anybody somewhat cautious about letting him or anybody associated with him any where near Church property. After all, if somebody wrote a book saying your company was awful and evil and deliberately trying to do people harm and that you personally were an evil person, then came and asked if they could use your home for a film…supposedly on a different subject like a secret society of talk show hosts…wouldn’t you be a bit cautious?
The bit about pedophile priests is interesting and the Church needs to change the way it deals with those kind of vermin. However, it’s grossly unfair to characterize the whole church for a very small percentage of criminal predators. As for the predators, I hope they get caught, rot in jail then have to explain it all to their maker and let him decide what to do with them. I know what I’d choose but fortunately for the predators I’m not making that decision.
Tammy:
You are borderline offensive whenever you talk about anything Catholic. It is a very unattractive blind spot.
Let’s require you to open your home to anti-2nd Amendment rights film crews. I’m pretty sure Michael Moore would love to use your home as a backdrop for his next film screed. Private property still trumps artistic expression.
Secondly: the reason the pederast priest scandal was a scandal was because it was in such violent disagreement with Church teachings. The priests failed; the Bishops failed and the flock was wronged. Right and wrong is still alive and well in the Church, and she is struggling to change the wrongs of the past.
I’m not saying they HAVE to allow the movies to be made there. I’m just saying it’s a stupid reason not to, that’s all.
And making comments about the “scandal” does not mean she’s anti-Catholic. The scandal is a disgrace to the administration of the Church and it gives regular Catholics a bad name as well as the religion (even if that dislike is misplaced).
The Vatican should have banned filming on the grounds that The Da Vinci Code was such a God-awful movie.
The acting was phoned in. Hanks was dreadful, and McKellan was even worse.
The dialogue was more wooden than Washington’s cabin. And the plot both sucked and blowed.
Where’s the Inquisition when you need it?
“The Bishop of Rome” and the entire organization are still stuck in the Dark Ages. There is as much enlightenment in Rome as a Dark Cave from medival times. As long as they continue to coddle, allow, look-the-other-way, smirk, or how ever they choose to cover up the behavior of their own Bishops and Priest they don’t have a leg to stand on. Women are still second class in this organization. It is a Man-Only club that has distorted the “message” to suit themselves!
It is all and only about Money!
For those who take offense: I don’t think Tammy is taking issue with the fact that church officials are banning film crews from the Vatican or other religious sites in Rome. I think the point is quite clearly the passion with which they oppose the filming. She thinks they should have the same and even more passion against their pedophile priests.
What bothers me most along those lines (forget film for a moment) is that the Catholic church won’t reconsider its ban against married priests. There is no biblical ban against married church leaders. As a matter of fact, the scriptures say that a priest should be the husband of one wife [not the husband of a dozen]. Give me one and I’ll leave. The problem with limiting your clergy to single men without opposite sex partners is that you will end up attracting an inordinate number of men who are sexually dysfunctional in some way. And if priests have access to young Catholic boys all day long, who do you think will apply for the job?
The Catholic Church is entitled to protest this film and not participate with any theatrical perforamce it deems contrary to its values.
You will notice they aren’t issuing death threats against the makers of the film, demanding they be stopped or else they can’t be held responsible for what less sensible Catholics do, or otherwise bombing embassies or something.
Tammy is right to observe that the passion the church seems to expend on fiction is not matched by anything close when it deals with real people and events. Where is the excommunication of Ted Kennedy, the execrable Pfleger, and the cannibal Mugabe, much less pedophile priests?
I am a Catholic and I along with most true followers of the faith want to see these disgusting animals who dare call themselves Catholic priests brought to justice and if they are guilty of touching a child given the death penalty . And the higher up who covered up or moved around these scum to also be brought to justice.
But those who are going to tell the church to get out of the dark ages , I suggest you get a copy of the New Saint Joseph Baltimore Catechism and educate yourself . Don’t criticize what you can’t understand . Then if you still feel the church does not meet your standards you can tell God it’s time to bring his Holy Catholic Church out of the dark ages and get with the times.
I do not even know why we are having this dialogue? Why would the movie staff even think it appropriate to ask to use sacred space to act out their attack? Kind of like renting the church to masturbate. I too believe Catholicism is a Tammy blind spot, despite everything else that I enjoy and appreciate from this blog.
Leave it alone, Tammy. I agree with the “blindspot” people but you seem more virilent than that when attacking the Church. I came to you a couple of years ago from Dr Laura Schlessinger and she has the same blindspot but I listen to you both for other stuff. It is irritating and takes away from your (and her) message. You would do better to re-read Hadsil’s comment above – so correct!!
My problem, though, really is with Dan Brown’s works and his ability to spread major inaccuracies. As much as I would like to say, we’re all adults and know fiction from fact, I am stunned on an almost daily basis when I hear his crap (am I allowed to use that word here?) spewing forth from otherwise intelligent people about the Church, Opus Dei and Tradition to say nothing of history (and, yes, Tammy, some others of us are historians by trade and education as well). But, I’ve also seen the damage he’s done on a more personal level. Internet creepies seem to love Brown’s work. His inaccuracies populate web sites, especially the ones teens love! It isn’t just those pediphile-“priests” out there doing this horror, and they aren’t just in the US.
I need to back up, I think. My problem with Dan Brown remains. It is the Tammy and Dr Laura blindspot that has made me think, these last few minutes. I am focusing on why I still listen to Tammy and Dr Laura yet am so offended when the Catholic cracks start. I think it is, and I am directing this more to you Catholics like me, that we are circling the wagons, the Catholic wagons. We fight and make trouble within our own parishes and dioceses when the pedophile issue/actions starts to encroach, but we don’t entertain others’ criticism of the Church. And, we’re losing the battle, which is when the “outsiders” start to attack. They attack legitimately and we know it. I think we should embrace it (as that PC term goes). We need to criticise and scream. The “protective” Bishops need to know we are scattering the wagons, and not just against the pedophile problem.
The Bishops here in the US are also the ones allowing the illegal immigration issue to go the route it is. I don’t know if it is because of this stupid fear of losing birth-Catholics to Central and South American evangelicals (so if they come here, we will “keep” them?) but we need to pressure them to speak to their brother Bishops in CA and SA to then speak to the leaders of El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico (largely Catholics themselves) and make ’em sweat. The Latino Bishops have dinners with these pigs, they have the opportunity to tell them to better their country for their native born Indians to work and live, rather than shipping them out.
Then we will be stronger and possibly listened to when we attack people like Dan Brown, or the pedophile/child rape productions within the “Vagina Monologues” etc.
Tammy’s blindspot may actually be ours (we Catholics). This could be a most enlightening Post that Tammy has given us.
Katiesilverspring:
Circling the wagons? Of course! When someone regularly, consistently, ignorantly insults my family? You bet.
I know it can be an avenue of grace [offering it up] BUT it can also be an opportunity for a corporal work of mercy–instructing the ignorant. I see an analogy to the “I support the troops, but not the mission” fallacy. Here she might say she supports Catholics [but has she ever even said that?], but not the Church to which they belong. Another fallacy.
Tammy’s anti-Catholic bigotry is contrary to her otherwise incisive intellect and I think it’s perfectly fair to call her on it.
As a former Catholic, I’m going to stick up for Tammy here. If she said that Catholics are stupid because they believe in a Virgin Birth, then, yeah, I think that would be anti-Catholic. But because she is upset at the pedophile priest scandal and the way the Church handled it, does not make her anti-Catholic.
Or because some of us think that the more mundane aspects of the Catholic Church (like priests can’t get married, women can’t be priests) are outdated, doesn’t mean we are anti-Catholic.
Anti-Catholic would be not hiring Catholics or wishing to round them up and kill them. Or calling them stupid because of their “faith”. Not disagreeing with administrative policies.
As humans often do, we are mixing up the “government” with the “people”. The way I see it, Tammy does not hate Catholics, she merely is in great disagreement with the administration of the Catholic Church as it relates to pedophile priests.
I see nothing wrong with that.
Bigotry?
You’re waaaay off the mark, Ruth Anne. She may or may not be wrong on this issue, but it is not religious bigotry that she is expressing here.
Longviewcyclist: I didn’t say religious bigotry; I said anti-Catholic bigotry.
Bigot: one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance.
As a member of said group, I will stand by my remark insofar as she has consistently taken intolerant views of the Catholic church and its adherents in this and other posts on this blog. It’s a knee-jerk cheap shot and she usually takes it.
“…you can tell God it’s time to bring his Holy Catholic Church out of the dark ages and get with the times.”
And here lies the problem. The current organization was not designed by “God” or “Christ” at all. It was designed by men with the best intentions. In this case it was St Paul. Any organization that still treats women, gays, etc., as second-class, does not allow clergy to marry and allows the current mess to go on is indeed in the “Dark Ages”.
I want to thank those of you who have attempted to explain to Ruth Anne that being critical of a certain group doesn’t make you a “bigot.” This effort to demonize those in order to simply stop a debate is classic and what my first book, The New Thought Police, is all about. While that effort controls the left, it certainly is not exclusive to them, as illustrated by Ruth Anne.
Accusing me of being an anti-Catholic bigot is as juvenile as the Barack Obama campaign claiming that anyone who criticizes him or doesn’t vote for him is a racist. Of if you’re against gay marriage accusing you of homophobia. You can actually be critical of a group because they’ve done things worthy of criticism. No one or group gets free pass here or on my radio program. No one. Oh, and may I suggest, I have written extensively about the attacks on the Catholic Church by the Gay Gestapo in my books. Both Ruth Anne and Katie, in an effort to be fully informed about what I said and my position, might want to take a look at that before you label me, or anyone else, a bigot.
So yes Ruth Anne, not only are you “way off base” as Longviewcyclist noted, you have lowered yourself into the pit with all the leftist Gestapos who name-call and demonize those who dare to criticize their, shall I say, sacred cows. You, in your demonizing, certainly do not sound like the Catholics and Christians I’ve gotten to know over the years.
And by the way, I have no patience, nor am I impressed by the remarkably patronizing and passive aggressive, “I like you and you’re really smart except when you’re a bigot” crap. Personally, how dare you.
By the way, what posts have I treated Catholics with “hatred and intolerance”? This would be hating and being intolerant of Catholics for being Catholic, as opposed to being intolerance of men in powerful positions who molest children, men in powerful positions protecting child molesters and men in powerful positions threatening women who dare to want more of a role in their church. So unless you’re saying those sorts of things is what makes one a Catholic, then I expect a personal apology from you.
Hey, Tammy.
I apologize for going out of bounds. The constant harangue against an all-male priesthood is what offends because it is a central tenet of the faith. It is not merely administrative. We believe there are reasons why Jesus only chose to ordain men. Those who disagree ought not to be Catholic. Also, no one likes the pederast priests. It was a scandal. But it happened and in the ensuing several YEARS, there have been numerous changes instituted across every diocese in America to prevent such things from happening again. It is a terribly grievous wound within the church itself. To raise it as the punchline every time you disagree with the church is tired. As to the role of women within the Church I would just say that the woman to whom all kings bow is Our Lady. Catholic women are not lacking for role models of holy living. Even some of the great women saints lamented not being able to become a priest, but they found their role within the church as they were created–female. Those who disagree with the gender differentiation within our church ought not to be Catholic.
I apologize to you and hope you accept it.
Tammy, I was waiting for you to come in here. You go, girl!
And I know Ruth Anne apologized and I’m sure you will accept her apology and I understand her knee-jerk reaction because my mom (who is still a Catholic) does that, too. Again, we need to separate out the people from the administration, the citizens from the government.
But Ruth Anne, as a former Catholic, I will disagree that it’s a tenent of the faith that all priests have to be men and can’t get married. The Apostles were married (most of them, I believe). And the fact that Jesus “chose” men to be his Apostles rather than openly choosing women (even though many women followed him and it was 2 women and man, John, that were at the foot of his cross, while the others hid), was probably more of a sign of the times. Even if I believed Jesus was the Son of God, I would say that even God would know better than to be too progressive during that time.
I’m sure if Jesus were to come to us today, he would choose both men and women to be his “Apostles” and I have seen nothing in the New Testament that would indicate that it would ALWAYS AND FOREVER be forbidden for women to become priests. Find me the passage . . . if you can.
If the Catholic Church ordained women, or even if they allowed priests to marry, the world would still turn on its axis just the same as the day before.
If someone were to ask Catholics to stop believing in a Virgin Birth, or that the Virgin Mary remained so throughout her life and had no other children, or that the Eucharist really is the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, then yes, that would NOT be Catholic. That would be Protestant.
But the administration of the Church, including the ordaining of priests and whether priests get married, has nothing, IMHO, to do with the tenents of Catholic Faith.
Just like the arguments against women in combat, I have yet to hear a real good rational argument for forbidding women to become priests or forbidding priests to marry.
Cheers.
Ladykrystyna: The all-male priesthood is a tenet of the faith. You might not know that there are indeed married men who are priests, customarily in the Eastern rite, but also, by special dispensation, in the Latin rite. Priestly celibacy is a practice, a tradition, a custom and so may be changed.
The Biblical reference is at the Last Supper. Church teaching is that this is the first Mass and also the institution of the priesthood [Jesus ordained the Apostles]. No females were present. The Apostles were listed at Matthew 9:36 – 10:8. Only men. All of us are potential disciples [followers], but the Apostles [ones who are sent] are the first priests and bishops. Every bishop in the church has an unbroken chain of succession back to the original 12 [recalling that Judas was replaced after he killed himself.]
Well, just because there was all men at the Last Supper and that the Church decided later to call that the first Mass, etc., does not mean it was ordained by GOD that it should be that way. That’s MAN’s interpretation, IMHO.
That was my point.
But this is not the forum, I believe, for debating and/or attacking one another on religious beliefs.
I respect that Catholics have a different interpretation of the Bible than do other Christians. I was raised Catholic and went to Catholic School through high school.
But IMHO what I saw was that most of the rules were MAN-MADE and had nothing to do with what was actually in the Bible. Hence the reason why Protestants believe that Mary had more children, that Jesus had brothers and sisters, that their ministers can get married and why women can be ordained in some of the Protestant faiths (if not all of them), among other things.
It’s a matter of interpretation. And I see nothing wrong with changing certain interpretations to change with the times, especially the woman’s role in the Church, which, despite devotion to the Virgin Mary, is still secondary.
Just because things are done the same way for 2000 years, doesn’t make them RIGHT. And just because some guy in Rome tells me the rule comes from God doesn’t mean I have to believe him either. People owned slaves, women had no property or legal rights, and the list goes on. Look at the Middle East where apparently they didn’t get the memo that it’s the 21st century and not the 7th century (oh, except for when they drive cars and talk on cell phones).
It’s “convenient” to use that excuse of “tradition” but sometimes people have to realize that tradition is not all its cracked up to be and simply doesn’t make sense in the modern world.
Again, I don’t think the universe will end if priests get married or women are ordained. The real faith of Catholicism is a bit more mystical IMHO – the Virgin birth, the fact that Mary stayed a Virgin all of her life, that the Communion really is the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. Things like that, things contained in the Profession of Faith, for example. Those are things that obviously shouldn’t change, because those are the core of the beliefs. But who gets to be a priest and whether they get to marry, no, I don’t think those are as important so that they have to stay the same.
But of course we are both entitled to our own opinions. So I think we can agree to disagree and keep these comments free of flame wars and fighting. I don’t wish to be banned.
God bless.
Cheers. 🙂
The very fact of this discussion shows we are talking past each other. I don’t mean Tammy and Ruth Anne primarily, but Catholics and Non-Catholics. There are good reasons why women cannot be ordained priests, but without explaining the Catholic view of ontology and Sacraments, it really won’t make a lot of sense. If I’ve followed Tammy at all these last several years, she is very concerned, rightly, that women be able to do what they want in their lives (within moral guidelines of course). If a woman wants to be a stay at home mom, she should be able to. If she wants a career in business she should have full access to it. No favorites should be played between genders. This is quite right. But the Church finds that a woman cannot in her soul (regardless of what can be done to her body) become a man. Only a man can be a groom to a bride in the Church’s view. It is the priest through whom Jesus makes present to the Church His body and blood. There is a marital and mystical meaning to this. Christ gives His Body and Blood to the Church, His own Bride, through the symbol and reality of a man. In the Church’s eyes a woman cannot do this. She isn’t able to. Even if a woman is ordained, it is impossible for her to ever become a priest in reality. She cannot be “in the person of Christ†in that way.
There is a real problem among Church people in recognizing the role of the bride as represented by women and it is a serious problem in the Church. It has been forgotten that Christ zexalted, yes, a woman, to rule next to Him. The Blessed Virgin Mary has been made by Christ to be, as we believe, Queen of Heaven, and truly Queen of Apostles. The role she plays (present tense) in the salvation of the world has been proclaimed well (but not enough) by Catholics. What her role in salvation means for her is often talked about. What her role in salvation means for us has not been. Women have been ignored far too easily and often in the Church and our Theologians for their many good points, have never explored the role of women in the Church as it relates to the Blessed Mother’s closeness with Christ. The role of women not as priests, but alongside priests, must be looked at with seriousness by the men of our Church, and I gladly confess my own failure in this point. May God help us to talk and to at least understand each other.