Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

I suppose that it is not surprising that the same USCCB office that fawned over Brokeback Mountain a couple of years ago would not find The Golden Compass objectionable. They want to evaluate the movie on its own merits rather than drawing in the larger context…i.e. the agenda of the writer, Philip Pullman, of His Dark Materials trilogy upon which the movie is based. Most know by now that he is a radical atheist who is intent upon pushing his anti-evangelism by co-opting C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia as a genre to spew anti-Christian, and specifically anti-Catholic dogma.

The USCCB reviewers’ response to this? Don’t ban the movie or the books, talk to your children about them. Hmmm. I don’t disagree with the need to talk but I think that the reviewers clearly steps beyond their competence when they attempt to tell parents how they should respond. It seems to me that it is for each parent to decide what is the best tack to take knowing their own children’s maturity and temperament. Nevertheless, this review, like the Brokeback Mountain review, reveals a fragmented line of thinking.

It is true that one can find the good even in the worst things. That is because evil is parasitic on the good and can only exist within it. But this does not mean that one ought not make judgments as to when there is enough evil sewed into the good to reject the whole. With Brokeback Mountain, I argued that the theme was sufficient to reject it. It was a movie whose effect and arguable intention was to “normalize” the sense the movie going public has of same sex attraction disorder. Financially supporting such a movie without some greater purpose was wrong.

In the case of The Golden Compass, Pullman has explicitly said his intentions with the movie are to draw kids to his books through which he explicitly intends to convert them to his warped world view. This is purely evil. Perhaps the USCCB reviewers are not sufficiently schooled in moral theology. What they are advocating then is to enrich and enable this evil purpose. That is at least material participation in an evil act. Material participation must assiduously be avoided. There must be graver consequences (under the principle of double effect) for not participating before one may consider materially participating in evil.

I think that it is time that the USCCB “pull the plug” on their movie review office. We can save assessment money and send people over to Focus on the Family’s Plugged in Movie Reviews which, sadly, are often more reliable and informative than what we get from the USCCB. For example, this is what they say about Beowolf:

Nearly full male and female nudity, sexual references and innuendo, period bawdiness, adultery, implied nonmarital encounters, intense violence with gore and a suicide. Possibly acceptable for older teens.

Possibly acceptable for older teens…hmmm… This doesn’t sound acceptable for chaste adults. With parents like this, no wonder we have so much trouble teaching chastity and purity to our children. As I said, it’s time to close the office.

So much for a short introduction.  Now go over and see what Thomas, The American Papist, has to say.