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More Critiques of Brown's Baloney

I was recently alerted to two excellent (and entertaining!) pieces of criticism aimed at the work of novelist Dan Brown. And as far as I know, they are both written by non-Catholics, even non-Christians. I mention that, of course, because it has become a common retort that those irritated by Brown's novels (The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons) are merely narrow-minded, reactionary, and frightened Jesus freaks.

Over at "Life Goes Off" ("A Website for the Passionately Cynical and the Politically Agnostic") there is a pointed and quite devastating post by Murph about the literary quality (or lack thereof) of TDVCode (hat tip to Blostopher of RatzingerFanClub.com).

The first sentence filled me with such dread and terror that I almost couldn't bear to continue for another 500 pages, not because it was too thrilling, but because the writing was so horrific that I saw a frightening vision of the thorny, editorless jungle that lay ahead.

Thankfully, he does continue on and his comments are worth reading.

Meanwhile, over at "No Loss for Words," historian Danny Loss has a lengthy and detailed post titled, "Dan Brown is a fraud: A list of errors in Angels and Demons." Be warned that Loss minces no words and uses earthly language from time to time. But his critique is excellent. He prefaces it by saying:

Dan Brown is an awful writer - his language is pedestrian at best, his characters flat, his plots formulaic. But that's not my concern. The problem with Dan Brown's books is that people buy into his claims that they're factually accurate. Call me a pedant, but facts matter, especially when you claim that you get the facts right.

My goal here is convince people that you shouldn't believe any of Dan Brown's factual assertions. He gets some stuff right, but he's wrong just as often as he's right. Go ahead and read his novels for fun. But don't trust a single word he's saying without doing further reading. Brown's either incompetent or careless. In either case, he insults his readers by getting so much wrong. It's amateurish, and he should be castigated for it.

Of course, Murph and Loss could be on the payrolls of Opus Dei, the Vatican, and Ignatius Press. It wouldn't surprise me if some people thought so. But in light of how many people blindly accept Dan Brown's "facts," very little surprises me anymore.

More "Reviews" of TDVHoax...

There are some new "reviews" of The Da Vinci Hoax over at amazon.com, including this freshly posted piece of critical ingenuity:

whats the point? on the front cover of the Da Vinci Code it clearly says "A NOVEL." what is the point of trying to "debunk" a book that clearly says its fiction. Maybe I should start doing this for every fictional book that comes out, I'll even sell it in a bundle with with the book im investigating! It'll make millions! My first book will be called "Of Lies and Men: exposing the truth between John Steinbecks famous story." C'mon now....

Golly, so glad that someone noticed that Dan Brown's novel is a novel. Wish he would have brought it up earlier. I thought it was a work of non-fiction completely based in fact. No, wait, that's what thousands (tens of thousands? hundreds of thousands) of other readers think. So sorry, but this line of "thought" it really starting to irritate me.

Another amazon.com review is actually a review, which means the reviewer ("Redbird") has read our book (he gives it 5 stars) and has some thoughtful things to say. I hate to quibble with someone who wrote so many kind things, but I do take exception to this comment:

The book may be sometimes petty (cf the size of the painting "The Virgin of the Rocks"), but it is rare. Also, one, if not both, of the authors are Catholic; so statements that Opus Dei is a fanatical sect, that the Catholic Church would encourage a prelature to form a new church for political reasons, that the Catholic Church murdered people to protect the "secret" of Christ's non-divinity, and that Mary Magdalen feared the Church for her life are so offensive that occasional stridency on their part is understandable.

First, is it really "petty" to make an issue out of Dan Brown's inability to correctly identify the size of The Virgin of the Rocks? The novel states it is five feet in height; it is actually 6.5 feet tall. As we state in our book, this is normally not a matter of much concern; it's called "artistic license." But consider some other factors:

1). The "FACT" page, which states that "All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate."

2). Brown's claim, in interviews, that he spent time in art school in Spain.

3). Brown's claim that he and his wife spent time researching the art of Leonardo da Vinci first hand in Paris (at the Louvre) and other places in Europe.

4). Brown's claim that his wife, Blythe, is an art historian and that she helps him in his research. In an June 9, 2003 interview on "The Today Show", Brown stated: "She--she is an enormous da Vinci fanatic and really got me extremely interested in this topic. And I--I approached it with some skepticism and became a believer the more time we spent in Europe in these museums. She's a great editor."

5). Brown's insistence, about a year after the novel was published, that he would not change a thing if he wrote it again and that this would hold true even if he had written it as a work of nonfiction.

I don't think, in light of all of this, that wondering how or why Brown could misrepresent the size of a painting is petty at all. It speaks to his research, his integrity and character, the legitimacy of his scholarship, and raises serious questions about his motives.

Finally, while this post might be considered a bit "strident," I have a hard time understanding how our book is "strident" in places. Critical? Yes. Sarcastic? Yes. Irritated? Yes. Annoyed? Yes. Strident? I don't think so. But again, the reviewer gave our book five stars, so he obviously is intelligent. Another reviewer states that our book is occasionally too "pious." That is a hoot. I can accept "strident" much easier than "pious"...

Feeling Listless?

Then you might be interested in "The Good, the Read, and the Unbearable," which contains my choices for favorite/best/worst books, CDs, and movies of 2004.

Simon Says: The Truth Sometimes Hurts

The heavily-watched, even-more-heavily-hyped singing competition "American Idol" is back for the its fourth season. Perhaps you don't care. But if you are curious, I wrote one of my more, um, speculative articles about this pop music spectacle back during its first season:

The caustic Brit Simon Cowell has been pushing Americans' buttons for several weeks on the popular "American Idol" television show. Is he really as cruel and mean spirited as his critics insist? Or could it be that some people just have a hard time coming to grips with the truth?

Read the rest of the article here...

Homiletic & Pastoral Review is now online!

Now you can access your favorite magazine online and check out the new issue every month! 

America's Leading Pastoral Magazine

Founded over one hundred years ago, Homiletic & Pastoral Review is one of the most well-respected pastoral magazines in the world. Priests and laymen alike have relied on HPR for decades.

Edited by Fr. Kenneth Baker, S.J.,  author of the best selling, Fundamentals of Catholicism, and of the popular introduction to the Scripture, Inside the Bible. Editor for over thirty years, Father Baker's experience is invaluable. His powerful monthly editorials will inform and inspire you. HPR features solid articles on every aspect of pastoral life and eloquent weekly sermons that illuminate through exposition of scripture. 

Faithful to the teachings and tradition of the Church for over a century, our readers know what to expect in each issue. Here are just some of the features of HPR:       

  • First-rate articles by great Catholic writers on doctrine, spiritual guidance, morality and authentic pastoral practice
  • Deep insights into pressing pastoral issues of the Church's life and mission
  • Stimulating homilies for Sundays and Holy Days by today's outstanding preachers
  • Wise and practical answers to your questions from one of the Church's top moral theologians, Msgr. William Smith

We don't bend and sway with every passing fad. Built on the solid foundation of the Catholic Church, we espouse the timeless truths of Faith that never change.

Download sample articles and sermons...find links to valuable online resources...take a look into the past through select articles from days gone by!

Kimball on Leisure and Pieper

A great post by Roger Kimball, editor of The New Criterion, on "The Uses of Leisure" can be accessed here (hat tip to the Seventh Age blog). He writes:

For Plato, for Aristotle, for Aquinas, we live most fully when we are most fully at leisure. In the Politics, Aristotle noted that "The first principle of all action is leisure. Both are required, but leisure is better than occupation and is its end."

Leisure in the sense intended by Aristotle--the Greek word is schole, whence our word "school"--meant the opposite of "downtime." Leisure is not idleness, but activity undertaken for its own sake: philosophy, aesthetic delectation, and religious worship are models.

He then notes that the greatest modern work on leisure is a book published by Ignatius Press:

Probably the most profound meditation on the meaning of leisure is a little book by the German neo-Thomist philosopher Josef Pieper called in English Leisure, the Basis of Culture, first published in the late 1940s and recently reissued. Pieper not only wrote about leisure. He was also a writer whose work requires leisure (I do not mean simply "spare time") if it is to be properly read.

Not that he is "difficult" or overly technical. On the contrary, Pieper wrote with a glittering simplicity--for once a genuinely "deceptive simplicity"--but the tintinnabulation of unleisured life deafens us to such quiet dignity. We must stop to listen if we are to hear these arguments, and stopping and listening are among the most difficult things to accomplish in a world that rejects leisure. Pieper's simplicity is the hard-won simplicity that comes at the end of an intellectual journey.

I've not read nearly as much Pieper as I should, but the three or four books I have read are all fantastic. Also excellent in Kimball's The Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotages Art, which I recently finished reading. More info and excerpts from that book can be found here.

An Interview with Archbishop Basilios Georges Casmoussa...

...is available over at IgnatiusInsight.com. The interview is from the November 2004 issue of Catholic World Report and contains Archbishop Casmoussa's thoughts about the challenges faced by Christians in a post-Saddam Iraq. As you probably already know, Archbishop Casmoussa was kidnapped and held for about twenty-four hours two days ago. Links to that story and the interview here.

The Never-Ending End-Times Story

I'm not a prophet, but a year ago on EWTN I remarked (very tongue-in-cheek-like) that I wouldn't be surprised if there were eventually 666 Left Behind titles. I received several nasty e-mails in response to the remark, most of them from Fundamentalists (who watch EWTN!) who were angry that I'd joke about such serious matters. One sternly informed me that I was very "mean-spirited" and then noted that Catholics aren't really Christian. Ah, yes, I'm mean, brainwashed, and going to hell—but at least Tim LaHaye is praying for my soul.

Anyhow, although I'm not a prophet, book #13 of the Left Behind series will be out on March 1st. It is titled The Rising: Antichrist Is Born and is a prequel to the first twelve books. Apparently there will be many more books to come since Tyndale is saying this is book #1 of the "Countdown to the Rapture" series. You can read an excerpt from The Rising over at leftbehind.com. Here's the opening paragraph, just to whet your eschatological/literary/humor-loving appetite:

Marilena Titi's union with Sorin Carpathia was based on anything but physical passion. Yes, they had had what the vulgar in the west would call a fling. But as his student and eventually his assistant at the University of Romania at Bucharest, Marilena had been drawn to Sorin's intellect. The truth, she knew, was that there was little prepossessing about either of them. ...

As far as I'm concerned, The End of this series of books cannot come soon enough...

Evolution and St. Padre Pio

In the category of things I did over the weekend: Finally, I have managed to get to a careful reading of Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God, a document of the International Theological Commission. When it was first released last year, I skimmed it, took note of some key points, and then put it on the very large stack of things later to be studied. Now I’ve gone through it. Interesting reading, if you want to think about what it means to say that human beings are created in the “image of God”.  And of course you should want to think about it!

One thing that bears mentioning here is the subject of human evolution. The document mentions the ongoing debate over whether purposiveness in living organisms is scientifically detectable. Proponents of what is called Intelligent Design theory say “yes”. Neo-Darwinians say “no”.

“The nub of this currently lively disagreement,” declares the ITC document, “involves scientific observation and generalization concerning whether the available data support inferences of design or chance, and cannot be settled by theology”. “But it is important to note,” continues the ITC document, “that, according to the Catholic understanding of divine causality, true contingency in the created order is not incompatible with a purposeful divine providence. Divine causality and created causality radically differ in kind and not only in degree. Thus, even the outcome of a truly contingent natural process can nonetheless fall within God’s providential plan for creation” (no. 69).

In other words, even if we posit an evolutionary process as an explanation for the diversity of organisms, including human beings, and even if this evolutionary process is said to have operated by chance variation and therefore contingency, it doesn’t follow from this that such a process is outside of divine providence, although such providence would not be scientifically detectible. According to Communion and Stewardship, “In the Catholic perspective, neo-Darwinians who adduce random genetic variation and natural selection as evidence that the process of evolution is absolutely unguided are straying beyond what can be demonstrated by science. Divine causality can be active in a process that is both contingent and guided. Any evolutionary mechanism that is contingent can only be contingent because God made it so. An unguided evolutionary process—one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence—simply cannot exist because ‘the causality of God, Who is the first agent, extends to all being, not only as to constituent principles of species, but also as to the individualizing principles . . . It necessarily follows that all things, inasmuch as they participate in existence, must likewise be subject to divine providence’ (Summa theologiae I, 22, 2)" (no. 69).

The ITC doesn’t take sides in the current debate over the scientific evidence for or against Intelligent Design—it declares that resolution of the debate is outside the expertise of theology as such since it hinges on a question of empirical evidence and whether design is scientifically discernible. But the ITC does say that those evolutionary theorists who declare evolution to have been absolutely unguided transgress the limits of what their scientific method can discern. It may be that we can’t detect by means of science alone the guiding hand of a Creator in the emergence of biological diversity—although proponents of Intelligent Design claim we can. But arguing that science can't penetrate beyond natural selection and chance to discover a Creator isn’t the same as saying no such Creator exists. As St. Padre Pio once said to a man who claimed such-and-such event happened by chance: “And who do you suppose arranged the chances?”

The "It's just a book" line is slammed...

...by the The Sunday Times of Malta in a this mildly surprising end-of-the-year piece. Pertinent quote, with emphasis added:

It was the year of Mel Gibson's Grunewaldian Passion of the Christ at one end and Dan Brown's Da Vinci hoax at the other. Moved by the unrelenting realism of the first, the unrepentant breeziness of the second left a bitter taste. It was edifying to see Christ the suffering man and not the bizarre Christs that are being invented: a gay Christ, a married Christ, a Christ indulging, for which read enduring, his last temptations on, of all things, a cross, a Christ cricified in urine. The assault has been ferocious and will no doubt get fiercer still as Christians stick to their man and treat with some contempt the comment of the post-Christian Bishop of Durham that the Resurrection was a "conjuring trick with bones".

Brown was not edifying because of the masquerade of scholarship under which he paraded his hoax, an intellectual pretence systematically shown up by a string of books that have recently come to market. The main problem with Brown's effort, of course, is that he's had people saying "it's just a book" as if it no longer matters that its contents undermine, or attempt seriously to undermine, a belief. Will ten million people read his critics? You can make a film about a hoax. Can you make one about the answer to that hoax? Brown and Hollywood know the answer to this too well.

Russell Shaw on the Election of 2004

Russell Shaw, an astute and veteran observor of the intersection of Catholicism and politics, offers some thoughts on the 2004 elections in the latest issue of Crisis. Pondering the reasons many Catholics voted for Senator John Kerry, Shaw writes:

Three reasons stand out.

The ethically respectable, though certainly debatable, reason was the belief that Bush was a failed president who couldn’t be trusted with power for another four years. Fear and loathing toward the war in Iraq and anger about tax cuts for the well-to-do in the face of soaring budget deficits combined with other issues to produce this assessment. 

The other reasons Catholics had for supporting Kerry were not as respectable.

One lay in the phenomenon of the Catholic yellow-dog Democrat. “These people think the Depression started yesterday, and Franklin Roosevelt is in the White House,” an exasperated bishop from a battleground state exclaimed privately before the election. He meant practicing Catholics in his diocese who were determined to vote for Kerry.

The final reason concerned the yuppie values of marginal Catholics who found Kerry’s backing for abortion, life-destroying embryonic stem-cell research, same-sex unions, and the like more congenial than Bush’s modestly pro-life stands. Instead of being troubled by Kerry’s pledge to name supporters of Roe v. Wade to the Supreme Court, these people apparently welcomed it.

The entire article can be accessed here.

Two Popes: The Real Pius and the Pseudo-Pius

Fast on the heels of an apparently false story that Pope Pius XII "opposed the return of Jewish children to their parents after the Nazis' defeat" (in the words of The Independent) is a report that there is proof that Hitler had plotted to kidnap the much-defamed pontiff. A Reuters story states:

Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler gave one of his generals a direct order to kidnap Pope Pius XII during World War II, but the officer did not obey, Italy's leading Roman Catholic newspaper reported yesterday.

.... Avvenire said Hitler feared the pope would be an obstacle to his plans for global domination and because the dictator wanted to abolish Christianity eventually and impose national socialism as a global religion."

What? Hitler wanted to abolish Christianity? Amazing (yes, I'm being very sarcastic). That helps explain why he killed millions of Christians, a fact almost completely ignored (if it's known at all) by the MSM.

For more on the truth about Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust, see the Catholic League web site or check out Dr. Ralph McInerny's The Defamation of Pius XII.

So that's why Mary isn't special in any way...

This from a reader, an Evangelical of some sort, eager to explain why (in his words) "there is no need for Mary to be seen as anyone special.":

At the root of the modern conflict over devotion to the Virgin Mary is a different understanding of how the miracle of the Virgin Birth occurred. This may seem like a "straw man" but I am merely pondering the roots.

In the early centuries of the Christian era, and until rather recently, human reproduction was not understood. Most people believed this is how reproduction worked. The semen (not sperm) enters the woman and rests in it. The semen is nourished there and grows into the child. The child is so seen as the "flesh of the man" literally.

So, the early Catholics think about the Virgin Birth. The Holy Spirit overflowed the flesh of Mary. Jesus' flesh grew out her womb. The flesh of Jesus is the flesh of Mary. Since the flesh of Jesus is sinless, so must Mary. Add 2000 years of popular sentiment, and we get what we have today. Though rooted in bad science, it has too much momentum to die down.

The MODERN evangelical view is this. This is how reproduction works. The sperm from the man enters the egg of the woman. The child has its own unique flesh. (If it did not abortion would just.)

So, this how the Virgin Birth worked. The Holy Spirit overshadowed the WOMB of Mary. One of her eggs was miraculously modified, a Y-chromosome was created and the genetic problems which usually harm such embryos eliminated. Instantaneously, the Word of God became enfleshed in that embryo. The only further miracle necessary is one of protection from enemies. There is no need for Mary to be seen as anyone special.

This is why even the most Catholic-friendly evangelicals are annoyed at Marian veneration, whether we know it or not. The Resurrection of any crucified man, let alone Jesus Christ our Savior is a much more beyond nature than His birth.

It's impressive, in a sad way, that someone could make so many strange, incorrect, and outrageous statements in such a short space. I'm especially puzzled by the assertion (if I understand correctly) that Jesus is not "of Mary," per se, but merely hung out in her womb for nine months after the Holy Spirit used one of her eggs. So does this mean, as a Fundamentalist once told me, that Mary was just a "biological vessel"? Bizarre.

Pope Pius XII vindicated. Again.

Recently there was a deluge of articles shouting that Pope Pius XII was indeed the ogre that many want him to be. The Independent, for example, reported:

The bitter, long-running controversy over the attitude of Pope Pius XII to the Holocaust has taken a new turn with the publication of diaries that prove he opposed the return of Jewish children to their parents after the Nazis' defeat. [emphasis added]

Not so fast, says the Vatican and ZENIT:

The theologian of the Pontifical Household described as "artificial" and "disagreeable" the controversy that followed the manipulation of a historical document attributing alleged anti-Semitic attitudes to Pius XII.

The debate arose when the Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera on Dec. 28 published a 1946 document that it attributed to the Holy Office.

The document, according to Il Corriere, instructed bishops and priests not to return Jewish children that the Church had baptized and saved from the Holocaust, to their original families.

However, when another newspaper, Il Giornale, published the original document, it was clear that Il Corriere was mistaken about the document's author, date and content. The document was, in fact, from the apostolic nunciature in France.

Will all of those newspapers that prominently ran the first—and incorrect—story offer equally prominent corrections? Don't bet on it. The hunt to destroy Pius XII, which has become an obsession for many, is really the hunt to destroy the papacy and thus destroy the Catholic Church. Expect more startling, damning charges in the years and decades to come, but don't expect many apologies or corrections when they are proven false or seriously skewed.

Ignited By Truth Conference

Perhaps I've mentioned this before, but just in case: I will be one of the speakers at the annual Ignited By Truth Catholic Conference held February 12th and 13th in Raleigh, North Carolina. I'm looking forward to it and I think the (other) speakers will excellent: Dr. Janet Smith, Jeff Cavins, Fr. Jim Garneau, Dr. Chris Clemens, and Dr. Wes Kirkpatrick. If you are on the East Coast (or anywhere else, for that matter) and are able to get away, it will be a wonderful opportunity to learn more about the Catholic Faith and meet other Catholics devoted to sharing and defending Catholicism.

The Secret of the Church's Social Teaching

If you've not yet seen or read it, be sure to check out Mark Brumley's excellent essay review of Fr. Roger Charles An Introduction to Catholic Social Teaching. Mark writes:

An Introduction to Catholic Social Teaching is just the sort of volume that can and should be used to good effect in parish adult faith formation. It presupposes only the rudiments of Catholic theology. It is written in straightforward, explanatory prose. And it covers the terrain very well. Furthermore, unlike many other volumes that purport to give us Catholic social teaching, this book presents the real thing—authentic Catholic teaching, not modish theories and dubious mixtures of Catholicism and radical political ideologies of either the right or the left.

The Church's social teaching is a mystery to many and a complex mess to others, often because (as Mark hints at above) it is corrupted and confused with all sorts of faddish nonsense. Mark's essay is itself a very helpful introduction to the topic, and Fr. Charles's book is highly recommended for anyone looking for a clear, accessible work on the topic.

Pasadena Bound

I'm off to Pasadena to give a talk to the Legatus group there tonight. Will be back tomorrow afternoon. In the meantime, be sure to check out a couple of new IgnatiusInsight.com articles: "Quintessence of Dust" by Dr. Donald De Marco and "The Real Reason for the Vocation Crisis" by Rev. Michael P. Orsi.

What am I missing here?

You've likely heard this story already: In a sermon last week the German Cardinal Joachim Meisner said: "First there was Herod, who ordered the children of Bethlehem to be killed, then there was Hitler and Stalin among others, and today unborn children are being killed in their millions." Now he's apologizing for offending Jews and some Jewish groups have threatened to take the matter to court:

He said he intended no offense to people of the Jewish faith and said he never would have made the comparison if he thought it would have been taken as an offense or misunderstood. The comments drew criticism from Jewish leaders and some lawmakers.

Paul Spiegel, president of the Central Council for Jews in Germany, claims the Catholic leader insulted millions of Jews who were victims of genocide in Germany before and during World War II. He said he was considering taking the matter to court.

Spiegel told the newspaper Saarbr?cker Zeitung he "cannot in any way understand" how anyone could compare abortion and euthanasia to the crimes of the Nazis. He called the comparison "unspeakable and offensive."

This is absolute nonsense, in more ways than one. First, if the good Cardinal doesn't want to offend anyone, he best not be a bishop. Secondly, how is this an insult to Jews?! The only explanation is that it offends those who support abortion. After all, the Cardinal doesn't refer to Jews and it's a plain fact that Hitler and Stalin, in addition to killing many millions of Jews, killed millions of non-Jews, including Poles, gypsies, Catholics, Protestants, Ukrainians, etc., etc.

It's obvious to anyone with half a brain that the Catholic Church opposes abortion and believes it is murder. Abortion is the killing of innocents. So, to compare the mass killing of innocents in one historical era to the mass killing of innocents in another historical era is completely legitimate, even necessery. Spiegel's comments are incredibly arrogant; in essence, he is saying that he and other self-appointed censors have the right to tell Catholic leaders what they can or cannot say to their congregations. The rotten thing is that this undermines the kind of legitimate, productive dialogue between Jews and Catholics that both sides should be seeking. But are both sides really seeking such a thing? I have serious doubts...

What do you get when...

...a knee-jerk liberal reviews a Tim LaHaye novel? Incoherence and more than a little smugness. That might sound strange coming from someone (me!) who has vocally criticized LaHaye, his theological views, and his books for several years now. But I take LaHaye seriously and, just as important, I take his concerns seriously. I just think that he's quite wrong in how he views many things, whether they be political, cultural, or theological.

But Jana Prikryl apparently doesn't, which makes her article over at The Revealer all the more tedious and mealy-mouthed. It is especially amusing that she finds it newsworthy—even astounding—that Evangelicals will read (gasp!) fiction. Yet she seems to think this is remarkable, even though Fundamentalists have been churning out Rapture novels and related fiction for at least a century now, if not longer. For example, Sydney Watson's In the Twinkling of An Eye, a "left behind" novel set in London and first printed in 1921; Watson also penned novels such as The Mark of the Beast and Scarlet and Purple.

Even more interesting is the fact that LaHaye's Left Behind series, which debuted in 1995, is not even the first Rapture novel(s) titled Left Behind! That honor goes to O.R.B. (Olive Ruth Brown) Pattison, who wrote her Left Behind (originally The Undelivered) in 1969. Its back cover states, "Imaginative, dramatic, and scientifically accurate, this contemporary novel is based on the ancient prophecies of the Bible concerning the Rapture. Beam me up, Jesus!

Most annoying, however, is Prikryl's constant reference to Fundamentalists as "Christian conservatives" because they (horror of horrors!) take the Bible and the uniqueness of Jesus Christ seriously. Doesn't that mean that Catholics and Orthodox are also "Christian conservatives"? No, it's much easier to blast Fundamentalists and portray them as knuckle-dragging hucksters. Perhaps I shouldn't bother. Perhaps I'm asking too much of someone who wrote an article titled "The Gay Shall Inherit the Church." Perhaps I've found someone more frustrating than Tim LaHaye....

Movies that change your life...

CRUX magazine is a new and interesting Christian e-zine/magazine that is apparently ecumenical and very confident, as the "About CRUX" page indicates:

What is Crux Magazine? Quite simply, the lone voice in the wilderness, the avant-garde of the avant-garde, the bane of conventional wisdom, a thorn in the flesh of ideology, a last bastion of Truth, and the home of tough questions and even tougher answers.

Pretty impressive; hopefully it can back it up. Anyhow, the site features an article by Bobby Maddex titled, "TEN FILMS THAT ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS: Some Movies Just Make You Want To Rethink Your Life." It starts with this bold and all-together dubious statement:

Okay, so The Passion didn't have the impact on people's lives that was expected of the highly publicized epic. There are any number of ways to account for this phenomenon. Perhaps the film was too heavy-handed for some viewers, so raw in its presentation of human torment that it detracted from whatever compelling message was also present. Or, it could be that the movie's focus, limited to the hours leading up to Christ's crucifixion, didn't allow enough room for an exploration of the revolutionary lifestyle that prompted those final excruciating moments. Whatever the reason, despite record ticket sales and unprecedented hype, The Passion left attendees horrified but unmoved.

I don't know Mr. Maddex or anything about him, but I have to wonder who he has talked to and who he saw The Passion with. Nearly everyone I've talked to who saw the movie was moved—very moved. I was moved. I was not horrified. And I thought the movie provided a wealth of things to think about (Mariology, Eucharist theology, soteriological issues, my relationship with the Crucified Savior, etc.), even though Maddex writes, "I would argue that the film failed to give audience members something on which to chew while driving home." Yet, he doesn't actually argue that—he simply states it.

Oh well. Perhaps he missed the crux of the movie. Regardless, this is a magazine that I'll be checking in on from time to time...