Rector’s Blog

Very soon a movie called “The Golden Compass” will be released. It is based on the book by English author Philip Pullman. Pullman makes no bones about being an atheist and writing “anti-God” books. There are those calling for the boycotting of the film with the same name. I’ve read forwarded articles that are worried that this film will make children hate God, or not believe in God, or at the least encourage children to read the book.

Quite a few years ago Martin Scorcesee (sp?) directed a film based upon Katzinzakas’ book” The Temptation of Christ”. There was great hysteria about the movie. A campaign set out to discourage christians from seeing the film based upon, not the book, nor the film itself, but from early drafts of the screenplay. As a young priest I spoke against the movie too, without having seen it. I think the campaign against the movie did the opposite - it sent people to the movies to see it and find out what all the fuss was about. When it came out on video, I rented it. It was not a good movie. It was not a scriptural presentation of Christ - but what movie can be? (Even Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” adds lots of stuff.) Without the hysteria over the movie I believe it would have been very short lived in the theatres. It was, like all religious art, one person’s (Scorcesee’s) interpretation of Jesus Christ. You can like it or not. It can be helpful to one person’s spiritual life and not helpful to another.

I read this morning an article by Martin Marty from his “Sightings” about “The Golden compass” or rather about an article about the movie in Atlantic Magazine entitled “How Hollywood Saved God”. I commend both to you. But I will neither commend nor pan “The Golden Compass” or any other movie until I’ve seen it. In other words I won’t take someone else’s word for it.

I thank those who have sent me articles about the movie, but I won’t speak about it until I’ve seen it for myself.