On Good Friday an Evangelical friend of mine had a movie night with The Nativity Story followed by an intermission with yummy Ice Cream (so says my two boys who are not old enough to be bound by the fasting laws of the Church) followed by The Passion of the Christ.  I was unable to get to the theaters to see the Nativity Story because Advent is always a busy time for my family and my wife and I are horribly cheap when it comes to babysitters and so are rarely able to get away for the evening, so we were excited to see the film.  Here is my review of The Nativity Story:

Just to get this out of the way, the complaints in various Catholic circles about the movie having an un-Catholic view of Mary were unfounded in my opinion.  Never once in the movie does Mary doubt God.  Never once in the movie does Mary sin.  None of the “Marian” passages from the Gospels is omitted to make her look less Holy.  The movie has no “flash-backs” that deny Mary’s Immaculate Conception and no “flash-forwards” that deny Mary her Assumption.  All in all I thought the script was well written to depict Mary as a young woman who, full of God’s grace as the Mother of God, found the strength to deal with disapproval and mocking.

The one concession I will give to those who didn’t like the portrayal of Mary was Keisha Castle-Hughes’s acting.  I don’t think she “got” Mary and so was forced to lean on some acting techniques for “generic Holy acting”.  I’m having a tough time explaining this so, as is my usual style, I’ll try to compensate for that by getting very verbose.

Mary, at least the way I see it, has the following characteristics:

1. Full of Grace
2. Humble before God (awestruck) 
3. Faithful 
4. Poor
5. Simple (or perhaps naive is a better word?)
6. Young

My view of how an actress should play that role is to be somewhat giddy and exuberant, in the simple and playful way that a teenage girl would be.  Then, as she is approached by God, in being awestruck, she would be very humble and submissive to God while still keeping that innocent quality of a teenage girl.  As the truth of her situation came to light with her community, the way she would communicate being Full of Grace to the audience is to blend that youthful exuberance with the peace of being able to accept the condemnation without giving ground or lashing out, something your average teenage girl doesn’t do well.

Instead, Castle-Hughes played the role VERY subdued.  She acted it like she had the weight of the world on her shoulders, even before God’s messenger comes to her, and tried to make it look as if she was at peace in her subdued-ness.  But the acting wasn’t there to sell the peace.  At best it was a veiled peace.  At worst it made her look like she was holding in her anger or at a minimum holding in that she was upset.  Often she almost looked a little “slow” or numb.  The worst scene in this regard was when she fell to her knees and told the angel “May it be done according to your will.”  She didn’t look awed and humbled… she looked mechanical and subdued, almost doped up.  As I said, I just don’t think she “got” Mary.

Now that I’ve lambasted Castle-Hughes, I should point out that I think it is an exceedingly difficult role to play.  I wouldn’t want to be the one to help a teenage girl figure out how to act out that role.  It’s difficult to communicate awestruck and humble without introducing a sense of doubt.  It’s difficult to communicate confidence in the face of trials without it looking like anger or fighting back.  It’s difficult to communicate any sense of peace or grace in the scenes she’d be asked to play.  So while I think the acting job was mediocre at best, I’m also willing to overlook that short coming because of the difficulty of the task.  It was not in my view a case of denying Mary anything due to her but merely a inability to effectively put that on the silver screen.

While Mary’s acting was the only signficantly disappointing aspect of the movie, there were a couple other things I though left something to be desired.  Most notably, the movie suffered from what I will from now on call “Sacramental Aversion Syndrome” (or SAS for short).  SAS is a frequent disease amongst Evangelical Christians who are very wary of Sacraments because of their aversion to all things Catholic, but their aversion is odd because of the many scriptural references to various sacraments (like Baptism).  One of the ways SAS often demonstrates itself is in the portrayal of the Jewish people.  There always seems to be a remarkable insistence on making the religious activities of the Jews look ridiculous.  The Navity suffered from this as well.  There were three or four completely unnecessary scenes (Herod sacrificing a bull and Mary and Joseph withnessing money-changers are the two that immediately come to mind) that seemed to be shoe-horned into the movie with the point of putting the SAS of the directors on display.  The story was about Christ’s birth, not his ministry.  There was no need to go down those paths in this movie.

Finishing off my criticisms, I also thought the production quality of the movie left something to be desired.  It was somewhere between an ‘A movie’ and a ‘B movie’.  That’s excellect quality for a Christian themed movie which often border on amateur status, but it’s still not a top-notch Hollywood quality production.  From a production quality perspective, this movie is not The Passion of the Christ.

All of that aside, The Nativity Story as a whole was a good movie.  It was very faithful to the Christian faith (despite some innocent conflicts with scripture) and did a good job of portraying what a miraculous moment Christ’s birth was.  The particulars of the moment of Christ’s birth were VERY well done.  Everything from the pacing, to the lighting (I’m willing to overlook the “spotlight triple-star”), to the acting, to the musical score all built up the moment to be every bit the miracle it was.  Additionally, I though the depiction of the Maji was remarkably good.  In fact, it stole the show from Mary and Joseph (Joseph’s role and acting was much better than Mary’s).  The depiction of Herod and his followers was very good as well.

In the end, The Nativity Story is the best movie I have seen that depicts the birth of Christ.  While it should be proud of that distinction, I left the movie both impressed and somewhat disappointed.  Impressed because it was another Christian movie for the masses in the new tradition started by The Passion.  Disappointed because it could have been so much more.

End result: 3 1/2 stars. (out of 5)

Jay Anderson, a Catholic blogger who I am not familiar with but was linked to today, has come up with Godwin’s Law for Catholic Discussions.  For those not familiar with Godwins law, it says:

“As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”

Additionally the law indicates that since this is not desireable, the individual who resorts to such tactic automatically loses the debate.

Well Jay’s a smart guy and was able to put into words what many of us Catholics who defend the Church have felt for some time.  The sex scandal is used just as aggressively as Hitler in Catholic discussions to divert attention from the issue being discussed.  (As an example of this from my blog, see my complaints about Sean Hannity.)  So he was able to state what I think should from now on be called Anderson’s Law:

As a debate involving the Catholic Church (either a discussion about the Church specifically, or a discussion in which the Church is taking a position) grows longer, the probability of someone mentioning the sex scandal approaches one.

And then there’s it’s corollary: Once such reference to the Scandal is made, whoever mentioned the Scandal has automatically “lost” whatever debate was in progress.So there you have it folks!  A new day in online discussions has dawned with a new law well worth observing.

Over at The Evangelical Outpost, Joe wrote a post about what he appreciates about Catholics.  The first comment was from a Matt Anderson who suggested that Jimmy Akin write a similar post from a Catholic perspective.  Jimmy linked to Joe’s post but did not write the reply Matt had hoped (Jimmy’s a very busy guy).  So, in Jimmy’s place I present a Catholic response:

New forms of worship – Catholics have come up with hundreds of different ways to appreciate God, many of them under-utilized.  However, most of that innovation happened a long time ago.  In more recent times, it has been the Evangelicals who have had the pioneering spirit to find new ways to praise God through music and different forms of prayer service.

In recent years there has been a push in Catholic circles to find new ways to present Christ, particularly to the young.  Being out of practice at it, Catholics have spent a good deal of time following the Evangelical lead and incorporating Evangelical ideas.  For this we should be very thankful.

Use of Technology – All the way back to the invention of the printing press, Protestants have taken a more aggressive approach to using technology to spread the Word of God.  Today Evangelicals are the Protestants who continue that heritage.  I wonder if Catholics would have as strong a presence online, on the radio, on TV and in print if it weren’t for Evangelicals taking the lead in these areas.

Re-Evangelization – Pre-Reformation Catholic Europe had the disadvantage of having “no one to convert”.  All of the Christian formation within Europe centered on raising one’s children.  While there were strong efforts to spread the word of Christ around the globe, in many ways it seems that Catholics lost the ability to evangelize locally.

Evangelicals, as is made clear by the name they chose for themselves, have made conversion a central goal.  In our ever-changing society, we are faced with the reality that Christianity is no longer the majority.  Catholics have struggled to find their evangelical identity.  We owe them a debt of gratitude for all that we have learned from them.

Jesus as man – While the Evangelical notion of a “personal” savior has its issues for us Catholics because of it’s de-emphasis on God as savior for the whole world, that same mindset has also had a positive effect on Catholics.  It has helped many Catholics see God in new light, one that supplements their existing views.

Instead of seeing God in just a very Holy and awe inspiring way, it has helped many Catholics see God in his humanity.  While this has been a constant theme in Lent from the perspective of Christ dying for our sins as a man, the evangelical perspective has broadened that mindset to more aspects of our shared Faith.

Institutional focus on serving the congregation – Evangelical churches are very focused on meeting the needs of their members.  While there has always been a similar theme in Catholicism, the Pope isn’t called “the servant of servants” for nothing, often times the bureaucracy of the Catholic Church has hindered it in delivering on that mission.  Evangelical churches have set a very high bar in this regard and have challenged the Catholic Church to do better.

Just as Joe is not going to swim the Tiber, I too can’t imagine myself ever leaving the Catholic Church.  Nevertheless, there is much to appreciate in the Evangelical approach to Christianity and Catholics should be very thankful to the renewed vigor they’ve brought to spreading the Gospel.

…and now I have a reason to boycott him.

This guy has always bugged me.  I mean, even when I’ve agreed with him, the way he has presented topics and the strategies he used to debate people always made my skin crawl.  Heck, just the way his voice sounds bugs me.

But now he’s gone too far:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f50fD5elrcg&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Emarkshea%2Eblogspot%2Ecom%2F

Before I go on, I should state that I think the priest was holding Hannity to too high a standard that I doubt he’d hold others too.  I don’t think he should deny communion to Hannity.  He could have been more charitable.

But that aside, I’ve lost what little respect I had for Hannity.  What kind of a response is it to a priest questioning how one is presenting the faith to the public to instead acuse him, without cause, of effectively being an accomplice to the priestly scandal?  That’s just ridiculous.  It’s doubly ridiculous coming from a guy who spent half the interview asking the priest if he knew anything about him when clearly Hannity knew nothing about the priest’s work (since the priest was quickly able to reference his website and the work he’s done in regards to the priestly scandal).  But even if this priest had done no work in that area, it’s still not a reasonable response.

In addition his “judge not” and “that’s in the good book” crap was just as ridiculous.  First of all, I’m absolutely sure Hannity has criticized more than one liberal politician for giving that same deflection.  More to the point, there are more than a few references in scripture that speak to the responsibility the Church has to not only generally proclaim the Truth but to call individuals out when they are failing.  In other words, it’s part of a priest’s job to call out sin as sin.

Finally, it’s not an either or choice for birth control or abortion.  There are the options of giving birth or obstaining from sex to prevent conception.  In fact, not only is it not an either or choice, it’s quite the opposite, one leads to the other, as the priest pointed out.  Both are interfering with God’s Will.  Both lead to a disrespect for life.  Once we’re willing to play God with birth control, when our ability to play God falls short, we find new ways to try and play God through abortion.  It’s not a coincidence that abortion was legalized less than a generation after birth-control use became the norm.  And it’s not as like both were discovered recently.  We’ve had the medical technology to do both since the times of the Greek empire.

Or said another way, as a favorite blogger of mine says “If bringing babies into the world is God’s way of saying the human race should continue, birth control is man’s way of saying it should end.”

So, I hearby proclaim that I will change the channel or station whenever I hear Hannity’s voice until he issues a humbly apology for that interview and shows some indication that he is going to take the leaders of the faith he claims to belong to more seriously.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that the page looks a little different than it did before. 

I’ve been meaning ever since I switched from the graymatter blog software to wordpress to duplicate the functionality I had that changed the look and feel of the pages to reflect the current liturgical seasons.  I finally got that work completed this weekend.  So now the blog will automatically change colors as we switch from Lent to Easter and also reflect a number of Saints and Holy days.

You’ll also notice on the right sidebar that it tells you the liturgical name for today.  Just below that is a link to another page I’ve just completed that gives you a month-view calendar so you can figure out when the various Church holidays are each year.

Next up on the blog/calendar ToDo list is to add scripture reading links for every day.  I’ve got most of the Sunday readings in digital format, so the work to be done is to get the daily readings and then parse those data files dynamically.

(Note to all readers.  Please read my previous blog post The Lord Giveth and the Lord Taketh Away before reading this post.  It is a necessary pre-requisite.)

Some may have wondered why I gave a biblical title to my previous post about losing my reporter job for Cal sports.  The reason for the use of this biblical language for both of these posts is because of the revelation I had last Sunday as I was preparing to be a lector for Mass.

Those who know me well know that as long as I’ve been Catholic, I’ve had what I believe is a calling to be a deacon.  There are a number of requirements for being a permanent deacon (the type I’d be eligible to be).  Many of those requirements have prevented me from applying to be a deacon before 2007, and even this year there is one rule that I’m on the borderline for.

Of course in addition to being eligible, a person must do a lot of pondering and discernment as to whether it is both wise for them and their family in addition to whether God is calling you in that direction.  So for the last 8 years I’ve been praying and discerning.  I’ve talked to existing deacons, others considering the deaconate, friends, family and even a couple of strangers I’ve met at Catholic conferences.

Up until last April, I was fairly certain, in a scared and humbled kind of way, that God was indeed calling me to be a deacon and that I should apply in the spring of 2007, when I first was reasonably eligible for the formation program through the diocese.

Then last April, some minor health issues arose in my family, health issues that will require extra vigilance and dedication for me, likely for the rest of my life.  While this didn’t completely shake my confidence, it did cause me to re-analyze my thoughts on the subject.

The month of November then proved to be a decisive one in this regard.  The reporter job was a minor but significant strain on my family life and it was also a time of bad news at my full-time job.  So when December came around and with it the season of Advent, I spent a great deal of time praying about what to do about being a deacon.  By the end of Advent I had decided to put off being a deacon for a handful of years.

The way I saw it, there was just too much on my plate to add the deacon formation process at this time.  Between family, work, the reporter job and possibly having more children, I just couldn’t see committing myself to being a deacon at this point.  While the calling was still strong, it seemed that I was being pulled in other directions for the time being.  God, it seemed to me, was telling me that it was not quite time for me to be a deacon.

Which brings me back to last Sunday.

I was at home preparing to be a lector for Sunday Mass.  It was a rare morning of silence because my wife and boys were visiting her family for the weekend while I was at home fulfilling other commitments like being a lector.

I had already spent most of the weekend thinking about what my next move was now that I had lost the reporter job.  Focusing on having the strength to proclaim the reading from Philippians just as St. Paul would have wanted it, I thought of the other times I had been asked to proclaim with strength.

At which point my mind snapped to the time I had read at the Chrism Mass at the Cathedral.  The reading was from first Samuel and it was a passage that, both because of the setting at the Cathedral and the nature of the passage, required that I be able to speak with strength the words of God, a prophet and a future prophet in formation.

Samuel, the prophet in formation in the passage, was unsure of the calling of God because, as it says in the passage, “Samuel was not familiar with the LORD, because the LORD had not revealed anything to him as yet” (1 Samuel 3:7). By the end of the passage, Samuel had been instructed by Eli to properly hear God’s call and the title of this post, “Speak, for your servant is listening” (verse 10), was Samuel’s response.

At that moment it occurred to me that maybe God was trying to tell me something more profound through getting let go from Rivals. Maybe he was telling me that the excuses I had for putting off being a deacon were not valid. Maybe I was turning my back on a higher calling. A big part of the decision to wait was because I knew that the reporter job was something I was only interested in doing for a handful of years. When those years were up, likely God would likely have already given my wife and I all of the children he wanted us to bring into the world. It seemed that all of the timing pointed to waiting that handful of years.

But now all of that has changed. Now I no longer have the distraction of the reporter job. Now, just after the reporter income had paid off the expensive camera I had bought for the job, God had provided a different thought. God provided the income to keep us out of debt, but is he now calling me to something else? Now, in the spring of 2007, when I had always told myself that the time would come to apply for the deaconate, God had cleared my biggest obstacle to being a deacon off of my plate.

I spent all of Sunday praying about this and frankly I am still confused and humbly awestruck at the path God has put before me to travel. While I don’t know where this path leads quite yet, I do know more than anything, that I need to use the remainder of Lent to walk that path and discern whether God is calling me to be a deacon.

I ask for your prayers to help me as I discern God’s will for my life.

Speak to me Lord, for your servant is listening.

Archbishop Chaput has always been an impressive Church leader in my opinion because of his balanced and practical approach.  This interview with him about immigration reform is another example of this.  Some great quotes that show his balance:

“We want a strong economy and a good standard of living, but we also don’t want to do a lot of the unpleasant jobs that help sustain that standard. So we live with a curious kind of schizophrenia. We need the “illegals,” but we also want to complain about them.”

“If Americans are angry about the immigration issue, it’s not because they’re instinctively bigoted. They’re frustrated and afraid, and too many of our public servants have failed us by not really leading with vision — in other words, by following their polls and ambitions, instead of their brains and consciences, to find a solution.”

“In Denver, we want to build a Church community that it is truly multiethnic and multiracial. That strikes me as a demand of discipleship. But unless we get serious national immigration reform soon, a sense of grievance will continue to grow among both Hispanics and non-Hispanics. In the long run, that could gravely wound the whole country.”

Please read the whole thing.

I was reading this article about a miracle that occured involving an infant who had a heart-attack and came back to life after a half hour, well after the docters stopped their attempts to recessitate the boy.  It’s an amazing little miracle and one that, as most commentors on the story noted, deserves the praising of God.

But the first comment (at least when I visited the site) suggested there is at least one person who felt otherwise.  Their simple comment was “Thank technology!”

Are you kidding me!?!

For me this is further proof of what I’ve known ever since I converted from being an Atheist to being Catholic, that Atheism is just as much of a religion as Christianity is.  How else could you take that story and proclaim that the miracle was the result of “technology”.  While I won’t deny that technology played a part in this infant’s being alive today, the story of his coming back from the dead (and that’s medically speaking) had nothing to do with technology.

No, it is only by having a obsessive commitment to attributing everything to technology that one could look at that story and say “thank technology”.  It’s no different than the overly zealous Christian who believes that his car starting on the second try one morning was the direct intervention of God when the car starts every other morning on the first try.

The reality is that as humans we lack the knowledge necessary to KNOW the answer to very much at all.  Just about everything we think is a mixture of understanding, intuition and faith.  This is just as true for the Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Muslim, Humanist, Agnostic or Atheist.  To claim otherwise is an exercise in foolishness.

What differentiates the various religions from the Atheist is that the average Atheist denies that they too are making decisions based on intuition and faith.  This can be very dangerous because they are blind to an aspect of their decision making process so they can believe that their decisions are based on logic when in reality they are just as based on their personal dogmatic beliefs, sometimes more so because of their blindness, than a person of faith.

I was reading in another blog about their move to requiring user accounts before one can comment.  I understand that desire, seeing as how I get 20-50 comment spam a day.  That’s why I went to moderated comments a while back.  Neither solution is ideal, but seeing as how I hate having so many different user accounts, I decided to go the way of moderated comments instead of user accounts.

But it had long been my plan to switch to the authentication string model and remove the moderation.  This has been the plan for far too long now and something always seems to be more important.  But, today the last straw broke my back.  Motivated by the bad news that yet another blog was taking action to eliminate comment spam, I FINALLY found the time to implement the comment filter.

So (triumphant music starts) from now on, no moderation!  All you have to do is answer a simple math question (something like “Please add 3 and 5″) and you’re comment will be immediately posted.  I decided to go this way instead of the “image in a string” route because sometimes those strings can be a pain to read and frankly anyone who can’t do simple math shouldn’t be posting here.

Comment away unfettered by the shackles of moderation!

I meant to blog about this when it first came out but have been busy the last couple days.  There is a bill being introduced into the state legislator making it illegal to spank children.  I have a lot to say about this but first, the link to the article, and links to associated opinion pieces:

• A Spank can work when a timeout fails
• EDITORIAL: Spank this proposal
• 2 Cents: Any regrets about spanking your kids?

This issue upsets me in so many ways I don’t even know where to start.  The best I can do is list the various complaints and then try to break it down from there:

1. Privacy and freedom:  Who is the state to say how I raise my children?
2. The legislation is backwards: if anything, spanking is more valuable for younger children, and should be outlawed for older children.
3. The apologetic ness of the response: “I’ve only spanked my child 4 times in my life and it was a very, very, very important reason.”
4. Physical intervention is a necessary tool for parents.

I guess I’ll start with #3.  I was going to put caveats in this post about when I think it is appropriate to spank but after thinking about the matter, I now refuse to.  I’ll decide for myself when I think it is necessary and I’ll give my readers the same respect that they can decide for themselves.  The over-arching issue is not whether or when we spank but that we love our children and raise them lovingly.  There is nothing about a spanking, even fairly frequent spanking, that precludes that.

Along those lines: spankings and beatings are NOT the same thing.  A spanking is something that at worst leaves a broad red mark for less than an hour on even the most sensitive butt-white (excuse the pun) skin.  A beating is something that might result in bruises.  So let’s put aside any implication that a spanking is beating or abusing a child.  It’s just not the same thing in even the remotest sense.

Which I guess leads me to #2.  A big part about what bothers me about the legislation is that it’s all backwards.  It says you can’t spank kids under a certain age (in this case 4).  However, if you think about it, spanking is something that only is relevant for young kids.  If you’re going to make legislation, it should say you can’t spank kids OVER a certain age, say something like 7, although 10 would give plenty of room for parental judgment.

For those of you who don’t have kids, the younger a kid is, the less they listen to you.  At some point, they’re so young they couldn’t understand your words if they wanted to.  At these young ages you only have one disciplinary tool: physical force.  (Which means I guess I’m getting into point #4.)  Most of the time this force is nothing more than stopping the child from doing what he/she intends.  But as they get more obstinate in doing what you don’t want them to, you have to step up the amount of force that you use to prevent them.

See, here’s the problem with the “no spanking” crowd.  What do you do when a child doesn’t respond to you “asking them”?  Asking them again, is laughable.  What if a kid won’t do a “timeout”?  Giving them another timeout is yet again laughable.  Kids are young, not stupid.  If they realize there is a limit to the punishments they receive, they’ll find a way abuse that.  It’s an important lesson for children to learn at a young age that the worse thing you do, the worse the punishment is.  The more warnings and punishments you ignore, the worse the punishments will get.  Not all wrongs are equal and kids need to learn that early because it is just as true for adults as kids.

As such, it’s very appropriate for parents to start with “don’t do that”, then step up to the “timeout” then to “physically stopping” the to “physically stopping with some minor pain” then to “punishment w/ pain (of which spanking is one option)”.  Does a parent have to use moderation to know when to step things up to the next level?  Yes.  Are there parents who show bad judgment? Yes.  In fact, stepping things up too quickly can harm the parent’s ability to differentiate between the minor wrongs and the major wrongs.  But none of this precludes the use of force/pain even on a fairly regular basis if the child is not obeying their parents.

I use pain in discipline much more often than my wife does.  Usually, since my boys are both toddlers, that most often means squeezing their arms or legs harder than is necessary when I’m physically trying to get them to do what I want.  I’ve often noticed the boys laughing when my wife is trying to get them to do what she wants.  They think she’s playing with them while, in reality, she’s getting frustrated.  All it takes is a quick squeeze for them to realize that this isn’t a game and they need to sit still while I change their diaper.

And you know what, my kids love me just as much as they love their mom.

To bring #2 to a close, as my children get older, I’ll have other tools to use besides force/pain.  I can reason with them, lecture them, ground them and punish them in ways that doesn’t require me to physically spank them.  But while my kids are young, I don’t have those tools available to me yet.  To take spanking away is to delay my ability to discipline my kids until they are old enough to be too used to getting their way without consequences.

Finally, I’ll wrap up with #1: Pope Benedict has often spoken of the dictatorship of relativism.  The idea is that we reach a point where we pretend that “everything is acceptable” but in reality we have a dictatorship that refuses to let you believe/do anything but what is “in vogue”.  While this proposed legislation is minor in the big picture, it is symptomatic of the dictatorship of relativism.  The mindset that creates this says: “Children have to decide for themselves what is right and wrong; therefore anyone who spanks their children is a very bad person.”  It’s the same mindset that says: “Those archaic ‘religionists’ want to enforce laws on us that take away our freedoms to do whatever we want and we enlightened people are smart enough to know that their archaic ways are so barbaric as to be illegal.”

Thankfully there are enough people who have lived the practical life of raising children to know how stupid this legislation is.  However, we must be wary of the mindset that spawned this legislation and fight it with all of our collective might.