Posted By: Paul   On: 16 Dec 2007   At: 6:11pm

I doubt i’ll go see the Golden Compass.  Not because of any religious reason, just simply because I just don’t fancy it as a fantasy flick.  I’d rather watch a Harry Potter movie… well made and well written.

As for Dogma.  It is an overlooked gem of a film when it comes to examining the filmmaker Kevin Smith’s own Catholic Christian faith.  It tackles a lot of issues and questions close to Smith’s heart.  I should also say though that as per usual in a Smoth film, it has vast qualities of toilet humour (literally) and bad language.  However I have a suspicion that on Kevin’s part the majority of those scenes were written in merely to satiate his comedy fans, and that underneath the rather foul(but funny) exterior is a serious essay on Smith’s own faith.  You could even argue that it touches on many of the things the DaVinci Code does… long before the book was even written.

Posted By: the fatside of jim   On: 15 Dec 2007   At: 2:22pm

Philip Pullman’s golden compass/subtle knife/amber spyglass:

Unfortunately Golden Compass truly is a woeful movie - it addresses none of the hard theological thinking which pervades the books and the stage play.

For those who don’t know - the trilogy mentioned above (and on which the movies is founded - and founders) is an exploration of the idea of original sin,the churches power to misinterperate and humanize and the eventual salvation through a naturalistic relationship with god.

It centres around ‘dust”  or “god” from which all is created and to which all returns and it explores themes from Milton’s paradise lost, the fall of satan and the idea that “god” as espoused by theology is insubstantial and (literally in the book/play) kept in a box…

Fascinating set of stories but one needs a fairly clear philosophical and theological head on ones shoulders before it makes the kind of sense that Pullman (an oxford scholar himself) intends.

Like the much easier to digest “Dogma” (Miramax films) it pulls no punches when dealing with the legalistic catholic stance.

You should read/see these pieces of work - they certainly provoke debate!!

Poor old pope though - representing the richest, most influential organization on the surface of the planet - it can “make up” as many indulgences as it likes - it all proposes nothing when compared to the force that set the very stars in motion.

Strange then, that same force can move so far and so deeply when dealing with something far more wonderful than these same stars - your eternal soul.

God Bless

Posted By: Helmut   On: 13 Dec 2007   At: 4:55pm

I should grow into the habit of following up iTalker’s links first…

Indulgences are very much with us, I remember them being announced on occasion of a Holy Year (which in itself is a strage institution).

What annoys me most (not to speak of my wife, she has got several sometimes very worried catholic pupils, she got furious to say the least) is that somebody comes along and declares that you have to go to some special place (and on that occasion, there only, nowhere else) at some stipulated time (and only then), most likely do exactly this and that, and, hey presto - but not at any other time and place, any other way? I know for an observed fact that along these lines mortal fear can be induced -our age is not so very much different from the olden times. (iTalker, I am sorry to say, but I think that a good number of people are quite sufficiently naive!) And the whole lot sounds rather like “faith and grace plc”.

Mind you, I do not mind somebody going places because of faith, and I do not mind some “hullabaloo” either. Places , rites, pomp and circumstances can help, but not on a rather exclusive and, let’s face it, frightening basis.

It all troubles me more than just a little - quite a few marvellous people and priests (no pun intended) I have come across were most decidedly catholic - somewhere there must be a hiatus, an invisible, unbridgeable, and perhaps unconscious gap.

Posted By: Helmut   On: 12 Dec 2007   At: 8:22am

What puzzles me is that the pope should know better. Indulgences were amongst the reasons for the reformation and the Thirty Years War. The most famous (in Germany) advertising jingle that went with the indulgences at that time was:

“As the money in the box you dump, A soul will out of purgatory jump.”

Quite a few people thought and think that it just means parting them from some (or quite a lot of) money.

Posted By: James Hogg   On: 10 Dec 2007   At: 12:23am

I was going to start with the phrase “playing devils advocate” but thought better of it as it might sound a bit paisleyite .

Any way my understand of the roman catholic understanding of purgatory is basically a place of sanctifications until one becomes glorified. Since certain people die in a state of grace but not fully sanctified they need a place to pay their penance, purgatory happening to be that. So they would say that the pope in not dispense Grace. These people are still guaranteed of getting to heaven but with indulgences they get there that bit quicker. I find it interesting that now a days the things the people have to do to achieve indulgences seem similar to what one might do in repentance? I also find the whole topic interesting in the concept that even though we are freed from our sins we still have to live with the consequences of them.

Posted By: Paul   On: 9 Dec 2007   At: 7:26pm

I always wonder at how the Pope has such power and how he believes he has well divine power to lets say… cut a catholics sentence short as it were.  Are they blessed with dungeons and dragons like clerical power of goodness!  Is there a secret handshake between him and the big man which occurs upon attaining the white robes?  I jest but it genuinely baffles me that mere mortals think they are a mouthpiece for God directly.  If it wasn’t such a famous position people saying that stuff would be committed.

For some reason it reminds me of Pascal’s Wager.  You know the one about how it’s a better bet to believe in God than be an atheist, because if we are wrong.  Nothing nada the end… but on the chance that we are right… yay Heaven!

It’s called getting the point that Heaven would be better than nothing, but somehow missing the message of what being a Christian is all about.  It also doesn’t take into account that God will know you’re cheating anyway.

Which ties nicely back into the main point is that… isn’t that a form of cheating what the Pope is doing.  Okay we don’t believe in what they have to go through to get to the nice place…  However millions of Catholics do believe that… and the Pope is giving them a cheat code!  Wouldn’t God know they were cheating?  Of course he maybe does have a white telephone hooked up to the Vatican exchange…

Posted By: italker   On: 8 Dec 2007   At: 11:33pm

Yeah! I guess if you had no concept of purgatory you wouldn’t need the idea of Indulgences.

Posted By: James Hogg   On: 8 Dec 2007   At: 11:29pm

I must say i thought that indulgences went out with the counter reformation. But indulgences however one acquires them are just a symptom on the idea of purgatory, is it not?