Gentle and devoted reader Rustypants has alerted us to an interesting article in the WaPo giving historical perspective to the Catholic kerfuffle about the DVC. Writer Thomas Doherty briefly chronicles the rise and fall of the National League of Decency, founded by Catholic clergy, which from the thirties to the sixties sought to control the depiction of immorality on the big screen.
Doherty notes that today Catholics are lining up to see the DVC, whereas formerly they would have been ordered to boycott the film.
We agree that the change is significant. But while Doherty sees it as a decline in the power of Catholicism, we tend to see it more as the power of Catholicism being wielded differently. Today the Church of Rome doesn't tell its parishoners what movies to see. But it has five of them sitting on the Supreme Court.
Engagement may work better than boycotts.
Side note: in passing Doherty compares the DVC to the "know nothings" of the nineteenth century, an American social and political fringe movement that stirred up some hysteria among its followers by alleging massive conspiracies on the part of the Vatican and its priests. The best stories are the old stories, and so are the worst.
4 comments:
Hello Jon A..., (you won't initially agree with everything I assert, but we are allies nonetheless...)
Here's a real hot potato! Eat it up, digest it, and then feed it's bones to the hungry...
Pay close attention, profundity knocks at the door, listen for the key. Be Aware! Scoffing causes blindness...
Here is the key to understanding what the Vatican and Papacy truly fear...
There's much more to the story of the Vatican's recent machinations than meets the eye. It's not the DaVinci Code or Gospel of Judas per se, but the fact that people have now been motivated to seek out the unequivocal truth about an age of deception, exactly when they expect me to appear. These recent controversies are spurring people to reevaluate the Vatican/Papacy and the religions that Rome spawned, at the worst possible time for them.
Remember, "I come as a thief..." ?
The DaVinci Code novel and movie are no more inaccurate as literal versions of history than the New Testament. The primary sub-plot involved purposeful symbology being used to encode hidden meanings, exactly like the Bible and related texts. In other words, none of these stories represent the literal truth. This is the common and pivotal fact of all such narratives about ancient Hebrew and Christian history. Debating whether the DaVinci Code, Gnostic texts, or the Bible are accurate history is a purposeful ploy designed to hide the truth by directing your inquiry away from the heart of the matter.
There is a foolproof way to verify the truth and expose centuries-old religious deceptions. It also proves why we can no longer let the Vatican tell us what to think about ancient history or much else. It is the common thread connecting why the ancient Hebrews, Yahad/Essene, Jews, Gnostics, Cathars, Templars, Dead Sea Scrolls, DaVinci Code, and others have been targets of Rome’s ire and evil machinations. The Vatican and its secret society cohorts don’t want you to understand that the ancient Hebrew symbology in all of these texts purposely encodes and exposes the truth about them. Furthermore, the structure of ancient wisdom symbology verifiably encodes the rules to decode messages built with it. This is what they most fear you will discover.
If the Bible represented the literal truth or even accurate history, there would be no need for faith in the assertions of deceptive and duplicitous clergy and their ilk. It is undeniable the New Testament is awash with ancient Hebrew symbolism and allegory. The same is evidenced in the Old Testament, Dead Sea Scrolls, Gnostic texts, biblical apocrypha, Quran, DaVinci Code, and other related sources. All ancient religious, mystical, and wisdom texts have been shrouded in mystery for millennia for one primary reason: The ability to understand their widely evidenced symbology was lost in antiquity. How do we finally solve these ages-old mysteries? To recast an often-used political adage: It’s [the] symbology, stupid!
It is beyond amazing that the Vatican still tries to insist the Gospels are the literal truth. Every miracle purported for Jesus has multiple direct symbolic parallels in the Old Testament, Apocalypse, Dead Sea Scrolls, and other symbolic narratives and traditions. Recasting the symbolism of earlier Hebrew texts as literal events in the New Testament is one of the central deceptions associated with Christianity. This is part of the secret knowledge held by the ancient Gnostics, Templars, Cathars, and others, which is presented with dramatic effect in the DaVinci Code. None of these narratives or stories were ever intended as the literal truth. This fact is the key to unraveling many ages-old mysteries and exposing the truth about the Vatican's long-term deceptions.
Moreover, the following Washington Post article (The Book of Bart) describes how many changes and embellishments were made to New Testament texts over the centuries, unequivocally demonstrating they are not original, infallible, or truthful. When you combine proof that the New Testament Gospels are not wholly literal with proof that these texts were heavily reworked in the early years of Christianity, you are left with only one possible conclusion. The Vatican has long lied to everyone about the central tenets and history of Christianity. This revelation also proves they are not the Creator’s representatives but Her longtime opponents. The recent hoopla over the Gospel of Judas and DaVinci Code demonstrates they are still desperately trying to deceive the world and obfuscate their true nature and activities.
It's no wonder the Vatican fears the truth more than anything else. As further proof of these assertions, seek to understand the symbolic significance of my name (Seven Star Hand) and you will have proof beyond disproof that Jews, Christians, and Muslims have long been duped by the great deceivers I warned humanity about over the millennia. What then is the purpose of "faith" but to keep good people from seeking to understand the truth?
Now comes justice, hot on its heels... (symbolism...)
Not only do I talk the talk, I walk the walk...
Here is Wisdom!!
Revelations from the Apocalypse
C'mon SWNID, stop fooling around. And quit calling yourself "seven star hand."
I think the point is that at this particular juncture in history Rome isn't trying to hide anything. Whereas in the past it might have met controversy with the iron fist of censure, it now attacks the controversy head-on. Hence Sir SWNID's "Engagement may work better than boycotts." Turn on any cable news station and notice that when priests argue about the merits of DVC they do not label it as anythign necessarily evil, rather they confront the fantasies that make DVC so ridiculous to them. For unlike the fantastic elements of, say, the Gospels, the DVC's irregularities have no method by which to explain themselves should historical evidence point to the contrary. In contrast, miraculous elements in the Gospels explain themselves because they claim the one doing them is God (obviously not bound by physics). Therefore the historical acceptability of the Gospel accounts does not rely on the possibility of miracles, but the claim that Jesus is God. This is why one must have faith when approaching the Gospels, not because people are walking on water, rising from the dead and so forth.
Oh, but Bryan D, all those priests are being so coy, so clever, in the way that they continue the massive, undiscovered conspiracy of the Vatican to keep secret the revolutionary, self-evidently-true spiritual reality that they suppress with their nonsense about the literal truth of the gospels.
We would go on about the assertions of Mr./Ms. Seven Star Hand, but to do so would put us seriously afoul of Matthew 7:6.
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