The Ark and The Dove

Tony Blair Signs on Catholic

FoxNews article.

(And remember that we linked to Drudge's link speculating this back in May.)

Rewarding Virtue

Hey, remember a while ago I did a post about how police should pull people over and reward them for obeying traffic laws?

Well, it looks like someone is paying attention.

A Very Late Review of The Nativity Story...

I just watched The Nativity Story, which was last year's decidedly un-bloody Christmas response to The Passion.

It wasn't bad, although I have to admit (and probably agree with the professional movie critics) that the best parts of the film were definitely the seemingly ancillary matters rather than the story of Mary.
The role of Mary in the film didn't seem very well defined...which is perhaps why the actress never seemed to really draw a bead on the character (no rosary puns intended). Her initial conflict is that she just wants to be a normal kid growing up in a war-torn, occupied territory, until her parents have to ruin everything by trying to marry her off before she can be enslaved and raped by Roman soldiers.
I suppose the intent was to create some kind of dramatic conflict in Mary...who, as the Immaculate Conception, has to be pretty much one of the most difficult characters to generate dramatic conflict for.
How do you show a conflict of desires for a character who is not prone to the base temptations of sin?
It's a dilemma of narrative theory.

To me, it seems that the best bet is to try to create situations where the character has to choose the lesser of two evils or the greater of two goods when no good seems apparent.
For instance, rather than making Mary tempted by her youth, the writers could have chosen to make her loyalty to her immediate family and its needs come into conflict with her betrothal to Joseph.
Or it could have been more a matter of choosing between a contemplative life and an active life.
We could have been shown how saying "yes" to God in the way He desired meant saying "no" to what we only thought God desired for us...rather than saying "no" to something we desire for ourselves. I almost would have preferred it if Mary were being courted by some zealot freedom fighter rival to Joseph (we do see her engage in a mild civil disturbance when she helps block a road as some revolutionaries escape from Romans). On the other hand, I suppose introducing such a character would have the unsettling effect of seeing an photograph of your mother with a prom date who is not your father.

I've seen reviews that criticized Mary's rambunctiousness as betraying her obedience...but I'm not sure I quite agree with that assessment. Everything in the film movies at such a fast clip, I don't know that I got that sense. It did seem, however, that she was never happy doing her parents will. Her home down is always dark and oppressive, whereas the Visitation comes off like a bright and sunny vacation hot-spot with nary a concern in the world. I've also read that Joseph steals the show, and I would be inclined to concur with this assessment. He's a far more interesting character, and he has a ready made dramatic conflict.

Herod, though probably not historically accurate at all, came off as believable...and was just disturbing enough that you were never quite sure if he really believed in the prophecy of the Messiah or just had practical concerns about the political ramifications of his people believing in the prophecy. He was also pretty creepy without being a cartoon caricature.

My favorite scenes by far, however, were the Magi. They really spoke to me as someone in academia: perfectly fine studying the texts and observing the stars, but not exactly enthusiastic about having to actually go anywhere or do anything in the real world (and this would have made a nice mirror if the writers had chosen to give Mary the contemplative/active life conflict). By far the least mimetic of the characters presented, they were nevertheless the most entertaining...and their reluctance made for a clever surprise.

I'm sure I'll start picking apart biblical inaccuracies in about an hour or so, but my immediate afterthoughts are mostly positive.

Thanks, Graduate Gardens!

It's 11:30 PM, and I still have not finished entering my grades for my four classes...mostly because I've spent a half of the day deconstructing my apartment...and I don't mean that in a literary sense either.

For your amusement, I've included two shots of my dining/office area.

The view of the living room is simply too devastating to show in a public forum.

So, thank you Graduate Gardens for scheduling your pest control exercise during exam week...the last week of the semester...the week before Christmas.

In addition to having to deal with living in complete chaos, I'm debating how exactly I'm going to hide Isabel's Christmas presents if she comes over. I'm thinking that the sheer confusion of the apartment will allow me to play a "purloined letter" game and leave them sitting out somewhere obvious without being observed.

Well, I should quite goofing off here...I still have two stacks of graded exams to tally up and enter into spreadsheets...

Roe v. Wade Quiz

I scored a foreboding and apocalyptic 66.67% on the test...

Domestic Paradox

So my apartment community is conducting roach exterminations in my building this week.
We received a checklist of preparation requirements.
One reads: "Empty bureaus, end tables, and all closets."
Shortly there after: "Remove as much trash and clutter as possible."

So, they want me to take everything out of its tidy organized storage space and do so while causing a minimum amount of clutter.

I also find it fascinating that they opted to do this in the middle of exam week...because people who live in Graduate Gardens have nothing going on or any extra "clutter" lying around in the middle of exam week...

Speaking of such issues, keep me in your prayers in the next two weeks gang. I've got three job interviews coming up (and a successful interview could eventually lead to moving out of so-called "graduate housing").

Does Your Creche Have One of These?

Via BBspot.com...
A really unique, if not scatological, Catalan Christmas tradition.

This also marks my annual tradition of trying at least once to spell correctly the word for Nativity scene.

Heteronormalcy in Science

In a FoxNews article on genetic engineering and drug testing regarding flies and sexual orientation:

Chicago researcher David Featherstone and coworkers discovered a gene in fruit flies they call "genderblind," or GB. A mutation in GB turns flies bisexual....
"It was very dramatic," Featherstone said. "The GB mutant males treated other males exactly the same way normal male flies would treat a female. They even attempted copulation."

Criticizing the Critics

I was a forwarded an article at Lifesite discussing how people are calling for the NCCBUSCC movie reviewer to be fired for giving The Golden Compass movie a favorable review. I went and looked at the review as it is currently manifested on the Bishops' Website. It might be that the Bishops altered or revised the review since it went up, but I have to confess that if this is the review that has caused the furor, it might be a tempest in a teapot. The review repeatedly flags Pullman's anti-Catholic agenda, and recommends that parents use the books as an opportunity to discuss the problems with its philosophy (which seems a much better idea than to teach children to run away screaming every time someone uses cartoon animals to attack their religious beliefs). The reviewer notes that most of the anti-Church sentiment of the book has been stripped from the script and warns that the sequels will probably have a hard time being so inoffensive--as it is, however, the reviewer suggests it is a good film (I suppose if Hollywood always ruins film adaptations of books and misses their point, then it only makes sense that ruining an offensive book would create a good movie).

The critic even goes so far as to point out that, as far as movies have been concerned, there have been far more anti-Catholic films that have gotten even less attention from Catholic groups (such as the absurd sequel to Elizabeth).

My point here is not really to defend the critic or the movie for that matter (as I said, I don't know if this is the same review that caused all this angst). My point is just that I smell something of a witch hunt brewing around this movie, and we have to be careful lest we end up looking like the irrational, foolish, self-serving, conspiratorial, and authoritarian Church that Pullman paints us out to be.
As Catholics, we put up with a lot of nonsense from our cultural artifacts. It makes sense to me that there would be a lot of our brothers and sisters who are itching for some kind of scapegoat to unleash their pent up aggression.

Instead of getting red-in-the-face angry about this book/movie/action figure franchise, we should be able to laugh at its absurdity and self-importance and find ways to deconstruct it so that we show how Pullman's text is actually at odds with his own intents.

Looking for Stocking Stuffers?

We really should find a way to "affiliate" with these kinds of Websites if we are going to give them free advertising...but I'm not sure it counts as advertising if we are doing it facetiously.

BibleQuest Action Figures: Let your materialist child experience all of the idolatry with none of the fun!