When the Homily is about Immunology

Hollywood and Church History

Clifton gave a little review of that 2004 movie King Arthur which purports to try and give the Arthurian legend more historicity. Well apparently, in doing so, they have him being a Pelagian, even at one point in a deleted scene, MEETING Pelagius!!!

Why? I mean, seriously, what does the average Joe or Jane moviegoer know about the Pelagian controversy? So why even bring it up? Well, I think it is a trend that is growing in popularity.

Awhile back there was a "horror" movie called Stigmata. It was pretty awful, but what struck me in this movie was the presence of the ongoing Hollywood habit of making "the Church" (nine times out of ten this is understood in the films as being the RC church) an antagonist...a representative of the power establishment. But, not content to simply leave it at that, they are beginning to chose a host of ancient heresies to resurrect as the historic "good" guys who valiantly fought and lost. In Stigmata it was the Gnostics and apparently in King Arthur it is the Pelagians.

The frightening thing that occurs to me, is that when they pick out a name like "Gnostics" or "Pelagians" for their protagonist force, they are lending historical credence to their story. AND, they are doing so either in ignorance or with malice. Either way, your average Joe and Jane moviegoer is not going to know the difference and so at the end of movies like Stigmata where they lay concluding text over the screen which states (my paraphrase) that the Roman Catholic Church still to this day is “supressing” documents like the Gospel of Thomas, the average viewers are literally given the impression that the Gnostics were right and the Church views the GOT as dangerous and is doing everything it can to destroy all copies of it, lest the truth of their empty authority be known. (Which of course, if this were true, the RCC is doing a terrible job since the text of the GOT is readily available just about ANYWHERE on the Internet)

And now, we are looking down the barrel of THE supreme Church history revisionist movie coming out in a year or so. Dan Brown’s books were wildly successful and while those of us who are educated in Church History might be tempted to laugh it all off, some of us (myself included) realize that a lot of poor ignorant (and I mean that in the nicest way possible) people who are going to see Tom Hanks in this flim and say: “hmmm…isn’t that interesting, I never knew that.” Worse yet, some of it will become engaged in that pschye of people…who knows, maybe our kids will someday be taught Dan Brown in their history classes – or at least some portion of his outrageous theories that seem to have some sense of historicity.

I have nightmares about coworkers who know NOTHING about the ecumencial councils trying to tell me what ACTUALLY happened at the 1st Ecumenical Council at Nicea. (sigh). I guess I can perhaps try and be optimistic and see it as an opportunity to discuss the matter, but unfortunately for some reason Dan Brown wields more authority than I do…if only I could get published.