You posted it twice, it scared you so much. Given that you're probably already using Depends, though, I'm sure it was an easy clean-up.

Flying asps shall smite you in your dream life.

Scared people? The only thing "scary" about that movie was the violence, which was most likely just the way it was. The fact is, Jesus wasn't on the cross as long as most were, because of the advent of a Jewish holiday. If it "scared" you it's probably because you're anti-Christian.

I suppose almost a billion dollars scares you, too. That's no joke.


I think you don't see it because you're probably not Christian. My guess is (and feel free to correct me honestly) is that you're agnostic or even atheist, like all too many writers in Hollywood.

Actually, that's not really Christian (or limited to it). REDEMPTION is the main theme of most positive films. That's VERY old, going back to the Upanishads and Vedas. Joseph Campbell's "The Hero of a Thousand Faces" goes into this. (Not that I'm a rabid Campbell fan, but he did spend five years studying the great stories and religions of the Earth.)


There you go, maybe I was right about you. The fact is, atheism and communism KILL CULTURES. And then there's the small fact of the millions murdered by Stalin, Mao, and all the other evil pigs straight out of George Orwell's "Animal Farm."


Assuming "most" means over 50% I'm not sure that's true. There are a great number of people who don't - at least I trust them when they tell me they don't. Hollywood, on the other hand, makes movies like Kinsey, with an angry self-righteous Liam Neeson in the lead (I saw the talk shows where he promoted, that statement is based on observation). And they think they're doing some great social statement, ignoring the dark side of Kinsey and his own rather nasty predilections.


Gee, Mel Gibson didn't have a problem with it. And Hollywood did it forever, but they stopped. Ever see "Angels with Dirty Faces"?


No they're not. The difference - and Lois is right here - is that Hollywood used to OPENLY make movies with Judaeo-Christian themes and have good priests and preachers and people doing what they considered morally right. Now more often than not when such themes arise, religion isn't mentioned. It's a thematic decline AWAY from most of the true values of most Americans, and that's what Lois is saying.

I love how Christians overall are labeled "fundamentalists" as if they're no better than "Islamic fundamentalists" who fly planes into skyscrapers and kill thousands.
The fact is, Wahabis (the evil Saudi version of Islam) are no more the fundamental representation of Islam than Pat Robertson is of most church-going Americans.
What Hollywood ignores is how much people in America want shows that reflect who they are, like Seventh Heaven, and how successful those shows are. Instead, Hollywood predominantly tries to sell how Hollywoodites are, which is often pretty damned twisted. And Americans watch it because that's what's available.
Hollywood makes half the money it could make every year because of this divergence.

Or so one historian *claims.* I'm willing to bet your source had an anti-Catholic axe to grind.



The Church fought heresy, but at times the heretics were in the position of power (as in the Arian heresy) and we have many of the heretic's own writings as well as the Church's writings about specific heresies. As for the claim that the Church was an "organization which actively tried to prevent widespread dissemination and understanding of its work..." quite bluntly, that's complete *** and it's quite the opposite of the truth. It's a claim made by the Churh's enemies, a claim which the gullible too easily accept because they want to believe the worst of the Church.
If you're claiming that the Gnostic "gospels" were somehow a coherent whole which were on an equal footing to what was accepted by the majority as the New Testament canon, then you're barking up the wrong tree. Because of the nature of Gnostism (which creates elitists who are believe they are "more enlightned" and superior to their intellectualy "unenlightened" neighbors) you have constant wrangling about which gnostic group is the "even more enlightened." It's the nature of such a system to constantly fragment.

Some latter day historians try to paint a bogus picture of the Gnostics vs. the Church, implying that the Gnostics were united under a single head against the Church, but in reality they just as viciously attacked their fellow gnostics as they did the Church (kind of like the early Protestants). There was no canon to unify gnostics, and no unified body of teaching to oppose the Church's unified doctrines.
Not that obvious except to the anti-Catholic cranks who invent bogus history so they can have an easy "straw man" to shout down. Unless by "agenda" you mean the Church believed it was teaching the truth and *openly* opposed those who attacked it. The notion that the Church had "a hidden agenda" just doesn't match the facts. Most anti-Catholic diatribes I've read fall into two categories. Either their proponents breathlessly announce some "secret" Church teaching that can be found in any Catholic Catechism designed for grade school children or they put bogus words into the mouths of Catholics which never existed.

When you counter their claims with facts, you get something like, "Sure, that's what the Church wants you to believe," or the "Church is hiding the truth." Conspiracy theories, nothing more. The beauty of a conspiracy theory is that any attempt to defend those charged with conspiring is answered with the claim that you're "in it with them." Not exactly sholarship, but it has to do in absence of any verifiable facts.

RonB
"There's a story there...somewhere"