Studio Script Notes on “The Passion”
Dictated To Steve Martin
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Dear Mel:
We love, LOVE the script! The ending works great. You’ll be getting a call from us to start negotiations for the book rights.
Love the Jesus character. So likable. He can’t seem to catch a break! We identify with him because of it. One thing, I think we need to clearly state “the rules.” Why doesn’t he use his super powers to save himself? The creative people suggest that you could simply cut away to two spectators:
Spectator one ‘Why doesn’t he use his super powers to save himself?’
Month: June 2006
sumer is icumen in, lhude sing cuccu
Summer is nearly here, the time of slightly cuckoo rural festivals.
Seen in Brookfield, MA on Monday.
Catholic Light:
We find the oddities so you don’t have to.
What rights are civil and what rights are natural?
Here’s is a political question with a natural law twist. I (and probably you) frequently read sentiments like this: “…of all rich countries the US has lost the most civil liberties recently. But I’m not too worried yet. I’m hoping once the present administration is out, the natural openness of American culture will reassert itself.”
You can see the quotation in context here, but it doesn’t matter that much. What interests me are two things:
1. The blatant exaggeration. In this case, the author doesn’t bother to enumerate which civil liberties we have “lost” — and people who write such things rarely do. They talk about wiretapping powers as if the Feds are listening to every phone call we make. But even if these measures are contrary to our rights, at best these are marginal encroachments: no one, to my knowledge, has abolished the right to free association.
2. The connection with natural law. Americans like to conflate natural rights (which are given by God) and civil rights (which are granted, or at least recognized, by temporal powers.) These are overlapping categories, certainly. The right to bear arms is connected with the natural right to self-defense. The right to property is explicit in both natural law and revealed scripture.
What about other civil rights? I do not consider voting to be a natural right, as it is possible to have a just government without elections or democracy. Free speech, at least as we constitute it today, does not seem to be a natural right, either. Those civil rights are good for our system of government, because they allow citizens to remove bad politicians and substitute good (or less bad) ones, and to speak out against their government’s policies or actions and urge correction. But that does not make them part of natural law, as their objects — the goods they serve — are ordered toward right government and not man per se.
I am not arguing that any civil right should be curtailed or abolished, but it would help to distingush between them and the ones that are truly inalienable.
Beware the phrase “Caught up in the Spirit of Vatican II”
Yet another article about the St. Mary’s by the Sea debacle, where a pastor has been removing folks who kneel during communion from the Pastoral Council, leading the altar boys, etc.
Here’s the “Catholic Academia SpinTM” on the issue. I’ve highlighted the dubious statements in italics and my comments in brackets.
At the center of the controversy is the church’s concept of Christ, said Jesuit Father [You sure should we should trust this guy?] Lawrence J. Madden, director of the Georgetown Center for Liturgy at Georgetown University in Washington.
Because the earliest Christians viewed Christ as God and man, Madden said, they generally stood during worship services to show reverence and equality. [Maybe. Maybe not. Would love to see the real evidence for this.]
About the seventh century, however, Catholic theologians put more emphasis on Christ’s divinity and introduced kneeling as the only appropriate posture at points in the Mass when God was believed to be present.
Things started to change in the 1960s, Madden said, when Vatican II began moving the church back to its earliest roots. [Is there a line anywhere in the Vatican II docs that says anything about “moving the church back to its earliest roots? That’s such a dubious, dishonest assertion.] What has ensued, he said, is the predictable struggle of an institution revising centuries of religious practices.
The argument over kneeling, Madden said, is “a signal of the division in the church between two camps: those who have caught the spirit of Vatican II, and those who are a bit suspicious. Because it’s so visible, what happens at the Sunday worship event is a lightning rod for lots of issues.”
Now: why would the same folks who are crying that changes to the English text of the Mass used for 40 years are a serious problem, but changing the posture of the faithful that has been the norm for over 1,000 years is right, just and better reflects our relationship with God. And get on board or you’re not welcome in our parish. Nothing to see here as long as you follow the rules about standing.
And with your spirit
An even-handed article about the upcoming vote on translation changes for the Mass.
It has a perfectly awful example of gender-revisionist language, which happens to be very appropriate following Trinity Sunday, and one I could have gone my whole life without reading:
Consider the most common Catholic utterance: ”In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.” It is translated, literally, as ”In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
To the horror of traditional Catholics, some groups — including Dignity USA, a coalition of gay and lesbian Catholics — offer ”In the name of the Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier” as a gender-neutral alternative.
It has one sensible quote from Bob Sungenis, and another that attempts to boil down the translation issues a little too far:
‘Modernists don’t like redundancy,” he said. ”Traditionalists love it because it reinforces in their mind the point to be made. The modernists want to streamline things. The problem with streamlining is you take away the effect, cadence and rhythm of words.”
Saying “modernists want to streamline things” is a bit like saying that Islamic terrorists want to “have a greater voice in the political struggles of the Middle East.”
It will be interesting to see what happens with things like the Gloria settings for the last 40 years. Catholic hymnal publishers will need to clear cut hectares upon hectares for the reprints. I bet some pastors will be happy they have OCP’s disposable hymnals.
My prediction: if the translation changes go thru, we’ll have the same bishops who act as if the only change in the GIRM was to have congregants stand through communion come up with some convoluted reason to implement only a small amount of the changes.