WobLog

Another headline comes to mind for me.

"Review of Movie based on Pullman's Books a Smear Attack."

I read the books and they were pretty good. That the church and other religious institutions have none-the-less issued high level "warnings" about these "dangerous" movies (and books), in the end, proves Pullman's point far more eloquently than Pullman did himself. Not surprisingly, that irony is lost on the people issuing the warnings. Especially since Pullman's criticisms of the church are either removed or watered down.

The warnings will none-the-less have, by and large, their intended effect and benefit. The reason being that from the point of view of the intended recipient the warnings originate from .... "the Authority".

For someone like Pullman, who doesn't believe Christianity has any claim to supernatural revelation, nothing the Church said to defend itself would be acceptable, short of: "You got us! We're all phonies. Guess we'll just close up shop and call it a day."

In fact, very little of the criticism of the movie came from the Church hierarchy. They rightly concluded that a full-bore frontal assault would draw more attention to the movie and do more harm than good. Most of the criticism came from lay groups like the Catholic League.

Some of the critique that I heard admitted that the movie itself was stripped of most of the anti-religious content. The expressed concern was that parents would unwittingly think that because the movie was innocuous, that their kids would find much the same content in the books. Clearly, that's not the case.