Jimmy Akin – Page 596

Fantastic Four: Movie of the summer?!

A few weeks back, when the best film of the summer, Batman Begins, opened, I posted expressing my hope that its opening weekend might end the worst U.S. weekend box-office year-over-year recession in 20 years.

Well, it didn’t… nor did any of a slew of other highly anticipated movies, including War of the Worlds, Revenge of the Sith, Cinderella Man, Kingdom of Heaven, and The Longest Yard.

According to studio estimates, though, the 20-week recession was finally broken… and to add insult to injury, the film credit with the achievement is another comic-book super-hero movie that’s as terrible as Batman Begins is great: Fantastic Four. (Get the story.)

So, what’s the lesson here? Why did Fantastic Four — an ensemble film with no star power from a fledging director based on a venerable but only moderately popular comic book — outperform Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise, Batman, Star Wars, Russell Crowe and Tom Howard, and Adam Sandler?

More pressingly, why did a lousy, badly reviewed film with only two tepid action sequences, one-note characterization, awful casting, mostly bad acting, dreadful dialogue, trashy humor, and lame special effects outperform an array of films that outshine it on almost every level imaginable?

Was I wrong to conclude in my earlier post that the message of the box-office recession was that moviegoers want better movies? Is the lesson here that quality doesn’t matter after all? That Marvel fans are a more reliable (or more forgiving) market than DC fans?

First of all, a plug: Jimmy and I will be discussing this and other movie-related topics today on Catholic Answers Live.

Second, a little perspective:

Fantastic Four’s opening domestic take of $56M is stronger than most of those other films — but not all of them. War of the Worlds actually opened much stronger, with a three-day opening weekend total of $64.5M — a figure that’s actually deceptively low, considering that much of its opening business wasn’t even in the Friday-to-Sunday period, since it opened on a Wednesday before the July 4 holiday (its six-day total was $112.7M).
Batman Begins likewise opened with a three-day take of $48.7M, somewhat lower than FF’s $56M — but here too Batman opened on a Wednesday, so its opening business wasn’t all concentrated into that three-day weekend total. Batman’s five-day opening take was $72.9M.
Fantastic Four isn’t single-handedly responsible for the end of the box-office recession. It was the convergence of FF plus continued strong performance from War of the Worlds and Batman, as well as other films. Had FF opened a month ago, likely it would not have broken the recession, and some other film would have.
It’s still too early to certify FF a hit. The figure that really matters now is the percentage of dropoff in the next week or two. Batman has been holding up well over the weeks, slipping a very modest 35% this past weekend to a $172.1M If FF tanks in its second or third weekend, as so many films do these days, it could still be a box-office turkey.

Still, with all that said, the question remains: Why did this film do so well?

Here is what I think is an important part of the answer:

Until FF, the big movies of summer have all — quite rightly — come with warnings not to bring the kids.

Even properties with built-in kid interest, such as Batman and Star Wars, have been the subjects of media and critical cautions that these films are too intense for young kids. And they are — and there’s nothing wrong with that.

As a result, though, the family market has been neglected. Yes, there have been traditional “family films” like Herbie: Fully Loaded and Madagascar. But families seem to crave films outside of the “family film” mold, i.e., cartoon-style comedies (whether live-action or animated) about children / families or anthropomorphic animals, cars, robots, etc, flatulence humor, kicks in the groin, etc.

Based on its marketing, FF, supposedly a “funny family action film,” seemed to fit the bill. Its initial success, like last year’s National Treasure (also not a great film, although much better than FF), may suggest that family audiences crave the same kind of thrills and action as teenagers and young adults, but without the heavy violence or sexual content. In fact, families may be so desperate for acceptable fare of this type that they will even embrace movies that are mediocre (National Treasure) or lousy (FF).

Unfortunately, it also seems, at least at the moment, that it may not be necessary that the movie be actually family-friendly — only that it be marketed and perceived that way. With FF, a running thread of trashy exploitative content, mostly in connection with the character of Johnny Storm, keeps it from being family-friendly, but it didn’t keep the studio from marketing the film to families.

And families, at least this weekend, seemed to buy it. Time will tell if word of mouth prevents the strategy from working in the long run… or whether family audiences really are the suckers some Hollywood studios think they are.

Listen today to Catholic Answers Live for more.

I've Been Paged!

… By Christopher over at Against the Grain in his page over the Harry Potter novels and Pope Benedict XVI’s alleged disapproval of them.

Since the Holy Father’s election, Potter naysayers have been having a field day with a German-language article that claimed that the then-Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger had denounced J. K. Rowling’s mega-popular children’s series. As the release date for the latest installment draws near, the frenzy has become even more strident. So, the question is, did the Pope disapprove of the series? The answer: No, because no such statement has been offered by Pope Benedict during his pontificate. Well, what about the alleged disapproval of Cardinal Ratzinger? Here’s my response:

As far as I know, the letter sent to the German critic Gabriele Kuby has not been published. According to Lifesite.net (the site that offers an article that blares "Pope Benedict Opposes Harry Potter Novels"), Cardinal Ratzinger’s letter was quoted by Kuby in a German-language interview she gave to the Zenit news agency. If the letter has been published, then I would have to read it in order to determine whether the Cardinal had been giving a private opinion or was speaking in his capacity as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
According to Kuby, as mediated through the Zenit report, Ratzinger said: "It is good that you shed light and inform us on the Harry Potter matter, for these are subtle seductions that are barely noticeable and precisely because of that deeply affect (children) and corrupt the Christian faith in souls even before it (the Faith) could properly grow." Please note that the glosses in parentheses are probably not Cardinal Ratzinger’s. One would have to see the letter itself to confirm the context of the glosses. Even if accurate, there is still a lot of context missing. What exactly does the "these" in the clause that starts "for these are subtle seductions" refer to? As of yet, there is no way to know.
Cardinal Ratzinger may simply be giving a politely general response to the concerns of a correspondent, affirming that her concerns for the faith of children are valid without necessarily affirming that the series itself indeed causes such dangers. If the intriguing "these" simply refers to the concerns she raised and not to alleged problems in the Potter series, then the quote says nothing of the Cardinal’s opinion of the series. Analogously, if someone wrote to Catholic Answers asking me if such-and-so liturgical abuse was a legitimate concern, I could say yes without saying anything about the particular circumstances at the correspondent’s parish.
Let’s say for the sake of argument that Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger has read the Harry Potter novels and agrees with the Potter critics that they are bad. What does that prove? If he was speaking privately as an independent literary critic, not much beyond the fact that they are not his cup of tea. If he was speaking privately as a theologian troubled by theological issues in the series, then his opinion would carry the weight of the private analysis by an orthodox and well-respected Christian theologian. Only if he had been writing as head of the CDF would magisterial authority begin to be a question.

The trouble with articles like the one on Lifesite is that they cause a lot of controversy without much substance. The same was true a couple of years ago when Roman exorcist Fr. Gabriele Amorth nixed the Potter series. Naysayers pounced on this and trumpeted it to fans of the series while failing to mention that Fr. Amorth was only speaking on his own authority and not the Church’s. Now that Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger has become Pope Benedict XVI, naysayers are hoping to stir the cauldron again. Granted, the remarks should be discussed, even investigated, to ascertain what was said and the context in which it was said. But misleading headlines and sensationalistic articles are not the way to foster calm and reasoned inquiry.

I’ve Been Paged!

… By Christopher over at Against the Grain in his page over the Harry Potter novels and Pope Benedict XVI’s alleged disapproval of them.

As far as I know, the letter sent to the German critic Gabriele Kuby has not been published. According to Lifesite.net (the site that offers an article that blares "Pope Benedict Opposes Harry Potter Novels"), Cardinal Ratzinger’s letter was quoted by Kuby in a German-language interview she gave to the Zenit news agency. If the letter has been published, then I would have to read it in order to determine whether the Cardinal had been giving a private opinion or was speaking in his capacity as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
According to Kuby, as mediated through the Zenit report, Ratzinger said: "It is good that you shed light and inform us on the Harry Potter matter, for these are subtle seductions that are barely noticeable and precisely because of that deeply affect (children) and corrupt the Christian faith in souls even before it (the Faith) could properly grow." Please note that the glosses in parentheses are probably not Cardinal Ratzinger’s. One would have to see the letter itself to confirm the context of the glosses. Even if accurate, there is still a lot of context missing. What exactly does the "these" in the clause that starts "for these are subtle seductions" refer to? As of yet, there is no way to know.
Cardinal Ratzinger may simply be giving a politely general response to the concerns of a correspondent, affirming that her concerns for the faith of children are valid without necessarily affirming that the series itself indeed causes such dangers. If the intriguing "these" simply refers to the concerns she raised and not to alleged problems in the Potter series, then the quote says nothing of the Cardinal’s opinion of the series. Analogously, if someone wrote to Catholic Answers asking me if such-and-so liturgical abuse was a legitimate concern, I could say yes without saying anything about the particular circumstances at the correspondent’s parish.
Let’s say for the sake of argument that Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger has read the Harry Potter novels and agrees with the Potter critics that they are bad. What does that prove? If he was speaking privately as an independent literary critic, not much beyond the fact that they are not his cup of tea. If he was speaking privately as a theologian troubled by theological issues in the series, then his opinion would carry the weight of the private analysis by an orthodox and well-respected Christian theologian. Only if he had been writing as head of the CDF would magisterial authority begin to be a question.

Monday Photo Caption

SOURCE.

Starting captions:

On a wing and a prayer.

That air-traffic controller is going to have a lot of ‘splainin’ to do….

Your hanger or mine?

Mary's Marriage

A reader writes:

I was sitting at a wedding this weekend and the Deacon was talking

about how we get married just as God had ordained with Adam and Eve,

Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and Mary and Joseph.

Mary and Joseph immediately struck me as odd because, unlike everyone

else, their marriage is distinct from all others in our Catholic

Tradition in that they did NOT have sex.

And then your discussions of impotence and sex (HERE and HERE) came screaming

back to me in that they left the impression with me that in order for

a marriage to be valid, then the husband and wife must be able to as

well as actually share in the marrital act together.

So, I was left wondering… since Mary and Joseph did not share in the

marrital act, is their marriage valid?

Yes. A valid marriage comes into existence upon the valid exchange of matrimonial consent between two parties that are free to marry each other and not otherwise impeded.

If the parties are not both baptized (as was the case with Mary and Joseph) then the marriage is a non-sacramental one, but nonetheless valid.

If both parties are baptized then the marriage is a sacramental one.

If the marriage is sacramental and the parties then consummate it, it becomes indissoluble by anything except death. Otherwise, it is at least potentially dissoluble.

Consummation thus changes the status of certain marriages (sacramental ones) but it is not necessary for marriage to be valid. Consequently, it was not necessary for Mary and Joseph’s marriage to be valid.

Could a couple get married

today, always abstain from the marrital act, and still have a valid

marriage?

Yes. This is known in Church history. It is referred to as "Josephite marriage" after St. Joseph. With a billion Catholics in the world, there are likely a number of such couples out there right now.

If so, then why does impotence really matter?

Impotence is the inability to perform the marital act. Perpetual and incurable impotence is an impediment to marriage because marriage involves exchanging the right to conjugal relations. Giving valid matrimonial consent means binding oneself to pay the marriage debt if the other party reasonably requests it.

Therefore, if you don’t have the ability to pay the marriage debt then you cannot truthfully promise to render it to another. Consueqently, you cannot give another the right to conjugal relations with you, and thus you cannot exchange valid matrimonial consent.

It is possible, however, to exchange the right to conjugal relations even if neither party plans to exercise that right. To parties can plan never to have conjugal relations and yet exchange the right to do so should one or the other (or both) change their minds.

If Mary and Joseph entered marriage planning on not having conjugal relations then they still granted each other a right even though neither intended to use it.

On the other hand, it may be the case that they planned on having conjugal relations but the intervention of the Holy Spirit in conceiving Jesus before they came together caused them to change their plans.

Couldn’t an

impotent couple marry in the hope – like Abraham and Sarah – that God

will provide in some way?

A couple in which one or both parties was perpetually and incurably impotent cannot marry. However, a couple in which one or both parties are not perpetually impotent (i.e., are sometimes able to pay the marriage debt) or are curably impotent (e.g., via pharmaseuticals or surgery or counselling) can marry.

The case of Abraham and Sarah was different. Abraham and Sarah, though their union was infertile for much of their

marriage, could and did have marital relations. Impotence thus was not

the issue.

Their issue was not impotence (the inability to have sex) but infertility (the inability to have children). The latter is not an impediment to marriage since the parties are still able to pay the marriage debt to each other and so are able to validly exchange consent to marriage.

Mary’s Marriage

A reader writes:

I was sitting at a wedding this weekend and the Deacon was talking
about how we get married just as God had ordained with Adam and Eve,
Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and Mary and Joseph.

Mary and Joseph immediately struck me as odd because, unlike everyone
else, their marriage is distinct from all others in our Catholic
Tradition in that they did NOT have sex.

And then your discussions of impotence and sex (HERE and HERE) came screaming
back to me in that they left the impression with me that in order for
a marriage to be valid, then the husband and wife must be able to as
well as actually share in the marrital act together.

So, I was left wondering… since Mary and Joseph did not share in the
marrital act, is their marriage valid?

Yes. A valid marriage comes into existence upon the valid exchange of matrimonial consent between two parties that are free to marry each other and not otherwise impeded.

If the parties are not both baptized (as was the case with Mary and Joseph) then the marriage is a non-sacramental one, but nonetheless valid.

If both parties are baptized then the marriage is a sacramental one.

If the marriage is sacramental and the parties then consummate it, it becomes indissoluble by anything except death. Otherwise, it is at least potentially dissoluble.

Could a couple get married
today, always abstain from the marrital act, and still have a valid
marriage?

Yes. This is known in Church history. It is referred to as "Josephite marriage" after St. Joseph. With a billion Catholics in the world, there are likely a number of such couples out there right now.

If so, then why does impotence really matter?

If Mary and Joseph entered marriage planning on not having conjugal relations then they still granted each other a right even though neither intended to use it.

Couldn’t an
impotent couple marry in the hope – like Abraham and Sarah – that God
will provide in some way?

The case of Abraham and Sarah was different. Abraham and Sarah, though their union was infertile for much of their
marriage, could and did have marital relations. Impotence thus was not
the issue.

George Is Wrong. . . . Robert Is Right

GEORGE WILL HAS A BRAIN-DEAD PIECE ON WHO SHOULD BE NOMINATED TO THE SUPREME COURT.

I don’t get it. Will is a smart guy. How can he fall for such a ridiculous position, which amounts to a rejection of a principled judicial philosophy and that has a demonstrably poor track record when past presidents have tried to follow it.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch . . .

ROBERT BORK HAS A STELLAR PIECE ON THE NEED TO APPOINT ORIGINALISTS TO THE COURT.

It also has a judicious judicial takedown of Justice O’Connor as a way of making his point.

EXCERPT:

Consider just a few of the court’s accomplishments: The justices have weakened the authority of other institutions, public and private, such as schools, businesses and churches; assisted in sapping the vitality of religion through a transparently false interpretation of the establishment clause; denigrated marriage and family; destroyed taboos about vile language in public; protected as free speech the basest pornography, including computer-simulated child pornography; weakened political parties and permitted prior restraints on political speech, violating the core of the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech; created a right to abortion virtually on demand, invalidating the laws of all 50 states; whittled down capital punishment, on the path, apparently, to abolishing it entirely; mounted a campaign to normalize homosexuality, culminating soon, it seems obvious, in a right to homosexual marriage; permitted discrimination on the basis of race and sex at the expense of white males; and made the criminal justice system needlessly slow and complex, tipping the balance in favor of criminals.

Justice O’Connor, a warm, down-to-earth, and very likeable person, joined many, though not all, of these bold attempts to remake America. Whatever one may think of these outcomes as matters of policy, not one is authorized by the Constitution, and some are directly contrary to it. All of them, however, are consistent with the left-liberal liberationist impulse that advances moral anarchy.

GET THE STORY.

U.N. Has a Hearing Problem

Catholic World News carries a story (in a follow-up to an earlier piece) concerning a troubling new way of doing business at the United Nations. In preparation for the upcoming Millenium Development ~~Circus~~ Summit, a series of "informal " hearings is being held to give non-governmental groups (NGOs) an opportunity to address the General Assembly and perhaps influence the proceedings.

Thing is, though, all those conflicting points of view can be confusing (especially if you have already made up your mind) so in order to streamline things a bit, the organizers of the hearings (a special task force appointed by GA president Jean Ping of Gabon) decided to invite only those NGOs that will tell them what they want to hear: that abortion is a basic human right. The task force chose a number of radical pro-abortion groups to address the GA, but not one pro-life/pro-family group was allowed to speak. There was, therefore, simply no rebuttal at all to the pro-abortion groups repeated calls for universal abortion-on-demand.

Anne Patterson, the acting U.S. Amabassador to the U.N., has now made a formal complaint (thank God) on behalf of the conservative NGOs that were excluded from the hearings. Will it make much difference? I’m afraid that the fact of their exclusion in the first place says all we need to know about the agenda of the U.N..
The U.S. should withhold payment of our dues to the U.N. (we are by far their biggest contributor) until such time as the pro-life and pro-family NGOs are allowed to address the General Assembly, the GA president is replaced, and a new task force appointed for future hearings.

GET THE STORY.

Caped Bible Crusader

No, it’s not a bird, or a plane, or even Superman. It’s the Evangelical world’s superhero, Bibleman! When he is not busy battling superscum Rapscallion P. Sinister, he can be found evangelizing with Billy Graham and introducing children to the superpower that can be found in knowing their Bibles:

He fights bad guys for a living! He’s got a light saber! He wears a silver spandex suit and a shiny yellow helmet! No wonder kids were enthralled by the masked superhero Saturday morning, even though he also sings ballads, quotes Bible verses and has no real superpowers — just the ‘armor of God.’

"Bibleman, the Christian superhero, swooped into Queens’ Flushing Meadows Park to help that other Crusader — evangelist Billy Graham — spread the message of God. Graham’s three-day crusade will be his last in the United States, and he has drawn record crowds.

"Thousands braved the sweltering heat to see Bibleman, including children decked out in purple and yellow Bibleman outfits, and a few curious adults.

"’I’m finding myself enjoying it,’ said Greg Packer, 41, of Huntington, N.Y. ‘It’s like a religious version of Star Wars.’"

GET THE STORY.

(Nod to Holy Weblog! for the link.)

I found myself wistfully thinking that Bibleman should team up with Tradition Man and Magisterial Man to fight off the evil Sola-Scriptura Man. But then I remembered! The Curt Jester was on the case and showcased the results!

"Big News" On Evolution?

Cardinal Christoph Schonborn has written an editorial for the New York Times in which he . . . (get ready . . . brace yourself . . . drumroll) . . . explains Catholic teaching.

The New York Times publishing a piece accurately explaining Catholic doctrine is widely regarded by many bible prophecy experts as one of the seven signs of the apocalypse, but the end may not come just yet.

In the piece Shonborn explains Catholic teaching regarding evolution and notes that one cannot as a Catholic say that evolution means a random, unguided process apart from God’s providential control.

READ THE PIECE.

Now, a bit of commentary:

Some secularists (like the NYTNoids themselves) seem to be acting as if this is "big news." It ain’t. Anybody who understands the nature of God would realize instantly that the existence of any process in the universe that exists apart from God’s providence would be an impossibility. Any interpretation of evolution that would advocate such a notion is not compatible with the Catholic faith.
This is not to say that God’s design will always be distinguishable from randomness. His design may be so complex that we cannot perceive the order necessary to distinguish it from randomness. As a result, the affirmation that the process of evolution is non-random may or may not be empirically verifiable. In other words, it may remain a matter of faith.
That, at least, applies as far as observing the process of micro-evolution as it takes place. When it comes to the macro-evolution that is presumed to have resulted in the life forms we see around us, there are signs of order to which one may appeal in arguing that the processes that produced them were non-random. Naturalists would argue against this interpretation, of course.
One should not too quickly dismiss the idea of true randomness being part of creation. If God has given man true free will then he has created a form of rational freedom in the universe. But if he has created rational freedom, he might be able to create non-rational freedom as well. Non-rational freedom would seem to be what we think of as randomness. If he has created such randomness then it does not, and cannot, exist apart from his providence. Nothing can possibly exist apart from the providence of an omnipotent being, but an omnipotent being can create freedom that exists under the umbrella of his providence.
Consequently–and I am not arguing in favor of this, simply suggesting that one would have to argue to eliminate the possibility–one should not too quickly dismiss the possibility that God created randomness in the universe and that he allows it to play a role in natural phenomena, subject to his providence. The situation would be analogous to the way in which he allows human freedom to exist while also setting bounds to what man can do and what shape human history will have. In the same way, he might create randomness in the universe and allow it to play a role in evolution, while also setting bound to what evolution can do and what shape natural history will have.

I’d also like to note something that Cardinal Schonborn mentions towards the very end of his article. Of late many cosmologists have been talking up the idea of a multiverse as a way of avoiding the clear evidence of design in this universe. The idea is that since things look so orderly in this universe, there must be other universes out there in which things are more random. That way the apparent order in this universe can be dismissed as simply the product of randomness.

I have no problem with the idea that there might be a multiverse. If God created this universe, he can create others as well. But I have never been impressed with the use of the concept of a multiverse as a way of getting around the order we see in this one. Since we can’t detect any other universes to see what randomness or order they may contain, postulating a bunch of random universes to explain away the order in this one amounts to postulating the existence of evidence that one does not have in order to explain away the evidence one does have. That’s bad reasoning.

What we have is evidence of order on the cosmological level, and one can’t simply wish up evidence one doesn’t have of an ocean of disorder just over the horizon. You have to go with the evidence you’ve got until you get evidence otherwise.

Cardinal Schonborn doesn’t spell this out in the detail I just did, but I was tickled pink to see one of the princes of the Church enough on top of contemporary cosmological speculation to be able to comment on the situation.

Go, Schonborn!

Oh, BTW, Andrew Sullivan tries to link the Cardinal’s piece to . . . (get ready . . . brace yourself . . . drumroll) . . . Sullivan’s own sex life.

It’s always about sex with Andrew.

(CHT: Southern Appeal.)