2004 CONFESSIONS
December
November
October
September
July/August
June
May
April
March
February
January

Little Notes
Letters

Talk About Movies
Roamin' Catholic
Follow Me




Contents © 2004
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

CONFESSIONS
June 2004

---

THE LAST OF THE CHRISTIANS

Alex Heard suggested in Slate recently that Mel Gibson make a movie trilogy depicting the events of the Book of Revelations. If Peter Jackson could put The Lord of the Rings onscreen, what was stopping Mel from giving us the End of the World? It made me want to haul out my own end-times screenplay, based upon a movie idea in Myles Connolly's 1928 novel, Mr. Blue.

The story opens with the capture, interrogation and execution of the world's last known Christian. The International World Government has taken over, of course, and people live anonymous lives in monstrous cities. As I tell it, the Master of this world, the Anti-Christ, is not a cartoon monster, but a reasonable-seeming man who decries the man-god proposition as purest nonsense, along with everything that flows from it. He controls the world because he controls the food -- all natural food has been chemically wiped out, and he regulates the artificial sustenance that keeps humanity alive.

In my version, he naturally excepts himself and his fellow members of the ruling class. High on their towers, they have slaves to grow gardens, cultivate vineyards, and raise animals. I imagine a lovely scene where he gently explains to his daughter -- as she munches a cupcake and stares down at the crowds below, burning Christ in effigy in celebration of the execution -- the insanity of Christianity and the necessity of slaves to the good life.

Anyway, the story is that there is in fact one more Christian in the world -- a priest. He is hiding among a band of barbarian peoples who live in hiding outside the cities, surviving on stores of canned food hoarded away by end-timers way back when. He is determined to bring Christ back to earth; he is determined to say the Mass. But for that, he needs bread and wine. He needs to get to the Master, and before that, he needs to get into the city.

But how to get him into the city? Surely the guards will ask a question to determine his faith? The Anti-Christ knows how dangerous Christianity can be. The priest cannot lie. How to get into the city? I couldn't figure it out. That's what stopped me writing the thing.

I thought of it again when Christopher Caldwell, writing in the New York Times Book Review, suggested that "perhaps the church's real arrogance was to assume at the time of Vatican II that it had the standing to open a dialogue with modernity. The church could never command that non-Catholics listen to it; all it could do was expose its faithful to the siren song of democracy, capitalism and sex."

I don't know that the Church ever intended to "command that non-Catholics listen to it." That's not evangelization. That's not the transformation of the culture, making all things new in Christ. I imagine the Church was aiming at conversion, not subjugation.

But Caldwell hit a nerve in me with that line about "the standing to open a dialogue with modernity," and the faithful being exposed to "the siren song of democracy, capitalism and sex." Looking around, it doesn't seem to have been much of a dialogue. It seems to have been a dressing-down. Modernity told the faithful that Catholic women were oppressed, Catholic sexuality was repressed, and the Church's structure woefully anachronistic. And the faithful listened. Modernity told the faithful that religion and public life had nothing to do with one another -- nor did religion and the intellectual life.

And the faithful believed. Finally, modernity put religion in its place -- a personal experience of God. There's democracy for you -- every man gets to vote on who god is and what god wants. "My God doesn't smite people." "I don't believe in a God who obsesses over my sex life." And the faithful accepted. Apparently, we lacked the standing (grounding?) to do otherwise.

Those of us who reject these notions are barbarians on the outskirts, hiding from the culture, homeschooling our kids and all the rest of it. But we can't hide out. The call to evangelize, issued not by Vatican II but by Jesus, remains. But the question remains as well: How to get into the city?

We have to find a better way to "open a dialogue with modernity." We have to do it on our terms; we have to remember that we're bringing Christ to the world.

TOP