Day: June 21, 2007

45 Important Movies as Chosen by the Vatican

Chris 7 Comments

The Vatican Film List:

The list is made up of three categories, “Religion,” “Values,” and “Art,” with 15 films in each of the three categories. Some are well-known favorites (e.g., It’s a Wonderful Life; The Wizard of Oz). Others have extraordinary moral or spiritual significance (e.g., A Man for All Seasons; Schindler’s List). Still others are challenging “art films” that demand literate critical engagement (the austere mysticism of Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev and The Sacrifice; the exotic grotesquerie of Fellini’s La Strada and 8½).

The list includes comedy (The Lavender Hill Mob), horror (Nosferatu), science fiction (2001: A Space Odyssey; Metropolis), animation (Fantasia), sports (Chariots of Fire), family melodrama (Little Women), a number of war movies, several silent films, even a Western (Stagecoach).

This openness to cinema in all its forms reflects the view articulated in the Holy Father’s address to the pontifical commission. “The Church’s overall judgment of this art form, as of all genuine art, is positive and hopeful,” John Paul II declared. “We have seen that masterpieces of the art of film making can be moving challenges to the human spirit, capable of dealing in depth with subjects of great meaning and importance from an ethical and spiritual point of view.”

(via SF Signal)

Daily Dose of Ingersoll

Chris 1 Comment
RobertGIngersoll.jpg

We cannot depend on what are called “inspired books,” or the religions of the world. These religions are based on the supernatural, and according to them we are under obligation to worship and obey some supernatural being, or beings. All these religions are inconsistent with intellectual liberty. They are the enemies of thought, of investigation, of mental honesty. They destroy the manliness of man. They promise eternal rewards for belief, for credulity, for what they call faith.

These religions teach the slave virtues. They make inanimate things holy, and falsehoods sacred. They create artificial crimes. To eat meat on Friday, to enjoy yourself on Sunday, to eat on fast-days, to be happy in Lent, to dispute a priest, to ask for evidence, to deny a creed, to express your sincere thought, all these acts are sins, crimes against some god, To give your honest opinion about Jehovah, Mohammed or Christ, is far worse than to maliciously slander your neighbor. To question or doubt miracles. is far worse than to deny known facts. Only the obedient, the credulous, the cringers, the kneelers, the meek, the unquestioning, the true believers, are regarded as moral, as virtuous. It is not enough to be honest, generous and useful; not enough to be governed by evidence, by facts. In addition to this, you must believe. These things are the foes of morality. They subvert all natural conceptions of virtue.

–Robert Green Ingersoll, “What Would You Substitute For The Bible As A Moral Guide?”