{"id":1545,"date":"2007-12-13T09:05:44","date_gmt":"2007-12-13T09:05:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/2007\/12\/striking-compass-from-the-reco.html"},"modified":"2007-12-13T09:05:44","modified_gmt":"2007-12-13T09:05:44","slug":"striking-compass-from-the-reco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/12\/striking-compass-from-the-reco.html","title":{"rendered":"Striking ‘Compass’ From the Record"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"goldencompass.jpg\"<\/a>
\nYou know on \u201cLaw & Order\u201d when the judge tells the jury to ignore the statement just made by the person testifying by saying, \u201cStrike that from the record. Jury, please disregard his statement in your deliberations?\u201d I always wondered how that worked exactly. The jury obviously heard the statement and as much as they try to disregard it, that statement will still be lingering in the back of their mind somewhere, influencing the outcome.
\nSo when I heard a Religion News Service report this morning that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has pulled their positive review of \u201cThe Golden Compass<\/a>\u201d from the Catholic News Service website thanks to pressure from conservative Catholic groups who find the film anti-Catholic and anti-religious, my mind immediately went to Jack McCoy and his merry band of A.D.A.s.<\/p>\n


\nYou see, the \u201cglowing\u201d review by Harry Forbes and John Mulderig of the Office for Film & Broadcasting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops — which called the film “lavish, well-acted and fast-paced\u201d and gave it an A-II rating, roughly equivalent to a PG-13 recommendation \u2013 was cited in the cover story of the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly.
\nIn its coverage of the film, based on Phillip Pullman\u2019s book of the same name, the magazine juxtaposes the concerns of Catholic League president Bill Donahue who condemns the Humanist author as hating the Catholic Church with the USCCB review which states that, “Most moviegoers with no foreknowledge of the books or Pullman’s personal belief system will scarcely be aware of religious connotations, and can approach the movie as a pure fantasy-adventure.”
\nIndeed, the film has been criticized by some as being too watered down, but the books of Pullman\u2019s \u201cHis Dark Materials\u201d trilogy \u2013 of which \u201cCompass\u201d is a part \u2013 have been recommended as required<\/em> reading by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, himself. Head of the Anglican Church, Williams commented in 2004 that the series should be part of religious education<\/a> in the United Kingdom, stating, \u201cShould teaching about religion include teaching about its critics? There is every reason for seeing this as a good thing. Clarifying objections is one way of clarifying what is being claimed.\u201d
\nIt\u2019s unfortunate that the bishops’ conference dropped the review, giving in to political pressure and further characterizing the Catholic Church as a place where different opinions are not valued or welcomed. And the Catholic League is playing right into Pullman\u2019s denunciation of organized religious groups, acting like the villainous, dogmatic \u201cMagisterium\u201d in its desire to quash the film.
\nBut, even if conservative Catholic and Christian groups have won the small concession of the removal of the review from CNS, what did they gain in the long run? Like the judge asking the jury to disregard information in their deliberations, assuming that hundreds of thousands of Entertainment Weekly subscribers and readers would disregard what they\u2019ve read and pay attention to a retracted CNS release seems just as implausible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know on \u201cLaw & Order\u201d when the judge tells the jury to ignore the statement just made by the person testifying by saying, \u201cStrike that from the record. Jury, please disregard his statement in your deliberations?\u201d I always wondered how that worked exactly. The jury obviously heard the statement and as much as they…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies"],"yoast_head":"\nStriking 'Compass' From the Record<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/12\/striking-compass-from-the-reco.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Striking 'Compass' From the Record\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"You know on \u201cLaw & Order\u201d when the judge tells the jury to ignore the statement just made by the person testifying by saying, \u201cStrike that from the record. Jury, please disregard his statement in your deliberations?\u201d I always wondered how that worked exactly. The jury obviously heard the statement and as much as they…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/12\/striking-compass-from-the-reco.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Idol Chatter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-12-13T09:05:44+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/files\/import\/goldencompass-thumb.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Ellen Leventry\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Striking 'Compass' From the Record","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/12\/striking-compass-from-the-reco.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Striking 'Compass' From the Record","og_description":"You know on \u201cLaw & Order\u201d when the judge tells the jury to ignore the statement just made by the person testifying by saying, \u201cStrike that from the record. Jury, please disregard his statement in your deliberations?\u201d I always wondered how that worked exactly. The jury obviously heard the statement and as much as they…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/12\/striking-compass-from-the-reco.html","og_site_name":"Idol Chatter","article_published_time":"2007-12-13T09:05:44+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/files\/import\/goldencompass-thumb.jpg"}],"author":"Ellen Leventry","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/12\/striking-compass-from-the-reco.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/12\/striking-compass-from-the-reco.html","name":"Striking 'Compass' From the Record","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/12\/striking-compass-from-the-reco.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/12\/striking-compass-from-the-reco.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/files\/import\/goldencompass-thumb.jpg","datePublished":"2007-12-13T09:05:44+00:00","dateModified":"2007-12-13T09:05:44+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/ac2cc34c973f7c4501ffd019f291d317"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/12\/striking-compass-from-the-reco.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/12\/striking-compass-from-the-reco.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/12\/striking-compass-from-the-reco.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/files\/import\/goldencompass-thumb.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/files\/import\/goldencompass-thumb.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2007\/12\/striking-compass-from-the-reco.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Striking ‘Compass’ From the Record"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/","name":"Idol Chatter","description":"Beliefnet Entertainment blog, TV blog, Movie blog, Religion in entertainment blog","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/ac2cc34c973f7c4501ffd019f291d317","name":"Ellen Leventry","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/566\/566a295a5a07deb0916671d2cb28e023x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/566\/566a295a5a07deb0916671d2cb28e023x96.jpg","caption":"Ellen Leventry"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/author\/eleventry"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}