{"id":2129,"date":"2006-05-13T10:55:35","date_gmt":"2006-05-13T10:55:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/how-dark-the-con-of-dan.html"},"modified":"2006-05-13T10:55:35","modified_gmt":"2006-05-13T10:55:35","slug":"how-dark-the-con-of-dan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/how-dark-the-con-of-dan.html","title":{"rendered":"How Dark the Con of Dan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Archbishop Niederauer of San Francisco – in the LA Tidings<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s an excellent piece – very direct and clear answers in a mostly Q & A format. It’s extremely gratifying that he cites both Carl Olsen and me in the piece – gratifying because it’s good to see Church working well here- parts of the Body doing their part. <\/p>\n

He also pulls from an film review of another film, written by David Denby from the New Yorker:<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Slightly over a year ago David Denby, a film critic for The New Yorker, wrote a review of a film titled, of all things, "Constantine." Denby described the movie as a "religio-satanic horror spectacle," starring Keanu Reeves. At the showing Denby attended, it was being watched "by rapt adults as well as teenagers."<\/p>\n

After dealing with that particular film, the critic moved on to the difficult, more general topic of how Hollywood deals with matters Catholic. Denby wrote: "Which raises a touchy point. ‘Constantine’ turns Catholic doctrine, ritual and iconography into schlock. God’s warrior wins, but is that enough to justify the tawdry, promiscuous borrowing? Will the trashy exploitation of Catholicism in movies ever end?"<\/p>\n

Could any Catholic have asked those questions better? Denby went on to conjure up Jewish and Hindu variations of the frequent Catholic exploitation films: "Imagine a Jewish version of the spectacle — ‘Angel,’ starring Vin Diesel, in which God’s messenger stays Abraham’s hand in mid-sacrifice and then earns His approval by lowering himself into cursed pharaonic tombs with tied together prayer shawls. In a Hindu version — ‘Vishnu," with Nicolas Cage — Shiva unleashes his snakes on the outskirts of Poughkeepsie and starts a war between truck drivers and apple pickers."<\/p>\n

Denby knew that the strategy of satire is often to take things over the top to show how ridiculous the situation has become, and he did that very well. In conclusion, however, he made a thoughtful and provocative remark: <\/p>\n

"Somehow I think these projects might be shelved. Yet terrible movies like …. ‘Constantine’ get made and become enormously popular. I will leave the issue of blasphemy to experts. But maybe some of the audience should wonder if they aren’t doing the Devil’s work by sitting so quietly through movies that turn wonders into garbage."<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Archbishop Niederauer of San Francisco – in the LA Tidings It’s an excellent piece – very direct and clear answers in a mostly Q & A format. It’s extremely gratifying that he cites both Carl Olsen and me in the piece – gratifying because it’s good to see Church working well here- parts of the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nHow Dark the Con of Dan - Via Media<\/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\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/how-dark-the-con-of-dan.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Dark the Con of Dan - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Archbishop Niederauer of San Francisco – in the LA Tidings It’s an excellent piece – very direct and clear answers in a mostly Q & A format. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2129\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}