The Nativity Story: A Blasphemous Movie
Every Christmas I try to show that the Fathers and Doctors of the Church unanimously teach that Mary was without pain on that first Christmas (see post: “Mary’s Painless Delivery of Christ”). The reason for this is plain – Mary was without original sin and thus she did not experience the curse of Eve in painful childbirth. Mary is the New Eve and stands higher than Eve. It also inconceivable that the Christ would cause physical harm to his mother. Moreover, the Church Fathers cite Isaiah 66:7 as referring to Mary’s painless delivery of Christ:
“Before she travailed, she brought forth; before her pain came, she was delivered of a man child” (Isa 66:7)
This year, I want to focus on something different. I recently listened to this sermon in which the priest demonstrated that the Nativity Story movie is both blasphemous and sacrilegious. The priest notes the following:
The Nativity Story film depicts Mary as experiencing pain in child birth and therefore depicts her as subject to original sin. In other words, the Mary of the Nativity Story is not the immaculately conceived Mary of Scripture, Tradition, and the Catholic Church. This is serious business when we recall what Pope Pius IX solemnly proclaimed:
We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful.
Hence, if anyone shall dare — which God forbid! — to think otherwise than as has been defined by us, let him know and understand that he is condemned by his own judgment; that he has suffered shipwreck in the faith; that he has separated from the unity of the Church; and that, furthermore, by his own action he incurs the penalties established by law if he should are to express in words or writing or by any other outward means the errors he think in his heart (Ineffabilis Deus).
But that’s not the worst part. The Nativity Story depicts the Blessed Virgin consenting to have her palm read by a medium or witch. This is a capital crime in the Old Testament law of Moses and anyone who engaged in divination (e.g. palm reading) received the death penalty by God’s command. A good rule of thumb is that if a sin received the death penalty in the Old Testament then the same sin constitutes a mortal sin in the New Testament (when full consent and knowledge is present). The death penalty of the Old Law reveals the spiritual death that the soul receives through mortal sin – mortal sin meaning “deadly sin.”
So would Mary have committed a mortal sin and allowed a medium to divine her palm? Absolutely not! If she had, she would have consented to Satan and she would no longer have held enmity with the infernal serpent as Scripture inerrantly teaches:
I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel (Gen 3:15).
So The Nativity Story explicitly depicts the Blessed Virgin Mary as 1) subject to original sin; and 2) committing a mortal sin of divination. This is the height of blasphemy and Satan grins as thousands of well-meaning Christians watch this film in preparation for the holidays.
I wouldn’t watch a movie in which my mother was slandered and depicted committing mortal sins. Why should we watch a film that depicts the Immaculate Mother of Christ in submission to Satan
Just say no to The Nativity Story.
ad Jesum per Mariam,
Taylor
PS: Here’s a post in defense of the painless and intact nativity of Christ:
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