A Warning Message

I received an email today from my cousin regarding the new Nicole Kidman movie coming out for kids. The movie is called "The Golden Compass". The following is the email I received, as well as quotes I found on the Focus on the Family Plugged In website:

There is a kids movie coming out on December 7, 2007 starring Nicole Kidman. I believe it's called The Golden Compass, and while it will be a watered down version, it is based on a series of children's books about killing God (It is the anti-Narnia). Please follow this link, and then pass it on. From what I understand, the hope is to get a lot of kids to see the movie - which won't seem too bad - and then get the parents to buy the books for their kids for Christmas. The quotes from the author sum it all up: http://snopes.com/politics/religion/compass.asp

QUOTE: "Atheism suggests a degree of certainty that I'm not quite willing to accede. I suppose, technically, you'd have to put me down as an agnostic. But if there is a God, and he is as the Christians describe him, then he deserves to be put down and rebelled against. As you look back over the history of the Christian church, it's a record of terrible infamy and cruelty and persecution and tyranny. How they have the bloody nerve to go on Thought for the Day and tell us all to be good when, given the slightest chance, they'd be hanging the rest of us and flogging the homosexuals and persecuting the witches." —Philip Pullman, author of the fantasy series His Dark Materials (the first installment of which, The Golden Compass, hits the big screen on Dec. 7). On his writing desk, Pullman has a note he wrote that says, "So: There is a God, but he is a liar and he's mortal," a sentence which does an excellent job of summarizing the spiritual message of his series. Pullman has not been reticent about whom he's targeting with that message: kids. "I wanted to reach everyone," he said, "and the best way I could do that was to write for children." [telegraph.co.uk, 1/29/02]

His Dark Materials is actually a loose—turned-on-its-head—retelling of John Milton's Paradise Lost. One of the central themes of that epic poem is the fall of humankind in Genesis, about which Pullman says, "[It was] a fall into grace, towards wisdom, not something that leads to sin, death, misery, hell—and Christianity." And about Eve, he said, "Eve is my great heroine: She wondered what it would be like if she did as the serpent suggested and ate the fruit. Good for her. What a pompous little prig she would have been if she had said, 'No, I mustn't.'" [telegraph.co.uk, 1/29/02; thirdway.org.uk, 2000]

QUOTE: "I was raised Catholic. The Catholic Church is part of my essence. I wouldn't be able to do [The Golden Compass] if I thought it were at all anti-Catholic." —actress Nicole Kidman, commenting on the fact that negative references to Catholicism and the Church have purportedly been trimmed in the film adaptation of The Golden Compass. Instead of referring directly to Catholicism and/or the Church, the malevolent organization that tortures children (yes, that's in the book) is simply called the Magisterium. While Kidman might think that solves the problem, anyone familiar with that term's usage in the Catholic Church will know better. Magisterium is a technical ecclesiological word used broadly in Catholicism to denote the church's authority to dispense truth, as well as the collection of bishops and the pope who communicate theological truth. [Entertainment Weekly, 8/24/07; catholic.net; disciplesnow.com; columbia.edu]