Monday, April 26, 2021

The Problem with Jim Caviezel

Ah, I remember the hazy, crazy days of my entrance into the Catholic Church, when Mr. Caviezel was quite the guy.  He's the one who portrayed Jesus in The Passion of the Christ.  You remember.  That was one of the early shots across the bow that this Western Christian heritage rubbish would no longer be tolerated in our godless, post-Christian era. 

Really.  If you recall, attempts to have the movie banned from American theaters were launched.  Even before the production was finished it was being called racist.  News outlets featured copious interviews with Rabbis who told us how wrong Christianity had always been.  I remember one even suggesting the Cross is a symbol of hate for many Jews.  Can't figure that line of thinking will go anywhere.  Meanwhile some liberal Protestant denominations openly voiced the same reservations about a Jesus movie that didn't feature messianic visions of gay sex with the apostles.  One went so far as to officially call the New Testament a form of Nazi propaganda. 

Yeah, it was all back then during that time.  But when I came into the Church, the majority of Catholic bloggers I stumbled across were quite the Passion/Caviezel fans.  Now?  Now it's this, from everyone's favorite Catholic Deacon and post-modern Film Critic, the one and only Deacon Greydanus:



Woof.  Pretty brutal stuff.  Note how he adds that Caviezel and also Gibson (important to throw in there),  were the most 'incoherent' interviews he ever did.  I wonder if he ever pointed that out back when he did the interviews.  Hmmmm.  Here is an interview he had with Gibson in 2016 at a conference in which he describes Gibson's answers as 'succinct' and 'provocative'.  Here are his initial thoughts on The Passion as well.  Nothing about incoherent that I'm seeing.  Maybe he did say that about an interview back when it happened, but I was unable to find it.  

Anyhoo. I do admit there is a problem.  Caviezel, like anyone with brains and a heart and soul, sees the terror on the horizon.  He no doubt sees the blasphemies, lies, racism, slaughter (1.5 billion abortions in a half century - well done women's rights activists!), the iconoclasm, the oppression, the duplicity, the corruption, the elitism, the classism, the coming tyranny and the general assault on everything good that came from the last 3000 years of Judeo-Christian civilization.

Problem is, there is no way your voice will be heard today if you notice these things.  The press has long died and is now in full blown, full frontal activist propaganda mode for the secular leftwing.  It doesn't even pretend anymore.  You would have to be the 'what camps in the German woods?' level of deniers to say anything else. If you can in any way challenge these things, expect to be shut out by the press and censored by the tech giants. 

Likewise in Weinstein era Hollywood, most of the Entertainment Industry is at the beck and call of the new secular leftwing socialist movement.  Our colleges and  public educators are more or less thralls of  the leftwing.  Only recently, corporate America and our fine industrial and business leaders realized there's more money in the destruction of the Christian West than in its preservation.  Heck, even most religious traditions are, to one extent or another, right there.  That includes leaders of the same Christian Faith that helped build the values and morals now under attack. 

So, for instance, a vast conspiracy like Black Lives Matter, which has taught the aforementioned industries and institutions to condemn anyone who says all human lives matter (well done that), is easily dismissed with actual facts.  Multitudes of statistics have been shown to prove the BLM narrative is on shaky ground at best, outright false at worst. 

And yet from the United Nations to the Pope to almost every government on the planet, to our tech industries and social media providers, to our schools, colleges, our corporations, churches, movies, television shows, news outlets and rock bands - everyone preaches the gospel of BLM as if it is as true as anything that ever came from the mouth of Christ.  The same goes for whatever the media experts happen to say about Covid on any given day.  The same goes for Climate Change.  Immigration.  Gun control.  You name it.  If it's a leftwing narrative, or if it glorifies the 90 foot Left, you can bet 90% of the world's leadership and power players, and half the population of us little people, will be in lockstep with the latest pronouncements.  Even if they contradict yesterday's pronouncements. 

Because of that massive deck stacked against those who see what is happening and have not yet donned their merry Rolfs, there is a tendency to then grab and run with anything and everything under the sun that purports to notice the same storm clouds.  No matter how false.  No matter how looney. No matter how unproven. 

I won't say this is bad because it makes anyone fighting New Mordor look bad.  Dissenters will be mocked and ridiculed because their dissent exposes the obvious, and the disciples of the Left can't have that.  No, it's not good because you don't want to be as bad as what you're fighting.  If you go after this or that conspiracy theory*, then you are on shaky grounds when condemning all those who accept such unversaially accepted conspiracy theories like BLM, #MetToo, Transphobia, or whatever.  

Best to let your yes be yes and no be no.  Best to stand on the Faith, the solid rock, and at the foot of the Cross.  Preach Christ and Him crucified.  Visit the widow and orphan and whatever you do, avoid being tainted by the stains of the world.  Remember to call good good and evil evil.  After all, as we see here, one of the most important demands on those who would align with this rising shadow is that they must unequivocally call good, or at least excuse, what they once condemned, and condemn everything and everyone they once called good. If anything shows who is on the wrong side of history, it would be that. 

*Until there is actual evidence, it remains a conspiracy theory.  However many accept it is not evidence, as transgender normality or BLM demonstrate. 

11 comments:

  1. Now isn't this interesting... (see, Dave, I don't just do it to you)

    Doing a search, this is the only 2018 interview I can find between Steve and Jim.
    https://www.ncregister.com/features/interview-jim-caviezel-goes-back-to-the-bible-in-paul-apostle-of-christ

    No mention in that interview of SEAL buddies or anyone martyred. So was this something that came up which Steve didn't put in the interview? That's possible... but then it brings up a lot of room for doubt. In 2018 Jim just happened to bring up this conveniently debunked urban legend that was repeated to him by some "seal friends" which Steve never mentioned until now? Yeah something's fishy there...

    And as usual, the Blueanon group has expanded Qanon to levels it no longer means anything as a label. Heck at this point you can point to a conspiracy theory which they admitted to as existing (remember the times article?) and they call you Qanon if you think that conspiracy was somehow bad in any way.

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    1. Yeah, I found no other and it said nothing about him being incoherent - which is what jumped out at me. If Caviezel is running about spouting conspiracy theories, that's fine and dandy if we want to call him out. Though, as you say, be careful that it is only a conspiracy theory and not something that happened. I do fear, in desperation, many are beginning to latch onto anything that comes by, which as I said is never good.

      But his gratuitous swipe at him -and Gibson no less! - sort of jumped out at me. That he predictably names a black actor who played MLK IIRC as the most coherent ever, is less surprising (like seeing high profile Asians winning the Oscars last night). But I was at pains to find any example of him talking about either Caviezel or Gibson that way before this broadside.

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  2. I wasn't a fan of the actor Caviezel until I read this article. Greydanus just convinced me Caviezel's worth paying attention to. I smelled something odd about Greydanus long before he became a deacon.

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    1. I was never a fan of his as a movie critic. He had some good observations sure. But too much was he the post-modern, giving unwarranted praise to movies other than because Superhero or Sci-fi/CGI awesome or, in later years, because the properly preached the leftist message. The shock has been watching him follow others in having to rewrite his own standards to accommodate the ever descending left. And unlike some others, he's not really that good at doing so, as Nate's discovery demonstrates.

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  3. I would note that both left and right take something with a certain amount of truth in it, often small, and expand it into a full on feature story. In the process, the truth gets lost. I also note that the left is much better at ad hominem and persistence until the fiction becomes accepted truth. Trump and Russia are good examples. I look upon all of it as the price for free speech, cancel culture not withstanding.

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    1. I agree. Doing the above is not necessarily unique to any side or group. The problem with those on the Left is the lack of accountability. Do something like this on the Right, and the press - if you were well known enough - would be all over it. Plus, if you're doing as Deacon Greydanus is, you're swimming with the current. If someone on the Right did the same thing, it would be more noticeable because it would be smacking against the dominant narrative of the Left. But I see your point.

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  4. I don't follow Twitter, so I'm always suprised when I see Deacon Steve's tweets being referenced. Until this year, his website and his Twitter feed seemed like two different people.

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    1. I don't follow it either, but several who I know or follow on places like FB do. In most cases I ignore it, unless something leaps out at me or is especially egregious. I have never been much of a Greydanus fan, but I have read his movie reviews and articles over the years. This jumped out at me since I couldn't remember him saying anything about them being incoherent, or anything for that matter. I thought it an unnecessary dig to an already partisan set of tweets. On further review, still haven't found any indicators that he thought this before this year. There could be something, I just haven't found it.

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  5. The BLM response to the ridiculous assertion that stating "Black lives matter" somehow excludes all lives mattering is simple. All lives can't matter until Black lives do. In other words, you can't exclude a subset of a circle and then say you still have a full circle. The right is so bankrupt of ideas and rational responses to reality that all it has left to gasp for are conspiracy theories. Average world temperatures continue to rise as carbon monoxide, shown to trap heat, is released into the atmosphere? It's somehow all a hoax perpetrated by the government to control us. How or why are not questions we should ask ourselves. Women stand up to their abusers and report sexual assault? It's all "he said, she said" and the women are really just out to get publicity, money or to be spiteful. Never mind that no woman making an accusation seems to have gained any of the three. Black people stand up to racial injustices and systemic prejudices? We'll just say they care only about Black people and are pushing false narratives (police killing unarmed Black people and continued economic injustices aside). On the other hand, a thrice married, twice divorced office holder boasting of being a serial adulterer and saying he's never asked God's forgiveness nor has any reason to do so? Well, he's a "baby Christian" so it's ok to worship him as the savior of "traditional family values." This is what the right has become.

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    1. The problem with BLM is the ending of the whole 'one race, the human race' mantra that dominated post-War liberalism. The only way we can put an end to the universal plight of bigotry and prejudice was to see each other as God sees the inner person, not as we see - skin color, ethnicity, national origin and the like. BLM ended that. It ended it gloriously by saying we will go back to a pre-MLK, pre-war notion that we do size people up and treat them differently based on a host of external, physical and other factors and group identifiers. And in just a year, we're beginning to see that approach applied quite differently based on those group identifiers. So how did we know George Floyd was killed due to racism? As far as I can see, because of Chauvin's skin color and nothing else. That's called racial profiling. Which apparently is now acceptable, but only based on the skin colors in question. Which is what the whole MLK - content not skin color - development was meant to put an end to. Because saying we should size people up and judge accordingly based on ethnic identity, skin color, or other group identifiers is what we saw before WWII, and concluded those were not good. BLM has said they were good, when applied correctly based on the correct group identity. I'm sorry but I see that as a step backwards. I think conservatives do as well, but have no outlet in which to voice their concerns. Hence the tendency of grasping at straws, so to speak.

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    2. The right is so bankrupt of ideas and rational responses to reality that all it has left to gasp for are conspiracy theories.

      Oooo... so close to a coherent comment but then you had to go off the rails.

      Average world temperatures continue to rise as carbon monoxide, shown to trap heat, is released into the atmosphere? It's somehow all a hoax perpetrated by the government to control us. How or why are not questions we should ask ourselves.

      Carbon DIoxide is the gas you're thinking of. Anyway, shall we start going over all the failed predictions to see who's "really" in connection with reality here? I mean I remember England was supposed to be under water by the year 2000 AND 2020. Must have missed that happening in all the Brexit stuff.

      Women stand up to their abusers and report sexual assault? It's all "he said, she said" and the women are really just out to get publicity, money or to be spiteful. Never mind that no woman making an accusation seems to have gained any of the three.

      Tara Reid says hi and wonders where you've been all this time. As well as Lindsey Boylan, Charlotte Bennett, Anna Ruch, Ana Liss, Karen Hinton, Jessica Bakeman, Valerie Bauman...

      Wait a sec, you said no woman ever got money? Here's $647,610 that say otherwise. Starting to look less and less like it's the republicans disconnected from reality...

      Black people stand up to racial injustices and systemic prejudices? We'll just say they care only about Black people and are pushing false narratives (police killing unarmed Black people and continued economic injustices aside).

      Total number of black people shot by police in 2020 who were unarmed?
      18
      Out of a population in the USA of 44.08 million.

      That's... that's practically nothing. Check for yourself

      On the other hand, a thrice married, twice divorced office holder boasting of being a serial adulterer and saying he's never asked God's forgiveness nor has any reason to do so? Well, he's a "baby Christian" so it's ok to worship him as the savior of "traditional family values." This is what the right has become.

      I think as we've seen above, your comments have very little to do with reality. Maybe check yourself before you wreck yourself again.

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