I have just watched the film The Golden Compass, starring Dakota Blue Richards, Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman, which is a film adaptation of Northern Lights, the first book in Philip Pullman’s trilogy His Dark Materials (Pullman is a militant atheist). The film had a budget of 205 million dollars, making it one of New Line Cinema’s most expensive productions.

Knowing none of this (I had no background information about the film), it caught my attention because it was among the list of movies offered by my local cable provider and, since I am on vacation, I decided to buy it.

The film is set in a parallel universe where people carry their souls outside themselves in the form of an animal, which they call a daemon. The form of this animal can vary while they are children, but as they grow up it becomes fixed, whether as a dog, a puma, a cat, a monkey, and so on.

The universe is governed by a religious body called “the Magisterium”, whose macabre plans include perfecting a series of cruel experiments on children in order to succeed in performing a kind of surgical operation (intercision) on them, separating them definitively from their daemons. This will take away their free will and prevent them from disobeying its authority and becoming “heretics” (making them “docile” or a kind of “brainless” people). In this way they will be able to impose their rule on everyone, and people will only be able to believe what they are told they must believe.

I could not help seeing in all this a subliminal message (obviously aimed at children), in which the Church is compared to a corrupt and evil body of an inquisitorial character, and in which the side of the good is made up of “those” who reject authority and the magisterium.

After curiosity got the better of me and I began to investigate, I was able to confirm that my impression was not an isolated one, but that the Catholic League in the United States had organized a boycott of the film for promoting atheism among children.

According to the president of the Catholic League, each book in the trilogy is increasingly aggressive in its attempts to denigrate Christianity; and although the film has been “softened” in the parts most offensive to Christianity (though evidently not enough for me not to notice), it may promote the books, whose anti-Catholicism and anti-Christianity become more and more evident.

Pullman has defended himself by denying that his book contains criticism of the Church, but his way of defending himself is literally a confession:

“I am not talking about this world but about another, fantastic one, in which authority is in the hands of a corrupt Church. If people want to draw parallels, they are entitled to do so”

In other statements his intention becomes even more evident:

“Religion must never tell people what they have to think”

The author of the book has also said that this kind of controversy will only increase book sales: “All this controversy will help people talk more about The Golden Compass, so I am very grateful to them”. Chris Weitz, the director of the film, has taken the same attitude; he has said that he is not worried about these actions and recalled that the Catholic League had also boycotted the release of The Da Vinci Code, which nevertheless became a box-office hit. “It will make more people see the movie”. The truth is that, apparently, either the boycott worked or the film failed to generate enough interest among viewers, since it grossed only twenty-six million dollars on its opening weekend, quite far from the forty million expected by its producers. (Perhaps a little of both, because, leaving the anti-Christian aspect aside for the moment, the film in my opinion is not “anything special”; even my wife concluded that it was boring and nothing out of the ordinary. A big budget and little quality.)

I encourage all Catholic parents to join this boycott; it is definitely the best way to teach these money-hungry producers to look for money elsewhere and not by promoting anti-Catholic trash.

To conclude, some related news items:

It promotes atheism

Catholics in the U.S. would boycott children’s film “The Golden Compass”

WASHINGTON D.C., Dec. 5, 2007 / 05:52 am (ACI).- The promoters of the children’s film “The Golden Compass” — based on a trilogy of books that spreads atheism among children — are doing everything possible to minimize the impact of the possible boycott that Catholics and Evangelicals will launch starting with its release.

The agency in charge of the film’s publicity has even sent a communication to the 50 most important Catholic newspapers in the United States to buy pages and advertise the movie.

The New Line Cinema and Scholastic Entertainment production stars Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig and Eva Green. Its worldwide release is scheduled for this week. It presents the story of a girl who, while trying to save a friend, ends up saving the world.

According to Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, the books by British militant atheist Philip Pullman — on which the movie is based — were deliberately written “to promote atheism and denigrate Christianity, especially Catholicism”.

“Atheism for children. That is what Philip Pullman sells. He hopes that The Golden Compass will lead parents to buy the trilogy as a Christmas gift. Our hope is that the film fails at the box office and that his books attract very few buyers,” he said.

Attention, parents

Campaign strengthened against “The Golden Compass”, a film that promotes atheism among children

WASHINGTON D.C., Nov. 30, 2007 / 01:21 pm (ACI).- The Catholic League of the United States has launched a campaign to warn about the dangers of the new film “The Golden Compass”, which opens next week and seeks to “lead children to atheism”.

The film, starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, is the adaptation of the first of three books titled Northern Lights, in which power is in the hands of the “Magisterium” (a clear allusion to the Magisterium of the Church), which would be a kind of “religious order that stifles individuality and controls the souls of children, an attitude against which the girl Lyra Belacqua, possessor of the golden compass”, which contains supreme truth, rises up.

As Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League of the United States, explains, Pullman thus promotes atheism and seeks “to denigrate Christendom in the eyes of children” with his trilogy titled His Dark Materials. For that reason he urges Christians to “stay away from this movie, because he knows the film will encourage people to read the books: naive parents who take their children to see the movie may be prompted to buy the three books as a Christmas gift”.

The second book, The Subtle Knife, is more “explicit in its hatred of Christianity than the first, and the third installment (The Amber Spyglass) is, if anything, even more blatant”, Donohue notes. He also explains that the film is based on the least offensive of the three works.

In the face of this attack on the Catholic faith, the League makes available to the faithful the report “The Golden Compass: Agenda Unmasked”, which can be obtained on the Internet.

Cinematic attack

North American Catholic organization denounces message of the film “The Golden Compass”

WASHINGTON D.C., Oct. 12, 2007 / 12:04 pm (ACI).- The North American Catholic League, presided over by Bill Donohue, has warned believers about the atheistic and anti-Christian message of the upcoming film The Golden Compass.

The New Line Cinema and Scholastic Entertainment production, starring Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig and Eva Green, and opening in the United States on December 7, is a children’s fantasy about a girl who, while trying to save a friend, ends up saving the world.

Donohue, however, warns that the film is the staging of the first book of a trilogy written by British militant atheist Philip Pullman.

“The trilogy was deliberately written to promote atheism and denigrate Christianity, especially Catholicism,” warns the president of the Catholic League.

“The audience targeted by the film is children and adolescents, and each book is progressively more aggressive in its denigration of Christianity and promotion of atheism: the second book, The Subtle Knife, is more explicit than The Golden Compass; and The Amber Spyglass is the most shameless assault on Christian sensibilities of the three volumes”.

Donohue is blunt: “Atheism for children. That is what Philip Pullman sells. He hopes that The Golden Compass will lead parents to buy the trilogy as a Christmas gift. Our hope is that the film fails at the box office and that his books attract very few buyers”.

The president of the Catholic League noted that “we are doing more than just hoping: we are launching a national campaign to protest the film, and for this purpose we have prepared the booklet ‘The Golden Compass: Agenda Unmasked’”.

Donohue points out that the film is based on the least offensive of the books and that the producers have diluted the most offensive parts of the work; but he explains that “we are carrying out the protest because it remains a fact that the film is bait for the books”.

“We are therefore combating a stealthy and deceptive campaign on the part of the film’s producers. Our goal is to educate Christians so that they know exactly what the film’s pernicious agenda is”, Donohue concludes.

Author: José Miguel Arráiz