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Amazon.co.uk28 November 2007
The Golden Compass: revealing religion’s fragility
Like all totalitarian systems, organised religion is not just intolerant of dissenting opinion or alternative ideas - it is vulnerable to them. That’s why it must crush free speech.
The call, by certain Catholic organisations, for a boycott of the movie The Golden Compass, reveals just how afraid the church is of its adherents being exposed to ideas beyond its own dogma.
The movie is an adaptation of the first book in Philip Pullman’s ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy. (The book is known as ‘Northern Lights’ outside the US, but, predictably, the film has taken the American title.)
The Pullman books have been criticised in the past as an attack on religion - Catholicism in particular. It has even been suggested that Pullman wrote them because he was aghast at the camouflaged proselytising for christianity in C S Lewis’ Narnia Chronicles. He has gone on record denying both charges.
In the books, the world is in the grip of a dark and sadistic force known as the Magisterium, and many people have drawn parallels between this organisation, which uses indoctrination and subjection of its people, and the Catholic church. Oddly enough, among those drawing those parallels is the church itself. How strange they should recognise themselves this way.
Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, issued a statement saying: “It is our hope that the film fails to meet box office expectations and that his books attract few buyers. We are doing much more than hoping—we are conducting a nationwide two-month protest of Pullman’s work and the film … the movie is bait for the books. To be specific, if unsuspecting Christian parents take their children to see the movie, they may very well find it engaging and then buy Pullman’s books for Christmas. That’s the problem.”
So, the problem is people reading books that don’t fit within Catholicism’s narrow view, and because of that, the Catholic League is doing what it can to suppress both film and book. That not only has an economic impact for those involved (though presumably the Catholic League believes no-one should be able to make a living unless they fall in line with their own views): this is a narrow-minded and arrogant attempt to control, or even censor, what people may read and see.
It’s clear, then, that Catholic organisations are afraid. Not of the film per se, but of their own people being exposed to ideas and opinions not approved by the church. Why does this have them so frightened? If what they preach is the unassailable truth, how could a mere Hollywood movie based on a book written for children have any impact?
The inescapable conclusion is that their own belief is terribly fragile. If a believer is given just the merest, oblique glimpse of what others feel about the church, they may just wake up and realise that what they’ve been told for so long is, frankly, nonsense.
No regime based on indoctrination, lies and (in the case of religion) bizarre and insupportable ideas can risk having its subjects exposed to non-conforming views. Keeping people brainwashed and compliant means convincing them that “There is no alternative” (to use Margaret Thatcher’s mendacious catchphrase). Propaganda, threats and attacks are standard tools of the totalitarian regime, and the Catholic church is a practised user of all three. It has used them for centuries to support a belief system that cannot sustain itself through logic or intellectual honesty.
Organisations such as the Catholic League have effectively confessed that their beliefs will not stand up to scrutiny. Perhaps ideas that are that fragile should be allowed to die naturally.
