Stigmata and the Truth About God
The film "Stigmata" is a graphic and frightening tale of spiritual awakening that provokes the viewer to question their own faith in religion. It is not merely a film about a young stigmatic woman. More importantly director Rupert Wainwright has produced a film portraying his view of the Catholic Church. His view is the same as that of an ancient scroll found in 1945 and that of a priest from the 11th Century named Thomas Aquinas. When a young, atheist, woman named Frankie Page (Patricia Arquette) becomes afflicted with the wounds of Christ, or stigmata, from an unseen attacker, the Vatican decides to send an official, Father Andrew (Gabriel Byrne) to investigate. Upon meeting Frankie and witnessing the stigmata first hand, he becomes more concerned with saving her life than debunking her claims. But he also finds himself contemplating his religion upon learning the truth about the actions of the Catholic Church.The truth that he discovers is that when the dead sea scrolls were found in 1945, in another cave not far from them in Nag Hamadi, another text was found. This scroll, written entirely in Aramaic ( the language of Jesus ), is thought by many to be the only living text of Jesus Christ himself. You'd think that th
e church would have hailed this discovery as a blessing but instead the church has described the scroll as heresy, since it's contents would destroy the fabric of the church. A church that owns more real estate world wide and is worth more money than other single corporation in the world. The church doesn't want this scroll to be published as a book of the bible is because the gospel is an account of Jesus on the night of his last supper. It states how he wants his church to be conducted after his death. The gospel starts out by saying, "The kingdom of god is inside you, and all around you. Not in buildings of wood and stone." Jesus taught that man does not need an institution between himself and God. But rather he taught that the true church of God exists in nature, not in elaborately decorated buildings. I believe that this point can be made more clear by looking at the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. Thomas is probably the greatest philosopher who ever lived. He wrote a sixteen volume work in which he discussed over six thousand questions on God. His work was thought by many to be evil because some believed it was anti-church. He proved that God's existence is not so obvious that it needs no proof, and that it is not so obscure that it could not be proved. Nothing in his writings relies on blind faith, which is highly contradictory to the teachings of the church which contends that man could never understand God completely. Through logic and reason Thomas came up with five proofs for God's existence. The first proof is the presence of motion. Physics explains that everything is either potentially in motion or actually in motion. Nothing in the universe can be set into motion on it's own, rather it is set into motion by an outside force. And since there are things in motion it is only logical that at one time
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Approximate Word count = 1241
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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