, Research Paper
The movie Stigmata is a in writing and awful narrative of religious waking up that provokes the spectator to oppugn their ain religion in faith. It is non simply a movie about a immature stigmatic adult female. More significantly manager Rupert Wainwright has produced a movie portraying his position of the Catholic Church. His position is the same as that of an ancient coil found in 1945 and that of a priest from the eleventh Century named Thomas Aquinas. When a immature, atheist, adult female named Frankie Page ( Patricia Arquette ) becomes afflicted with the lesions of Christ, or stigmata, from an unobserved aggressor, the Vatican decides to direct an functionary, Father Andrew ( Gabriel Byrne ) to look into. Upon run intoing Frankie and witnessing the stigmata foremost manus, he becomes more concerned with salvaging her life than exposing her claims. But he besides finds himself contemplating his faith upon larning the truth about the actions of the Catholic Church.
The truth that he discovers is that when the dead sea coils were found in 1945, in another cave non far from them in Nag Hamadi, another text was found. This coil, written wholly in Aramaic ( the linguistic communication of Jesus ) , is thought by many to be the lone life text of Jesus Christ himself. You d believe that the church would hold hailed this find as a approval but alternatively the church has described the coil as unorthodoxy, since it s contents would destruct the cloth of the church. A church that owns more existent estate universe broad and is deserving more money than other individual corporation in the universe. The church doesn T want this coil to be published as a book of the Bible is because the Gospel is an history of Jesus on the dark of his last supper. It states how he wants his church to be conducted after his decease. The Gospel starts out by stating, The land of God is inside you, and all around you. Not in edifices of wood and rock. Jesus taught that adult male does non necessitate an establishment between himself and God. But instead he taught that the true church of God exists in nature, non in intricately decorated edifices. I believe that this point can be made more clear by looking at the Hagiographas of St. Thomas Aquinas. Thomas is likely the greatest philosopher who of all time lived. He wrote a 16 volume work in which he discussed over six thousand inquiries on God. His work was thought by many to be evil because some believed it was anti-church. He proved that God s being is non so obvious that it needs no cogent evidence, and that it is non so vague that it could non be proved. Nothing in his Hagiographas relies on blind religion, which is extremely contradictory to the instructions of the church which contends that adult male could ne’er understand God wholly. Through logic and ground Thomas came up with five cogent evidences for God s being. The first cogent evidence is the presence of gesture. Physicss explains that everything is either potentially in gesture or really in gesture. Nothing in the existence can be set into gesture on it s ain, instead it is set into gesture by an outside force. And since there are things in gesture it is merely logical that at one clip nil was in gesture. In other words everything that is in gesture could be traced back to an original motion. This motion consisted of no possible energy s
ince it had to have moved on it s own. It was pure actuality. We call this first motion God. The second proof lies in existence itself. Nothing could cause the existence of itself. Rather everything is brought into existence from something else already in existence. But if there was no first uncaused cause then all secondary causes leading up to you and me today could not have existed. Since we do exist then so does the first uncaused cause. This uncaused cause we call God. The third proof also lies in existence. Since things in existence are corruptible, that is they are able to not exist, it is logical that at one time nothing existed. If at one time nothing was in existence than it is impossible for something to ever come to exist ( this was explained in the last proof ). Therefore not all beings are merely possible, but there must exist something the existence of which is necessary. The fourth proof lies in the perfection and gradation of things. Some things are more perfect than others. Since man, for example, is a complex organism that relies on all it s parts to work, it is impossible for a man to be perfect. For the simplest things such as rocks are more perfect in that a rock does not rely on anything else to exist. ( This is why the notion of God as an old man sitting in the sky is ridiculous. God must be completely simple in order to be perfect.) Since everything in nature is more or less perfect than something else in nature, it is logical that there has to be a completely simple being that is absolutely perfect. A perfect being would have to be simple yet infinite and incorruptible, this being we call God. The fifth proof for God s existence lies in the perfection of the design of nature. Design can only be caused by an intelligent designer. Mindless nature could not have designed itself or have come about from chaos into perfection. For example, the presence of every form of life relies entirely on water, and water is the only thing in existence that weighs less in it s solid state than in it s liquid state, which is why ice floats. If ice did not float lake s and rivers would freeze from the bottom up and life would not be able to exist. All of these proofs for God s existence prove one thing. That in order for God to be God he would have to be infinite- infinite in perfection, goodness, and existence. Therefore, why would God exist more in a Church? Why do people have to go to a building which is elaborately decorated to pray to God? It is impossible for God to be more present in a Church than anywhere else. In Stigmata Petrocelli ( Rade Serbedzija) has a line that sums everything up, he says, It s a building. The true church of Jesus Christ is so much more. Not in buildings made of wood and stone. I love Jesus, I don t need an institution between him and me. You see, just God and man, no priests, no churches. Even though certain moments in the film are very dramatic and can be frightening, the most frightening thing about the film is that it is based in truth. This scroll really was found in 1945 and has been rejected by the church, a church that is supposedly only in existence to spread the word of Jesus. This example of the Catholic Church s treachery is probably the most frightening thing I ve ever heard.
