Been reading christian movie reviews.

Exactly.

But even then It's a big mistake to think all of us christians are like that vocal minority/parody groups...

After reading your post the first thing I did was watching a bit of Kikis Delivery Service

A great movie that people who have been brainwashed will never be able to enjoy and that has a more solid grip of morality in objective terms (yes, morality does have objective elements to it) than most christian or "family" friendly movies...

Nevertheless, specially in America, and I always repeat this, there is this undercurrent of puritanism that is quite frankly stupid.

Take for example Kiki's Delivery Service... Now I might not know a lot of Japanese but this subtitles (I would be better off with fansubs but that is piracy which is evil) are quite frankly not good.

They even change the word Coffee for Chocolate!!!!!! They can not tolerate the slightest cultural difference... As in a kind drinking coffee...

edited 19th Mar '12 7:10:18 PM by Baff

Is that really important in the grand scheme of the story though?

I don't think that's what's going on, Baff.

lol not at all. Its just me bitching about it. They do annoy me do...

But they just go about changing details, some of them more important than others...

Edit: Well maybe I went a bit too far there.... I am just very critical of translations...

edited 19th Mar '12 7:24:49 PM by Baff

It may not be this way with all studio Ghibli films, but I do know that the DVD release of Howl's Moving Castle had two sets of subtitles: a literal translation and one for the dub. Perhaps you activated the wrong one with Kiki's Delivery Service?

@Op It's times like these I'm proud to be Catholic. Most of this arn't that anal.

I'm often amused by the differences between American and European society. For instance, in the US it's usually the Protestants who are more fundamentalist than the Catholics; in Europe, it's almost always the other way around. The Anglican Church is much more conservative and fundamentalist than most European Protestant churches in my experience.

The Lutheran church of Finland (Lutheranism is one of the original Protestant movements, but these days it's only big in Germany and the Nordic countries) has female priests, transgender priests, more or less openly gay priests and they're about to allow gay marriage in the church. For most Finns (and I suspect most Europeans,) that's the kind of thing you imagine when you hear the word Protestant.

edited 19th Mar '12 10:54:14 PM by BestOf

To generalize horribly, that's because northern Europe got the chill, Copernicus-loving, science-is-awesome-because-the-Catholics-hate-it Protestants, while North America got the kind who just couldn't deal with not being able to burn Catholics at the stake.

I think that's definatley a continental thing. In my experience, "Protestant" creates images of some dour, grey-haired, Labour-voting, Church of Scotland Presbyterian type with a name like "Campbell," "Henderson" or "Donald." Probably hails from some place named "-shire."

In terms of actual, takes-it-seriously and gives a shit types, you'll probably get one of two flavours. There's the Rev. I. M. Jolly type and the Mason Boyne character.

edited 20th Mar '12 9:50:27 AM by TheBatPencil

Well, it's older than that even. To put it as uncharitably as possible: The northern Germanic kingdoms, when they converted to Christianity, were for the most part Arianists, who believed that Christ was not co-substantial with God and generally just a cool dude and were for the most part quite chill about other beliefs; on the other hand, the English—and hence the early colonists—come by two different strains of insanity honestly: Violent, genocidal mania on the Saxon side and crazed Nicene religious puritanism on the Norman one.

edited 20th Mar '12 9:47:38 AM by JHM

Relatively little is known about Arianism, beyond the mere basics; but I think that you might be idealizing things a little. Boethius did not execute himself, you know...

But in any case, by the time of the Reformation Arianism was long dead.

I think that the reason why Protestants run such a wide range of different beliefs and outlooks is simply because they are not centralized at all and seem to be rather prone to creating new denominations. I do not mean this as a value judgment here; but the point is, the Catholic Church has a single theology and set of rules which is supposed to be valid everywhere, from Scandinavia to South-America to central Africa. Evolution happens, but it is very slow — Catholics' beliefs about authority make them (well, us) extremely unwilling to create outright fractures within the community, so everybody just keeps grumbling and making suggestions and trying to push for their favored interpretations of whatever rulings exist already.

As far as I can tell, this is not an issue for Reformed Churches. If the Lutheran Church of Finland wants to allow gay marriage, it does not really have to worry that much about whether this will draw heavy criticism from other Lutheran denominations, let alone from other non-Lutheran Protestant groups; but if by some miracle the Catholic Church were to do the same right now, it would probably result in a massive schism. We cannot, and will not, risk that.

Returning to the reviews: yeah, I never saw much point in that sort of review. Is our religion really so fragile that the merest objection to it in a piece of fiction will shatter it?

edited 20th Mar '12 10:50:21 AM by Carciofus

Well, lets remember there where many types of Protestantism.

The protestants we seem to be thinking about here are the ones that follow a Lutheran approach it seems

edited 22nd Mar '12 7:12:30 AM by jejl

Pretty much Protestant denominations in the strictest sense could range from extremely close to Catholicism with some key or minor differences (i.e.: the Orthodox Churches) to so far from most others that it can be difficult to realize it's still a denomination of Christianity (i.e.: the Mormons). So, in other words, if we're really going to judge people or things by them being "Christian" or "Protestant" (which isn't exactly a good thing to do anyway), you'd might as well pick something far less arbitrary and wide-ranging, like "people who wear blue on Tuesdays".

The Orthodox Churches are not Protestant. They and the Catholic Church separated from one another (there is a lot of debate on who separated from whom) many centuries before the Reformation, and for entirely different reasons.

edited 23rd Mar '12 1:44:33 AM by Carciofus

Alrighty then. Well, that mistake aside, there are still denominations that don't differ much from Catholicism aside from some minor points (e.g.: different/fewer sacraments).

Agreed. The Anglicans, in particular, seem to be extremely close to Catholicism.

And even more so the Old Catholics, who are in full communion with the Anglicans but have a slightly different history: they split from Roman Catholicism after Vatican I over the issue of Papal infallibility, but their theology is basically indistinguishable from that of Roman Catholicism (although their practices tend to be more on the "liberal" side: they have no celibacy requirement for priesthood, for example.)

edited 23rd Mar '12 1:58:03 AM by Carciofus

Not in this part of Europe, it isn't. In the Netherlands - where Protestants and Catholics have had a few friendly disputes in the past, and where society was segregated among religious and political lines up until half a century ago - The Fundamentalist is usually Protestant. The Dutch "Bible Belt" refers to the parts of the country where very orthodox Protestants live. Here, Catholics are associated with good cheer and hedonism, while Protestants are seen as dour, strait-laced types with black clothes and über-conservative social morals. The fact that Catholic churches are full of colourful decorations, whereas Protestant churches tend to have a simple, minimalist look, also helps.

With sites like CAPALERT, I noticed that reasons for giving negative ratings includes things like characters being mean or cruel. Evidently the fact that many such characters are the villains and get their comeuppance as part of the plot makes no difference to him. I think the reason he gave Mary Poppins a perfect review was because there were no actually bad people in it. He also gave the South Park movie a rating of 0%, and didn't even finish watching it.

We have a similar set up. No "Bible Belt" as such, but if you go to the more remote Northern Islands it all gets a bit Wickerman, though. The small towns scattered across Lanarkshire, Ayrshire, Renfrewshire and Inverclyde can be a bit... strange as well. Larkhall, which is like Deliverance in Belfast, takes this to almost comical extremes.

edited 26th Mar '12 8:30:52 AM by TheBatPencil