Brokeback Mountain and the USCCB

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Gnosis:
This movie is an abomination, it should not be shown as it deeply offends the Lord. Everyone knows that God will have no part in a movie about homosxual lovers. Its absurd. Rather, a movie about the brutal slaying of a man, his being whipped, tortured, and nailed to a cross, the camera refusing to turn from every gory, bloody, sadistic detail ( a man’s eyes were even pecked out by a crow) is much more of a Godly film. What we need is less gay love, and more overdrawn, gruesome depictions of violence. Thats what God would want.
You are correct in the first sentence that this movie is an abomination. Not that I put homosexuality as a greater sin than many other abominations before God. All sin is serious, but that is no reason to promote sin as acceptable.

The seriousness of sin is the reason all that gory stuff really did happen. It happened to God.

I agree that it is too much for many of you younger people to watch the reality of what happened 2000 years ago, but for many adults, it was an effective dose of reality.
 
I went to see a movie last week called “Brokeback Mountain” about two supposedly straight men who start a homosexual relationship. I’m not sure if I’ve committed a sin seeing this movie or not, I found this movie very sad. I want to know if anyone else saw this movie and if there are any comments from the Catholic community.
 
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Celeste88:
I went to see a movie last week called “Brokeback Mountain” about two supposedly straight men who start a homosexual relationship. I’m not sure if I’ve committed a sin seeing this movie or not, I found this movie very sad. I want to know if anyone else saw this movie and if there are any comments from the Catholic community.
I have heard about this movie listening to Catholic Radio and they advised against seeing it, however if you weren’t aware I don’t think that you committed a sin. I do agree that what I heard of it is very sad and this seems to be the way of the world. I am really getting turned off by hollywood and all that it stands for.

God Bless
Kathleen
 
Meh. People get too worked up over this movie. Unless you think that seeing a movie about gay cowboys is going to make you pursue a homosexual relationship, I doubt you risk being corrupted from the movie. The nudity is far more offensive than the gay theme.
 
I don’t think the movie is that big a deal. It has its flaws and its good points. That being said, if all the storyline consists of is two guys starting a sexual relationship together, and realizing how empty it is (from what I have heard, it says many things that are true about the emptiness of that lifestyle), there are MANY other good movies that are more worthy of my time and money. I do not care for movies that much to begin with, so I’m picky about what I watch. I don’t like trying to see some sort of positive message in a questionable movie. This particular one sounds like it would be very depressing, too.
 
Yeah it is very depressing. I saw the Movie with A female friend. With both agreed afterwards that the homosexual thing was really no big deal. It seemed the Movie focused (IMHO) more on How doomed such an affair was. And how empty.

That only my take on it.
 
Anyone ever seen a movie about a murderer, kidnapper, thief, extortionist? Was that a sin?
 
How about Halloween, Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Freddy vrs. Jason? Movies where the only plot is repetitive, explicit violence.
 
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coyote:
How about Halloween, Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Freddy vrs. Jason? Movies where the only plot is repetitive, explicit violence.
Freddy and Jason really made me feel sympathy for the mass murderer. The reason these horror films are not good to watch are for a different reason than that of Brokeback Mountain. The violence in these films are not good to watch, but usually good and evil are properly ordered. Brokeback Mountain is bad for a different reason, its more for the moral of the story can be posioning.
 
The movie really didnt focus on the relationship nearly as much as their lives and the lives of people around them. But you know, if Catholic officials say not to see something, what are you going to do?

I’d also say that the movie showed far from emptiness in the relationship. If it showed emptiness in anything, it was the emptiness of living a lie.
 
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Celeste88:
I went to see a movie last week called “Brokeback Mountain” about two supposedly straight men who start a homosexual relationship. I’m not sure if I’ve committed a sin seeing this movie or not, I found this movie very sad. I want to know if anyone else saw this movie and if there are any comments from the Catholic community.
No sin…unless bad judgment is a sin…I just can’t figure anyone wanting to watch a couple of gay cow pokes and their adventures…except the Hollywood crowd of course :confused:
 
I have not seen the movie and really feel no great desire to see it. But the theme seems similar to an indy film released several years ago (in 2000, I believe) called Boys Don’t Cry, starring Hillary Swank (her role won her an Oscar for Best Actress).

I’m sure many of you saw it, and since I wasn’t on the forum back then, was wondering what your views on the film might be?
 
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Celeste88:
I went to see a movie last week called “Brokeback Mountain” about two supposedly straight men who start a homosexual relationship. I’m not sure if I’ve committed a sin seeing this movie or not, I found this movie very sad. I want to know if anyone else saw this movie and if there are any comments from the Catholic community.
USCCB movie review of Brokeback Mountain

Over-the-years love story between two emotionally fragile cowboys (Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal) who begin an intimate relationship during a solitary sheepherding assignment. Though shortly after, they try to go their separate ways, with one marrying his fiancee (Michelle Williams) and the other a former rodeo queen (Anne Hathaway), they continue to be drawn to each other. Director Ang Lee’s well-crafted film, which is superbly acted, was adapted from a New Yorker short story by Pulitzer Prize-winner Annie Proulx. It treats the subject matter – which a Catholic audience will find contrary to its moral principles – with discretion. tacit approval of same-sex relationships, adultery, two short male sex scenes without nudity, two brief heterosexual encounters with upper female nudity, shadowy rear nudity, other implied sexual situations, profanity, rough and crude expressions, irreligious remarks, alcohol and brief drug use, fleeting violent images, a gruesome description of a murder, some fisticuffs, brief domestic violence. O – morally offensive. (R) 2005
 
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Ortho:
Anyone ever seen a movie about a murderer, kidnapper, thief, extortionist? Was that a sin?
Watching sins acted out is not a sin. That being said, watching sex acts or simulated sex acts–regardless if they are marital, premarital, extramarital, homosexual, etc.–is a sin because it perverts something sacred that is to be shared by a husband and wife alone and not a voyeur.
 
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Genesis315:
Watching sins acted out is not a sin. That being said, watching sex acts or simulated sex acts–regardless if they are marital, premarital, extramarital, homosexual, etc.–is a sin because it perverts something sacred that is to be shared by a husband and wife alone and not a voyeur.
Is life sacred? How does murder relate to life? OK to watch murder of sacred life?
 
Is Nosferatu (the original Dracula film) OK for Catholics to watch?
 
Of course it’s not a sin to watch a film with murder in it. The Bible is full of murder - is it a sin to read that? Of course not. Why not?because of the reasons for murder being included - there’s a point, a moral. Just so, if there’s a moral for a film to have violence, or sex, or nudity, or swearing, or profanity, that’s OK - as long as it’s done in a way that’s not arouse or inflame the average person. Look up the Vaticans “45 Films of Note”. decentfilms.com has good articles abt film too.
 
Many of the comments posted about this film, in this thread and others, display a kind of arid rigorousness and a certain fearful narrowmindedness, about film (and by extension, about art in general) that is hugely discouraging. If you want to talk about “the problems in our church”, as many here do, this is one of the foremost problems; this rigorousness is crippling and suffocating. I know so many good and faithful Catholics who are nonetheless living half-lives because they are fearful of engaging with the world, fearful of thought - ultimatley, forgetful of the Church’s past - a past that has never been afraid to embrace art in all it’s challenging manifestations.
 
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