Thread:KatnissEverqueen/@comment-1672596-20131227082459/@comment-1672596-20131228214848

KatnissEverqueen wrote: You put a lot of thought into your responses, and I really appreciate that. I am actually staring at an Ariel statuette I received for Christmas and which I referred to as my 2nd-favourite Disney Princess, Elsa being the first. I mentioned this because of what I think provides the most positive influence for girls, but of course if the statuette actually were alive a la Toy Story I would not regard her as lesser than any other! (As for Frozen, I may like that film a great deal, but I rail against the fact that they replaced the cross on Elsa's crucifer with a flower and Joan's "JESUS MARIA" standard/banner with a shield bearing an inverted Fleur-de-Lys....)

You also make a valid point regarding Gaston's Jezebel-like exploitation of the villagers' religious zeal as being potentially seen as a condemnation of Christianity. Nowadays that is probably exactly what it would be, but I believe the fact that Beauty and the Beast was released in 1991 saves it. I recall that time vividly (even if I was only 12), when "Public" schools meant "Protestant" and people were more worried about whether the cleric in The Little Mermaid had an erection than whether they should show religious content at all. The audience was presumed to be nearly-all Christian anyway. Oh, and now that I think on it, does Ms. Potts' singing, "Thank the LORD I've had the napkins freshly pressed" count as a positive reference to Christianity?

Belle was probably raised Catholic, as up until 1990 80% of France was Roman Catholic, and I hope she was wise enough to stay true to it. That would sadly depend in part upon her influences, but at least she had an Enchanted Christmas! ;)

In the book I've been writing, Why God Doesn't Hate You, I note that while Christianity suffered a major blow after 9/11, the point at which it actually started to decline was immediately after World War I. People were shocked and frightened at what the world had become, their faith in God had been shaken or shattered, and they were prepared to embrace a number of changes, many of them wrong. Ironically the single greatest contribution of feminism (1st-wave, ie the Suffragettes), which was the original concept and drafting of the United Nations, would be refused by such people and the women responsible would be blacklisted during the 1920s.

As for conversion, I take Joan of Arc as my role model, as she preferred her banner 40 times more than her sword. I do not believe people can be truly converted by the sword, but if we always carry the banner boldly, then we show the world that we are not ashamed of Christ and will not abandon Him even unto our own earthly destruction. Well, I'm not sure if Gaston himself actually mentioned religion at all when riling up the Villagers emotions (interestingly, the Bimbettes weren't even present among the mob at all, at least in the film. Maybe they had second thoughts? I doubt it was for safety reasons, as there were plenty of old women in the mob), though yeah, that's a possibility. I still wish they had Belle herself actually mention religion at all, though, and in a positive light, especially. Mrs. Potts may be religious, but even still... At least Quasimodo, Esmerelda, and Phoebus (the first being the actual main protagonist of the story) actually referenced religion a lot, and in a positive manner, which balances out the bad influence Frollo has on religion.

And was France still an 80% Catholic majority up to 1990? I'm doubtful that a strong Catholic majority (or heck, any Christian majority) would have allowed their country to descend into the kind of amoral movements such as May 1968 (which was effectively started by that Communist-leaning scholar and Existentialist founder Jean-Paul Sartre, and the French's equivalent of America's Hippie movement), which involved a lot of unmarried sex as well as throwing off the old things into anarchy (and right now, apparently 3/4ths of the Country actually support it based on a poll I read online). Apparently it also had women turning out quite badly as a result: I can't verify if this is true or not (and believe me, I've tried to verify it by asking quite a few French women about this, including the actual template for the character who claimed this, Cecile Caminades. So far, if I've gotten responses, they usually mention they are unsure or are way too busy to respond at the moment.), but according to Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, specifically the May 1968 tape, in addition to the already-mentioned near-anarchy and the so-called "free love," apparently every single one of France's females were implied by Cecile Cosima Caminades to have turned out exactly like she did as a result of the event (when told by Big Boss, the main character, that she was an "uninhibited" woman, she basically said that she is no different from any other Parisian woman since May 1968, and further implied throughout the tape that all of France ended up that way): which is being a group of sultry... well, you can probably guess what was inferred in that tape. I know there was the controversy about Catechism II during that time, but I'm extremely doubtful that it would have ended up that badly for the Church.

And try as I might, as much as I hope that religion was actually doing well before 9/11, it's hard to tell, especially when our Pope Pius XII was falsely condemned by lots of people as being a Hitler supporter especially because of that KGB-funded play The Deputy, and the intellectuals certainly did not help either, being many of the people pointing fingers at us. Not to mention the Church is constantly at threat, possibly moreso than ever before, of infiltration and false-conversions thanks to Antonio Gramsci effectively telling the Communists how to infiltrate the Church.

And Simone de Beauvoir (who incidentally, similar to Belle, seemed to condemn the role of housewife) and her role in feminism certainly didn't help either. I think she was responsible for the Second Sex and Feminine Mystique, which was published during the 1920s-1930s, certainly post-World War I.