Did the Virgin Mary menstruate? (Short answer, no)

[meee]

I'm confused why the emphasis on virginity "before, during, and after" the birth... nobody's going to be having sexual penetration during or immediately after childbirth so I don't understand why her son's birth is a point of reference and not, say, "her whole life" or whatever.

But yeah, this is a large part of why I never understood/believed in Christianity.  To quote a college friend, "So basically God raped Mary."

Also, something I don't understand, does anyone here know why Mary is such a big deal in Catholicism and not so much in Protestantism? 

[Georgiana]

6 hours ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

Bullshit. Whatever ideas Aristoteles and Aquinas had this is what thinks the RCC now.This Catechism was thoroughly revised last in 1966 and as you can see for yourself there's no mention of strange Aristotelian theories. I didn't cut out anything so you can check.

This is what the RCC teaches now. My personal take on this will be in another post because I am terrified that this might be eaten (it already happened once).

A careful read will show that you supported my argument.  There is SPECIFICALLY nothing that references the soul being present from conception.  RATHER, the focus is on ABORTION and whether the FETUS should be protected from conception.  The "official" stance of the Catholic church is that "life should be protected from conception", whether the soul enters the fetus at that time is deliberately left ambiguous so as to not conflict with other official doctrines of the Church.  Specifically, the Catechism touches on ABORTION, but DOES NOT discuss ENSOULMENT.   Catechism =/= doctrine =/= Tradition =/= canon law =/= a complete list of Church teachings, though I should have made that distinction in my earlier post. That is completely my error in being sloppy and conflating everything in laziness; I was on cold medicine and a bit light headed.

The purpose of Catechism, as from the introduction: 

Quote

 

III. The Aim and Intended Readership of the Catechism

11 This catechism aims at presenting an organic synthesis of the essential and fundamental contents of Catholic doctrine, as regards both faith and morals, in the light of the Second Vatican Council and the whole of the Church's Tradition. Its principal sources are the Sacred Scriptures, the Fathers of the Church, the liturgy, and the Church's Magisterium. It is intended to serve "as a point of reference for the catechisms or compendia that are composed in the various countries"

 

Simply put:  it is a quick reference,  It is NOT designed to be exhaustive NOR to outline ALL the beliefs of the Catholic Church.  What it IS designed to do is present to the reader some of the basic, most useful, and most important teachings of the Church with an eye to what lay persons may encounter in their everyday lives.  Hence why ensoulment is missing.  Because honestly, it doesn't matter due to the Church's stance on abortion.  

The Catechism will give you access to the basics of Catholicism, but to think that you can simply read the Catechism and understand all the nuances of the Church is a bit of hubris, IMO.  Even a very small slice of Doctrine and Doctrinal application is enough for a phD (I know, because friends have gotten it).  Ditto to canon law.  And it is these doctors who write up the Catechism, deliberately wordsmithing passages  and cherry picking teachings to convey the MESSAGE they want without TECHNICALLY contradicting either doctrine, other teachings of the Church, or the historical record. 

For example: while the Church has discussed and been critical of abortions since the first century, they did not consider it murder from the first century on, and only in 1869 was it that canon law did not make a distinction between an early and late term abortion (pre/post animus).  Before that, an abortion of an "unformed fetus" was not considered murder and was not punishable by excommunication (as decreed by Pope Gregory XIV in 1591).  But again, that's useless information for your average lay Catholic, and so it was omitted and wordsmithed to give the modern message of the Church.  

The Catholic Church and Church teachings need to be taken differently than their Protestant counterparts (ESPECIALLY modern Protestant movements) because they ARE different.  This is an organization that has centuries more history and once held far greater religious and secular power than any Protestant denomination ever has, and that substantially changes how we ought to look at it's teachings, especially those that have roots from before the modern era in order to properly process them.  I'm not saying you are not free to disagree, what I am saying is that the scholarly methods needed to fully understand the teachings are different.  This is not Gothardism, which can be essentially understood by reading their core doctrines (and has only been around for a few decades). This is a much more complicated religious system. Remember:  one of the catalysts for the Reformation was that the Catholic Church DELIBERATELY attempted to remain inscrutable to the common man.  There's still a sense of that in the Church today.  

tl;dr : Catholic Catechism is essentially the Cliff's Notes version of Catholic teachings.  It'll give you the basics, but it is not designed to be either exhaustive or the ultimate authority on Catholic belief.  Reading it will allow you to basically summarize Catholicism, but  it is not designed to nor able to be used on its own to sustain a high-level, in depth argument around a particular Catholic teaching.  For that, you will need to look at Tradition, Teachings, canon law, doctrine, Papal leters/decrees/bullls, etc.  

In terms of fundamentalist Catholics this is somewhat ironic as they tend to attempt to ignore the modern Catechism and instead fall back on Tradition, other teachings, canon law, etc.  

[Maggie Mae]

1 hour ago, meee said:

Also, something I don't understand, does anyone here know why Mary is such a big deal in Catholicism and not so much in Protestantism? 

Some of that is just the misunderstanding/smear campaign of protestants. Catholics don't worship Mary or the Saints, regardless of what Protestants tell themselves. Catholics pray to Mary and/or various Saints because prayer and worship in the Catholic Church are very different things. They pray to Saint Jude to intercede and ask them to pray to God on their behalf when a case feels hopeless. Prayers to Mary are similar. It's kind of like when you want a new job, so you have your old boss mention how great you are to the CEO of the new company when they are golfing. 

Also Catholics are Christians, not all Catholics are the same, etc. 

I can't even remember the entire Hail Mary prayer, it's been so long. I used to know it in four languages. Now I can't even recite it in English. 

[nausicaa]

I'm not trying to put words in Cleopatra7's mouth, but I think it might help to clarify that she is typically discussing Traditionalist Catholics, who are as different from your typical RCC practitioner as IBLP is from mainstream Episcopalians. So it would make sense that those of us raised mainstream North American Catholic would not be familiar with a lot of the concepts C7 is mentioning. I was raised a cradle Catholic in an Irish-American family of cradle Catholics and it wasn't until I was 23 or 24 that I learned about SSPX, women still head covering, and that some believers thought Catholic countries should be under monarchical rule (and that there's some non-swimming female Catholic movement). It's a flavor of Fundie I've learned way more about it since joining FJ. 

And I like Cleopatra7's posts, they're informative and thought provoking and create more meaningful discussions than the "Ew, Derek is so skinny" stuff than can go on for pages when there isn't much Fundie news (and granted, I've participated in these discussions as well). Honestly, I've already learned a ton more on this three page thread from you guys than any of the 40 page Duggar threads. I'm kind of a snob too though. 

[paganbaby]

14 hours ago, IntrinsicallyDisordered said:

...

@Cleopatra7I harbor a lot of blasphemous thoughts (though as I've gotten older I mainly keep them to myself instead of getting into hysterical arguments with my mother) and one is my desire for Mary to have become pregnant - maybe from Joseph, maybe not - and knowing she was going to be stoned to death, was quick witted and convincing enough to be like "It was an angel!  This is God's kid!"

 

...

 

My mother would be upset at me for nodding my head and snickering as I read that. For all she's pragmatic about most things, she absolutely sees Mary as a guide and intercessor. She told me once that Mary inspired her to marry my father. Of course, my parents were happily married for over 50 years until he passed away so...

I love the painting too.

[HerNameIsBuffy]

40 minutes ago, nausicaa said:

I'm not trying to put words in Cleopatra7's mouth, but I think it might help to clarify that she is typically discussing Traditionalist Catholics, who are as different from your typical RCC practitioner as IBLP is from mainstream Episcopalians. So it would make sense that those of us raised mainstream North American Catholic would not be familiar with a lot of the concepts C7 is mentioning. I was raised a cradle Catholic in an Irish-American family of cradle Catholics and it wasn't until I was 23 or 24 that I learned about SSPX, women still head covering, and that some believers thought Catholic countries should be under monarchical rule (and that there's some non-swimming female Catholic movement). It's a flavor of Fundie I've learned way more about it since joining FJ. 

And I like Cleopatra7's posts, they're informative and thought provoking and create more meaningful discussions than the "Ew, Derek is so skinny" stuff than can go on for pages when there isn't much Fundie news (and granted, I've participated in these discussions as well). Honestly, I've already learned a ton more on this three page thread from you guys than any of the 40 page Duggar threads. I'm kind of a snob too though. 

My understanding changed when I realized she was talking about traditional Catholics...i didn't pick up on that at the beginning.

I've also really enjoyed reading this thread and I've learned so much.  This is some of the very best of FJ; intelligent conversation that really makes me think about things in a new way.

[mausi]

This is a really interesting discussion, but I have to admit I only popped in because...

I read this thread title as 'Did the Virgin Mary masturbate'.

[boston2495]

I have to say, this is one of the most interesting and thought-provoking conversations I've read in a while. I've read so many intelligent and interesting comments as I made my way through this thread. As someone who was raised in a fairly moderate RC family/society (definitely not religiously liberal, but not traditionalist), and as someone who also spends a lot of time pondering Gothardism and related fundamentalist issues, I often forget that such extreme views are present in my own backyard as well, so to speak. I don't attend church often anymore, and to be honest I kind of see it now as more as a part of my cultural identity than a representation of what I truly believe, deep down. I grew up in the church, and all major family events somehow relate to the church, but I can't say I'm in line with a lot of what I was taught as a kid. I'm sure a lot of that has to do with my personal inability to reconcile certain teachings of the church with some of my own personal beliefs, as well as the fact that the church is still a patriarchal structure by definition and I've seen real examples of how damaging that can be. Either way, whether Mary menstruated or felt pain in childbirth or not were never topics I've ever heard discussed or considered in church or in church-related teachings, so the fact that there are Catholics out there, however traditionalist, who are actually thinking about this is a bit terrifying to me. Not only do I find it just plain weird and invasive, but it scares me that the notions of female impurity are still being discussed openly out there, somewhere, in the church. I mean, I guess I always knew there were extremist groups like this in the RCC, but I never paid much attention to them, so being confronted with this type of thought is a real eye opener. 

[HerNameIsBuffy]

23 minutes ago, mausi said:

This is a really interesting discussion, but I have to admit I only popped in because...

I read this thread title as 'Did the Virgin Mary masturbate'.

This made me laugh way harder than it should have.  And you know at some point some old theologian wrote a 100,000 word essay on the topic.

 

[paganbaby]

2 minutes ago, HerNameIsBuffy said:

This made me laugh way harder than it should have.  And you know at some point some old theologian wrote a 100,000 word essay on the topic.

 

And I wonder what he was doing with his other hand as he wrote.

[mausi]

5 minutes ago, paganbaby said:

And I wonder what he was doing with his other hand as he wrote.

I bet the orgasms were heavenly.

[nausicaa]

1 hour ago, boston2495 said:

 As someone who was raised in a fairly moderate RC family/society (definitely not religiously liberal, but not traditionalist), and as someone who also spends a lot of time pondering Gothardism and related fundamentalist issues, I often forget that such extreme views are present in my own backyard as well, so to speak. I don't attend church often anymore, and to be honest I kind of see it now as more as a part of my cultural identity than a representation of what I truly believe, deep down. 

That's why the Traditionalists fascinate me too. I honestly had no idea about any of this until I was older and had left the church. My mom (still practicing) doesn't believe any of my stories about them!

And on your second point, Roger Ebert has an essay in which he argues that "culturally Catholic" should be an identifier the same way "culturally Jewish" is. I feel that way. For whatever reason, I cannot find the essay right now. (Though when you google "Roger Ebert cultural Catholic" a bunch of Traditionalist discussion forums pop up freaking out about him. )

[laPapessaGiovanna]

Full disclosure. I was raised Catholic by a fundie lite mother (LGBTQ people are an aberration, no abortion,  no sex before marriage etc, she's affiliated to the Rinnovamento Nello Spirito movement) in a culturally very Catholic country. If I need to define myself I'd say that I am agnostic. I divorced from the Catholic faith over the concept of "sin". I believe people can do unspeakably evil things and I do believe in personal responsibility for someone's actions,  but I can't believe in the inherent "wrongness" of every human. 

This said I have to say that US Catholicism is very different from Catholicism here and this is something I discovered on FJ. Most of you FJers would consider my mother fundie lite and this is how I "classified" her, but here she's considered just normally religious. Most of those who think differently just don't consider themselves religious anymore or religious but not Catholic and typically go to Church only for baptisms, marriages and the likes. There's definitely this idea that the RCC upheld some beliefs and if you don't share all or most of them you just part ways. This is problematic for many people who try to push for a change from the inside because they don't want to go against any RCC belief but they also can't share some. For many others it's a matter of cognitive dissonance and cherry picking, as with my mother using birth control, so that the Church is always right except when it isn't. 

I agree with those who say that  the sort of theological reasoning we are debating here is not officially recognised by the Church,  it's not officially disproven either and this is bothersome for me. The Church doesn't reject many fundamentalist ideas among its ranks until they start conflicting with the official Catechism. And the fact that Mary menstruated or not isn't among the Church official teachings,  meaning that you can think whatever you want on the matter as long as it doesn't conflict with the Catechism. For example it could be argued that menstruating is a big part of a human woman's human life and since the whole Incarnation concept is based on Jesus deriving his humanity from Mary, making of her a half himan/half angel/half ideal creature without the body functions that characterise the majority of women and that at the time were necessary to conceive would undermine the whole Incarnation belief. 

Another objection could be that the whole theological reasoning explained in the Marist University link is based on the assumption that some biological functions were considered impure by the OT law, but Mary was put above the OT law starting from her own Immaculate Conception by virtue of one day becoming the Mother of Christ, so the OT law never applied to her, per the RCC teachings. (ETA I am NOT a theologian, so I may have said some BS, I just expressed what would be my objections if I were still Catholic).

I can understand how most theologians would roll their eyes and not even bother answering but letting this sort of ideas creep around unchecked and unchallenged is damaging imho, surely not among mainstream Catholics (not even my mother would buy it) but among more trad groups it would. 

Someone above mentioned the obsession with Mary's virginity.  I too find it creepy. I can understand the necessity of it to demonstrate the divine paternity of Christ but insisting on it being preserved during childbirth and breastfeeding is absurd. Moreover it's based on the idea that being a virgin she's thoroughly open to God's grace and free to live the perfect faith. The other side of the medal is that sex, childbirth and breastfeeding would normally take something away from a woman's wholeness and that's simply ridiculous patriarchal bullshit. 

On another side I'd like to remind to moron Catholic patriarchs that in the Catechism Mary isn't presented as a model for every woman to strive for but rather as a model for the Catholic Church as a whole for her perfect acceptance of the faith. But this too is depressing. A Virgin Church says the Catechism. Basically it means celibate priests being the only hierarchically important people. 

On the topic of Mary's person and body. The concept of papal infallibility wasn't ever codified before 1850 ca when Pius IX proclaimed that the capability of discerning a definitive truth was a prerogative of the pontifex when he is speaking ex cathedra Petris. It wasn't anything particularly new but usually the Church's dogmas were proclaimed in a Council. Anyway Vatican II recognised papal infallibility. All this to say that there are a couple of interesting things to say about this. Pius IX proclaimed papal infallibility on the verge of the disruption of papal temporal sovereignty in 1861 only Rome remained of the once vast Kingdom of the Church and 10 yrs later only the Vatican. A disruption that started long before with the loos of papal power in the wider stage of international politics because if in the past papal endorsement of Catholic sovereigns was fundamental for them, to justify their power as coming by divine right, the French Revolution got rid of this concept too.

Anyway it's worth to notice that when the Pope lost his temporal power he codified his spiritual one as absolute. 

It's not like everything the Pope says is a definitive truth, only when he speaks ex cathedra petris. And he did so only twice. Both regarding a woman's body and prerogatives, namely Mary and her own Immaculate Conception in 1854 and Mary and her Assumption to Heaven in 1950.

One more detail. Premise: I personally think that all the Marian Apparitions fenomena are scams. While the Pope was debating the Immaculate Conception with the ecclesiastical hierarchies,  a girl started seeing "a beautiful lady" appear near a cave in a lost place in the Pyrenees. When, instructed by a priest, Bernadette Subirou asked the lady who she was, the lady said "I am the Immaculate Conception". Wow.

Anyway it's perfectly clear that the RCC considers Mary not in the same league of the rest of us poor mortals, she's perfect and we aren't, she's the model of the Church. Because if a normal woman who overcomes her sins until she reaches the perfect acceptance of God's will, was the model for the perfect faith...well this would definitely pose a problem. Because you know wimmenfolk are inherently different from men, yes they are important, equal dignity blablabla, but they are different and priesthood is not their place.

Sorry for the wall of text.

[laPapessaGiovanna]

5 hours ago, Georgiana said:

A careful read will show that you supported my argument.  There is SPECIFICALLY nothing that references the soul being present from conception.  RATHER, the focus is on ABORTION and whether the FETUS should be protected from conception.  The "official" stance of the Catholic church is that "life should be protected from conception", whether the soul enters the fetus at that time is deliberately left ambiguous so as to not conflict with other official doctrines of the Church.  Specifically, the Catechism touches on ABORTION, but DOES NOT discuss ENSOULMENT.   Catechism =/= doctrine =/= Tradition =/= canon law =/= a complete list of Church teachings, though I should have made that distinction in my earlier post. That is completely my error in being sloppy and conflating everything in laziness; I was on cold medicine and a bit light headed.

The purpose of Catechism, as from the introduction: 

Simply put:  it is a quick reference,  It is NOT designed to be exhaustive NOR to outline ALL the beliefs of the Catholic Church.  What it IS designed to do is present to the reader some of the basic, most useful, and most important teachings of the Church with an eye to what lay persons may encounter in their everyday lives.  Hence why ensoulment is missing.  Because honestly, it doesn't matter due to the Church's stance on abortion.  

The Catechism will give you access to the basics of Catholicism, but to think that you can simply read the Catechism and understand all the nuances of the Church is a bit of hubris, IMO.  Even a very small slice of Doctrine and Doctrinal application is enough for a phD (I know, because friends have gotten it).  Ditto to canon law.  And it is these doctors who write up the Catechism, deliberately wordsmithing passages  and cherry picking teachings to convey the MESSAGE they want without TECHNICALLY contradicting either doctrine, other teachings of the Church, or the historical record. 

For example: while the Church has discussed and been critical of abortions since the first century, they did not consider it murder from the first century on, and only in 1869 was it that canon law did not make a distinction between an early and late term abortion (pre/post animus).  Before that, an abortion of an "unformed fetus" was not considered murder and was not punishable by excommunication (as decreed by Pope Gregory XIV in 1591).  But again, that's useless information for your average lay Catholic, and so it was omitted and wordsmithed to give the modern message of the Church.  

The Catholic Church and Church teachings need to be taken differently than their Protestant counterparts (ESPECIALLY modern Protestant movements) because they ARE different.  This is an organization that has centuries more history and once held far greater religious and secular power than any Protestant denomination ever has, and that substantially changes how we ought to look at it's teachings, especially those that have roots from before the modern era in order to properly process them.  I'm not saying you are not free to disagree, what I am saying is that the scholarly methods needed to fully understand the teachings are different.  This is not Gothardism, which can be essentially understood by reading their core doctrines (and has only been around for a few decades). This is a much more complicated religious system. Remember:  one of the catalysts for the Reformation was that the Catholic Church DELIBERATELY attempted to remain inscrutable to the common man.  There's still a sense of that in the Church today.  

tl;dr : Catholic Catechism is essentially the Cliff's Notes version of Catholic teachings.  It'll give you the basics, but it is not designed to be either exhaustive or the ultimate authority on Catholic belief.  Reading it will allow you to basically summarize Catholicism, but  it is not designed to nor able to be used on its own to sustain a high-level, in depth argument around a particular Catholic teaching.  For that, you will need to look at Tradition, Teachings, canon law, doctrine, Papal leters/decrees/bullls, etc.  

In terms of fundamentalist Catholics this is somewhat ironic as they tend to attempt to ignore the modern Catechism and instead fall back on Tradition, other teachings, canon law, etc.  

I was replying to this. You specifically mentioned the Catechism three times.

22 hours ago, Georgiana said:

There are a lot of very weird things that are still official Catechism simply because the method of changing them is so difficult as to be nearly impossible.  For example, I am sure you have heard that Catholics believe "life begins at conception".  This is NOT what is on the OFFICIAL Catechism.

[...]Anyway, if you scour the Catechism, you'll find loads of little tidbits like this.  The difference is that while they are on the books, they are no longer in any way taught or recognized by the church.  [...]

But since you were talking about the soul and when it starts being into the body let's see what says the Catechism of the RCC on this.

Quote

362 The human person, created in the image of God, is a being at once corporeal and spiritual. the biblical account expresses this reality in symbolic language when it affirms that "then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being."229 Man, whole and entire, is therefore willed by God.

363 In Sacred Scripture the term "soul" often refers to human life or the entire human person.230 But "soul" also refers to the innermost aspect of man, that which is of greatest value in him,231 that by which he is most especially in God's image: "soul" signifies the spiritual principle in man.

364 The human body shares in the dignity of "the image of God": it is a human body precisely because it is animated by a spiritual soul, and it is the whole human person that is intended to become, in the body of Christ, a temple of the Spirit:232

Man, though made of body and soul, is a unity. Through his very bodily condition he sums up in himself the elements of the material world. Through him they are thus brought to their highest perfection and can raise their voice in praise freely given to the Creator. For this reason man may not despise his bodily life. Rather he is obliged to regard his body as good and to hold it in honour since God has created it and will raise it up on the last day 233

365 The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the "form" of the body:234 i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.

366 The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God - it is not "produced" by the parents - and also that it is immortal: it does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection.235

Pretty clear isn't it? The body and soul are a unity but while the material body is produced by the parents the soul is created IMMEDIATELY, meaning in that fucking (pun intended) moment. 

And yes the RCC can change its views of things as explained here

Quote

175 "We guard with care the faith that we have received from the Church, for without ceasing, under the action of God's Spirit, this deposit of great price, as if in an excellent vessel, is constantly being renewed and causes the very vessel that contains it to be renewed."

Beliefs, especially if born of of tradition (not of Scripture) can be changed under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. 

[paganbaby]

13 hours ago, nausicaa said:

And on your second point, Roger Ebert has an essay in which he argues that "culturally Catholic" should be an identifier the same way "culturally Jewish" is. I feel that way. For whatever reason, I cannot find the essay right now. (Though when you google "Roger Ebert cultural Catholic" a bunch of Traditionalist discussion forums pop up freaking out about him. )

That's an interesting idea. My husband is Jewish, and was raised in a secular environment. We did holidays in a secular way, and my kids mostly identify as Jewish. In part that's because they don't have to embrace a dogma to do so. (Other reasons include the fact that their paternal grandparents barely survived WWII and most of their families were killed. Identifying as Jewish is a way for my kids to acknowledge that part of their family history, which is rightfully important to them.)

[nausicaa]

3 hours ago, paganbaby said:

That's an interesting idea. My husband is Jewish, and was raised in a secular environment. We did holidays in a secular way, and my kids mostly identify as Jewish. In part that's because they don't have to embrace a dogma to do so. (Other reasons include the fact that their paternal grandparents barely survived WWII and most of their families were killed. Identifying as Jewish is a way for my kids to acknowledge that part of their family history, which is rightfully important to them.)

I do think it's different, since being Jewish is also an ethnicity, and obviously there's a history of persecution there that understandably creates a close sense of community. 

Ebert discusses how Catholics were often segregated in cities early on in the U.S. and as a result developed some cultural norms outside of the typical Protestant American culture. So someone can leave the beliefs of Catholicism while still identifying with the larger culture (and the rest of his essay is about the things he really likes about that culture and doesn't want to leave behind, despite being essentially an atheist). I really wish I could find that damn essay. 

[paganbaby]

3 hours ago, nausicaa said:

I do think it's different, since being Jewish is also an ethnicity, and obviously there's a history of persecution there that understandably creates a close sense of community. 

Ebert discusses how Catholics were often segregated in cities early on in the U.S. and as a result developed some cultural norms outside of the typical Protestant American culture. So someone can leave the beliefs of Catholicism while still identifying with the larger culture (and the rest of his essay is about the things he really likes about that culture and doesn't want to leave behind, despite being essentially an atheist). I really wish I could find that damn essay. 

I was able to find this passage from his autobiography, which appears to be a shorter version of it:

https://books.google.com/books?id=uEtgwG7gGw4C&pg=PT39&lpg=PT39&dq=roger+ebert+"cultural+catholic"&source=bl&ots=VOBwLILpc_&sig=Xg3Z7QzyGSaHXGsWuSfcZXtAEM0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj35tjRzoXOAhUE2oMKHZ49C3UQ6AEIUzAI#v=onepage&q=roger ebert "cultural catholic"&f=false