If forced to choose I would have taken Crowe over Obama but who am I to judge?

So the president got his promo and also a rosary, which he promptly ditched to apostate Pelosi, who was denied a photo op with a pope during the pontificate of Benedict XVI. Dare we wonder if that regifted rosary is the very one that the Bishop of Rome tore from the cold fingers of his dead confessor?

But enough of politics and on to the cinema! Have you seen or heard of the newly released movie, Noah, starring Russell Crowe?

By the way, do you know the name of the wife of Noah? If you responded “Joan of Arc” then you are among millions of biblically illiterate Americans who think that this is the case.

As ridiculous as this may seem, so much more ridiculous is the new movie that bears the title Noah. Yes, there is an ark and a flood, but similarities to the biblical account end there. No surprise, given that the director intended “the least biblical film ever made.” Mission accomplished!

Noah is a religious movie but it has nothing to do with true religion. It espouses the religion of Radical Ecology with elements of New Age nonsense woven in. One of the first hints of the ecological theme occurs early in the movie, when Noah criticizes his son for picking a small flower. (Sorry Joan, no roses for Mother’s Day!) Never mind the fact that later, Noah will strip an entire forest bare of its timber for the sake of building the ark, which is just fine. It smacks of the modern incongruity that while ecological “experts” burn fuel and punch carbon holes in the atmosphere by jet-setting around the world with their “Global Change” message, the rest of us are expected to pedal bikes and drive electric cars.

The next memorable incident supporting the ecological theme involves a wild dog which is dying from an arrow shot by “men” who are hungry and hunting for meat. Whenever the word “men” is uttered in the movie it is said with obvious contempt. Men are portrayed as filthy rotten meat eaters who ravage the soil and murder innocent animals for food. Noah removes the arrow from the stricken animal and then murders the three hunters—PETA justice! At this point in the movie I began to gnaw away on a thick chunk of beef jerky, while the vegans in the theater munched down on buttered popcorn.

But the flower and dog incident are just the warm-up for the big ecological push. Noah learns through some psycho-dream that he is to build a huge ark, the purpose of which is to save all the innocents on the planet. The “innocents” include all living creatures EXCEPT for mankind. Even pesky insects are worthy of preserving, but not man. For the terrible sin of “men” is their treatment of nature, for which reason they must be destroyed in their entirety as a race. Noah and his family alone are preserved from the flood for the sole purpose of building the ark and caring for the animals on board. Once the waters recede and the animals are restored to dry land, Noah and his family are intended to die off, without any offspring. Never mind what the lesson of Friday Mass of Easter week reads: that the eight souls saved in the Ark prefigure baptism.

So committed is Noah to the extinction of the human race and the end of his own family line that he takes murderous measures to insure it. Unlike the biblical narrative, the sons of Noah have no wives in this movie fiction. One woman is allowed onboard the ark but only because she has a stab wound in her womb, which has seemingly rendered her barren. Noah isolates his sons from opportunities to find mates and when one of his sons is racing toward the ark with a woman partner in tow, Noah leaves her behind to die, her ankle fittingly locked in the jaws of an animal trap set by “men.” When it becomes known that the womb-wounded woman on board has, in fact, conceived by his son, Noah is resolved to murder his grandchild at the instant of its birth, should it happen to be a girl. Turns out she has twins: two girls. Oh boy—oh girls!

Typical of a certain genre of modern productions, this movie flirts with many gnostic-like elements. Rather than any references to God, Noah frequently makes reference to “the Creator,” which is more likely some sort of demiurge than the one true God.

In one flashback scene to the Garden of Eden, the first human beings appear as luminous bodies without skin, until such time that they partake of the forbidden fruit. It appears that their sin was the violence of plucking the fruit as an act against nature, and their punishment was to become encased in mortal flesh. There is a cameo of the serpent, which sheds its skin in the garden. That snake skin resurfaces throughout the movie, passed from one generation to the next, as a sort of talisman for magic and blessings. Equally bizarre are “the Watchers,” which are rock encrusted fallen angels, cast from heaven for helping mankind after the fall but redeemed in the end for helping Noah construct the ark.

The sad consequence of this picture is that many movie watchers who are ignorant of biblical history will assume that this entertaining fiction is the real deal. It will reinforce in them the doctrine of radical ecologists: nature is good, men are evil. In a similar way, modernists have misled uneducated Catholics, who are ignorant of tradition: new order is good, ancient tradition is evil. But the pseudo ark constructed by these modernists is taking on water and listing badly. We can only pray that many more sincere souls will see their peril and climb aboard the traditional ark of the Church, while time remains...