Catholic-ometer: 2.5 of 5
Enjoyability: 3 of 5
You really have to be careful with documentaries; especially ones that rely on a narrator, background music and jump-cuts, because nearly every documentary that does this has an axe to grind, and is trying to get some point across.
That most definitely holds true for this documentary, so the only question that we really need to ask ourselves is this; is that axe aimed at the enemies of Catholicism, or at its neck?
The question of the quality of the documentary may not even come up. For the record, though, it's made about as well as any documentary, which is to say that it left very little impression on me, primarily because about eighty percent of the talking was done by the narrator, telling us what the pope believes, instead of letting us hear his own words. That was a warning sign for me, though it wasn't obvious in the early parts of the film.
You see, there's a trick that documentary-makers like to use. Before they start giving you their message, they start off with information about history, or the person's childhood and rise to fame, which is usually accurate enough. They do this because they want to convince the viewer of their trustworthiness.
However, once the set-up of the person's life is established, the documentary's message rears its ugly head. Using, I think, some of the heaviest bias I've ever seen on film, this documentary tries to establish the pope as harmless and inoffensive. In short, as someone bland, who just wants to go back to his library and leave the rest of us alone.
Maybe I'm being too hard on them, and maybe this isn't the message they intended to give, but I have a hard time believing that all of this documentary's tremendous missteps could have been accidental. They lay huge stress on how the pope is accepting the loss of the church's holdings into his coat of arms, how he's a prolific writer, how he preaches peace and truth, etc... none of which means a thing according to the gospel. Accepting the loss of holdings is economic, not spiritual, and being a great writer is only important if you use that to serve God. However, this movie makes no mention of what kinds of things the pope wrote about; it drops a couple names and summaries, but no specific themes in his work, which, I think, is a massive disservice to both the pope and the truth.
As for "peace" and "truth," neither of those words can be assumed to be truly good or Catholic anymore.
On the subject of peace, I suggest reading John 14:27, followed by Matthew 10:34. Jesus came to Earth to preach peace, but not worldly peace. He came to bring the peace of God, and as it happens, there's already an established definition for that, found in the Summa Theologica; Second part of Part 2, Question 29, Article 1.
"There can be concord in evil between wicked men. But 'there is no peace to the wicked' (Isaiah 48:22). Therefore peace is not the same as concord."
The trend in the modern world is to pretend that all non-war is neccesarily peace, when, in fact, worldly peace often leads to a lack of God's peace. Because of this, pursuing agreements with other human beings, and ignoring the truths of the faith is the same thing as buying into a lie, which leads me to the other point.
Truth. Of course, a good Catholic recognizes truth as an absolute value, set in place by God, but that's not the way the world sees it, and we need to be careful to point this out, whenever we use the word in Catholic circles. This movie fails to do this; to the point of making it look deliberate; as though some attempt to deconstruct the church is involved here.
There are three main examples of this. In one instance, the narrator says that the pope needed to guide "traditionalists" to implement the teachings of the second vatican council, almost as though it was only "traditionalists" who ever failed to implement those teachings, or who rebelled against them openly. Furthermore, in the modern, American church, the word "traditionalist" has come to merely mean "a Catholic who honors the traditional values of the faith," in which case, no one can truly be Catholic without being, in some manner, a traditionalist. Comments like these give cover to heretics who want to transform the church into their own kind of worship, which has nothing to do with Catholic Church teaching.
The second example of this was when the pope's books were being described, and although the film is loath to actually mention anything contained in those magnificent books, it does mention that one of his books was very popular among Lutherans. Lutherans! Why would any Catholic care about that? The Catholic Church has no stake in the Lutheran religion, beyond a blanket duty to convert as many of them as possible, so that they can be led to the truths of the Catholic Church. Why would anyone want a Catholic pope to be loved by Lutherans? For that matter, what does the pope's popularity among protestant groups have to do with anything? Isn't the point how well and how far he preaches the true word of God?
The third example of this kind of thing is worse, however, because it pertains to the church's relations with Islam. The narrator informs us that the pope quoted a bizantine emperor, infuriating muslims, but doesn't mention what he said, or what message he was trying to get across. However, the narrator does go over, in excruciating detail, how the pope went to a muslim nation shortly afterwards, and prayed to God, while standing in a muslim temple. It even has the gall to use the term "universal God" in these surroundings, as if trying to convince us that, in the end, all of our religions are the same; something which any faithful Catholic knows is absolutely false.
These kinds of things gave me the distinct impression that modernist, humanist-minded individuals, who want to claim that the church is just one of many valid religions, have made a documentary about the pope's life, putting their own spin on it, to try to mislead the flock. It's subtle enough that I can't prove anything, which is why it's not rated lower, but this is not something faithful Catholics will get anything out of.
For the record, Jesus came to Earth in a time when peace came in the form of the dreaded "Pax Romana;" the iron-fisted roman oppression that eventually served as the vehicle for his own death, and the early church fathers didn't see their religion in terms of peacemaking. They saw it as a war or competition. To quote Saint Paul; "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith."
Jesus didn't teach that worldly peace was an end unto itself, much less the ultimate end, and you will not find the word "tolerance" anywhere in the entire bible. What he did teach was that he was the way, the truth, and the life, and that no one could come to God, except through him. This is what the pope of the Catholic Church really believes, and the message that he works to spread, no matter what a fifty-five minute documentary might imply to the contrary, and you can take that to the bank.
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