From our "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Rome" file

Somebody sank *millions* into creating this piece of shit. But there's no anti-Catholicism in America or anything. Tim Cavanaugh said so.

My recommendation: Hollywood vs. America by Michael Medved. Among the lies under consideration in his book is that lie that "We just give the people what they want" and the lie "we just reflect culture. We don't shape it."

Very few people will go see this movie, just as very few people (relatively speaking) read "Hitler's Pope". But the lies slowly seep into public consciousness anyway. The Church is a dark and sinister place with creepy occult doings going on. Educated people won't fall for this. But many consumers of mass culture aren't educated or, worse, are educated by.... mass culture. It not so much like shooting somebody as it is by putting small traces of lead or mercury in the water. The movie has millions invested in it even though so many similar movies have bombed. Why? Because the movie is made to please fellow ideologues in Hollywood, not to "give the people what they want." The "artistic community" is notoriously as pliant to peer opinion as it is contemptuous of the hoi polloi.

Derbyshire, I think, has a point: there is simply "a seething, foam-flecked detestation that large sections of U.S. society feel towards Christians and their faith." From an earthly perspective, that's bad, of course. But from another perspective, it's normal Christian life. We can't say we weren't warned.