heaven, cannot be proven wrong and if they return to heaven, a contradiction that will end the world will occur.
Another controversial element in the film is that the female protagonist is said to be the new Sion, the bearer of an important child conceived immaculately û a reference to the Immaculate Conception of Mary, who was born without original sin û and God is a woman (Greeley 22; Stevens 1235). God as a woman, though a popular concept for many feminists, is not something with which many Christians are particularly comfortable.
Blake (20) said that Dogma may be unique in its unorthodox approach to Catholic dogma, but it is nevertheless an inherently and profoundly spiritual film because it evokes an image of a loving God who cares enough about his creation to save the world from destruction. This is, says Blake (20), "a film of ideas, more particularly of theological ideas, and that is always welcome."
Tom Carson (52) says that in Dogma, director Kevin Smith challenges his viewers to accept certain distortions of traditional Christian beliefs. For example, Chris Rock appears as a thirteenth apostle, a person who has been mysteriously eliminated from the Bible, who insists that Jesus was Black. When the audience meets God, as noted above, they meet a silent woman who is prone to turning cartwheels and who occasionally disappears from heaven in pursuit of a little fun. Whether or not one accepts this particular version of Catholic tradition, Carson (52) finds a great deal of value in the film. For example, when the Angel Metatron describes having to tell a frightened 12 year-old boy that he was the Messiah and when Chris Rock's thirteenth apostle recalls that Jesus loved being human, the movie makes it clear that Jesus Christ was both the son of God and the son of man.
This particular approach to describing the life of the Roman Catholic Church, says Carson (52), was clearly going to be received poo...