Reviews:
How Catholic is the movie? Very. But it is not Catholic in a way that excludes Protestants. The film’s Marian devotion is a devotion to the Lord through His mother. (Scrawled on my notepad: “This is what the beauty of holiness would look like.”) She is the counterpart to Lucifer: the faithful servant versus the faithless one. In recent years there has been much discussion of “evangelicals and Catholics together.” There has been joint political action and joint theological reflection. In the popular culture, this movie appears to be the most significant moment of such togetherness yet. Other Christians need not feel excluded by the movie, but it is among these two groups that its most enthusiastic fans have already been found. If the film is truly a “success,” one way it will be a success is in drawing evangelicals and Catholics together where they should most be together: in Christ. Both groups should pray that they are drawn, together, to Christ, by Christ.
From World Magazine (evangelical)
One issue that has been almost completely ignored in the midst of the controversies surrounding the movie is that some Protestant Christians have been at best uncomfortable with visual depictions of Christ in principle, graphic or not. Far fewer Christians today share that concern, yet the dangers of blasphemy, idolatry, or simple misinterpretation are certainly worth considering. To the degree that Christians treat this movie as a definitive or authoritative “incarnation” of the gospel, these issues can become especially troubling.
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