In response to Professor Ryan Cragun’s Letter to the Editor below, The Minaret would like to expound upon our editorial last week and answer some of the questions raised by the letter and also by other comments.
The Minaret enjoyed the film and its overall thought-provoking themes that were touched upon in the discussion following the film. Professor Gary Luter talked about the theatrics of the film and compared it to Broadway play. This was needed just to put everything into context and to bring light on how certain characters needed to play certain roles to fulfill those contexts.
Doubt is definitely the main theme. Whether it was the faith or the decisions made in the films that were doubted, doubts absolutely needed to be discussed. The statistic that 50 percent of Christians have doubts definitely shows the importance of doubts in anyone’s faith, values or spirituality. The number is definitely high and is probably a little higher.
Homosexuality was indeed a theme in the movie, whether big or small we will leave that up to the individual viewer. The amount of discussion taken up by this particular theme seemed to be too much for the purposes of strengthening someone’s faith, values and spirituality. All themes should have been given equal time and analyzed in the same way in order to foster a well-rounded guide.
Statistics in terms of any discussion could be important and they definitely put the themes in context. In terms of spirituality, faith and values, statistics only play part of the role in really seeing how each has an effect on a person.
When The Minaret suggested someone to “fight for the church” we didn’t mean to fight for the misbehavior of priests, but rather to be there to facilitate a discussion which would have concurred with the statistics perhaps and hopefully would have presented the church’s view of the movie.
We can’t say that they do not deserve a place on the stage, after all, the movie is set in the church and all themes surrounded it. No, the church does not deny it’s members doubt, sometimes this doubt is what causes a person to strengthen their faith after a period of time.
Of course the church has not denied the scandals that have occurred but maybe they can shed light on why they think it happened from their perspective and how they are working to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Maybe to also show their view on doubts and why they believe doubts occur.
In conclusion, The Minaret finds it hard to say that “the assumption that every issue has two sides to it,” is one of the many problems that is plaguing journalism. A journalist’s job is to get all sides of a story.
The Minaret cannot say, however, that we have done everything we could to get all sides for every story we have published. And not getting all sides is what is plaguing journalism today.
Leave a Reply