From:  (Steven Carr)
Newsgroups: uk.religion.christian
Subject: The Tablet and Persecution of Christians
Date: Sat, 17 Apr 1999 09:43:28 GMT

The Tablet, a Catholic weekly, has an interesting review of 'The
Easter Story-Keepers', a cartoon targeted at children and 'Crossing
Rome' with presenter Paul Heiney.

'devout parents may have encouraged their children to watch The Easter
Story Keepers which had immediately preceded Crossing Rome on the same
channel. the Story keepers is an animated adventure of a group of
Christian children in Rome in AD 64.....

One of the things that jarred was the catacombs. Not only does The
Easter Story Keepers locate them in the centre of the city, but has
Christians taking refuge therein. As Father Lawlor pointed out to
Heiney, however, the first Christian catacomb burials are not until
the second century: pagan ones are much earlier. As public places
their existence was well known to the Roman authorities.

Perhaps I am being pernickety, but why, even in a children's
programme, do the producers have to massage the facts? Paul Heiney was
not above doing the same himself, on behalf of adults. We had Peter
dying on a cross, upside down, as if this were an undoubted fact.
Historians know, he went on, that thousands of Christians died in the
Colosseum, though they have yet to find the evidence. You would have
thought that the persecutuion of Christians was a continuous
occurrence, rather than an occasional, and usually localised, hazard.'


Is it right to massage the facts and then broadcast them to children
as reality?

I should point out that it is beyond all doubt that not one Christian
died in the Colosseum during the reign of Nero.
 
Steven Carr

http://wwww.bowness.demon.co.uk/