COMMENTARY: NBC Miniseries Deserves Eternal Damnation

c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) NBC-TV has combined two sure-fire concepts in popular culture _ the miniseries and the end of the world _ in a drama entitled “Revelations” from the Bible book of Revelation. We are told that it is “about a nun and a scientist’s search for signs that Armageddon is at […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) NBC-TV has combined two sure-fire concepts in popular culture _ the miniseries and the end of the world _ in a drama entitled “Revelations” from the Bible book of Revelation. We are told that it is “about a nun and a scientist’s search for signs that Armageddon is at hand.”

The ads for this show even use a Latin phrase _ Finis omnium imminet, roughly translated as “the end of everything is at hand” _ to add a touch of solemnity to a drama that is further described as a “breakthrough faith-based thriller.”


You can’t make this stuff up except that somebody did make this stuff up. This kind of religious-tinged hokum suggests that, artistically speaking, the miniseries as a form is the end of the world.

Poet Robert Frost once famously posed the question _ How will the world end, in fire or ice? _ that still fascinates Americans who relish apocalyptic judgment in everything from the wildly popular Left Behind books to the scenarios _ take your pick _ of being found out and fried or frozen as a wrathful God lowers the curtain of the long running Earthbound Follies.

The end of the world is, of course, too important a subject to be treated in such a superficial manner. The spiritual meaning of this Scriptural metaphor is not intended to set off our fears about losing everything but to awaken our wonder at all that we possess.

Despite high-level prophecies and low-grade entertainments, the end of the world is not even a future event. In fact, the world comes to an end for all of us every day in one way or another.

The world comes to an end whenever we see past its surfaces into its true depth. We read of seers and of those who claim to have visions and messages from another world. But seers are simply those who are able to see and visions are simply what they see in this world spread out about them.

These are not experiences reserved for the supposedly saintly who preach Flee, the end is near. They are commonplace experiences for ordinary people who are not preoccupied with the last things but with the next things. They don’t look at life as a farewell appearance as much as a new creation that they want to hand on to their children and grandchildren.

The world came to an end on that hazy July night in 1969 when men first landed on the moon and we, in their company thanks to television, were able to see earthrise for the first time.


An old world came to an end as we could see for ourselves that the Earth is not separate from but is in the heavens. Seeing the unity in the universe we rediscovered the unity of human personality. What ended that night was an outdated world in which all creation _ Earth and heaven, body and soul _ was divided and humans became whole again.

The old world comes to an end whenever we look into the eyes of the very old who have seen so much of love and loss or into the eyes of the very young who set out not knowing how much they will taste of both of these as they take their first steps into the profound mystery of life itself.

The old world ends whenever people fall in love. While it is said that love is blind, it actually allows us to see more of each other, transforming us and our sense of time and place.

An old world ends when a great pope dies and a whole configuration of power, influence and purpose dissolves to make way for another. An old world also ends when we watch a middle-aged Prince of Wales receive a religious blessing with the middle-aged woman he has just married in a civil ceremony. It is the great symbol of doing the best we can and is as poignant as autumn in its revelation not of their highness but of their ordinariness and of how much they need good luck and fair weather just like the rest of us.

The mystical poet William Blake urges us to Cleanse the doors of perception and see the world as it is, Infinite. We are not standing at Armageddon but at the entrance to the mystery of our existence. The “breakthrough faith-based” Revelations can’t teach ordinary people anything about the end of the world. They experience it with love rather than terror every day.

LF/JL END RNS

(Eugene Cullen Kennedy, a longtime observer of the Roman Catholic Church, is professor emeritus of psychology at Loyola University in Chicago and author of “Cardinal Bernardin’s Stations of the Cross,” published by St. Martin’s Press.)


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