Phantom Part II

Here's a link to the post Phantom Part I



In the last post about the Phantom movie, I setup the plot of the movie. ***Spoilers Alert!!!*** In this post I would like to talk about a line that David Duchovny's character, Bruni, said. That character was in charge of the Phantom device that fooled enemy ships (and Soviet ones too) into misidentifying the Phantom-carrier ship as some other ship due to the Phantom's sonic emissions.

***Spoilers Alert!!!*** Really, Bruni was trying to use the submarine's nuclear missile to start a nuclear war between China and the US (for the USSR to win the world). But, he needed the captain's and political officer's launch keys and some codes. The captain, let's just say, resisted a little.

When Bruni eventually won over the captain and violently took the key that was on a chain around the captain's neck, he saw a cross there too. Bruni said, "You really think religious icons are gonna save you?"

In the last post, I mentioned that the Sacrament of Reconciliation, or confession, was an encounter with Christ via the priest (in persona Christi) to sacramentally wipe the sin away from the penitent (the one going to confession). There was real grace in the sacrament, as long as the person accepted it, to be used in effecting change in the penitent to, if you will, save him from sins. (This grace is given by Christ to the Church.)

However, religious icons, or "sacramentals" are not revealed to effect the person in the same way as sacraments. Sacramentals like crosses, rosaries, scapulars, other religious art, or religious clothing do not in themselves effect any change in anyone. They are simply aids for Christians to enter more profoundly into prayer or remembrance of sacred things, people, or events.

So, Bruni was right in that religious icons do not save anyone, but it is Christ alone through His Bride the Church (sacramental graces) who saves.