Coddled kiddies

I was just sort of glossing over an article in the paper that took a dim view of letting children watch The Passion of the Christ, because the movie is violent, R-rated, etc.
I haven’t seen the movie (yet; I am very interested in doing so and probably will with a couple of Catholic friends in the next couple of weeks), but look. I studied European medieval history, American history, and Japanese history when I was in college, and I’m here to tell you that I doubt there is much in this movie that doesn’t equal what children of earlier times must have seen, heard, and lived through in their day, every day.
Children today are coddled and sheltered from the evil of the world (I speak of the vast majority into whose lives rain will never fall; the children who make the news through abuse, kidnapping, disappearance, and the like, are the exceptions that prove the rule). It is not so many years since children were exposed to war, famine, and the gory details of everyday life (eg, hunting, butchering, birth of livestock, etc.) without anyone really giving it much thought. In fact, in much of the world, conditions are still like that. We forget sometimes how little of the world is really “civilized”.
I am not convinced that our air-conditioned, tatooed and pierced children of privilege with their boom boxes, skateboards, $100 tennis shoes, and other accoutrements don’t actually NEED to be shown, once in a while, that life could be a lot different than it is. And if in the process they learn about something potentially greater than their precious little selves, all the better.
By all means prepare the children for what they are going to see. But don’t keep them from seeing it just because it’s dirty, violent, and has an R-rating.
It’s (mostly) in the Bible, after all.