What Hath the Church Rot?

Distinguished film producer Antony Thomas released two documentaries this year, both of which take on controversial religious themes with surprising honesty and candor.

Thomas’s HBO documentary Questioning Darwin not only asks whether Darwin’s beliefs hold up scientifically, but it also examines how evolutionists and creationists today treat the question of death and suffering.1 As his pattern has been in past films, Thomas lets both sides speak for themselves, without out-of-context editing.

With Secrets of the Vatican (appearing on PBS television), Thomas does not shrink from exposing the corruption within the Roman Catholic Church.2 (He used the word rot in an interview with Answers magazine.) Thomas’s film draws attention to the moral lapses (mostly pedophilia) and serious crimes (mostly financial) that still plague the Vatican.

Occasionally a contemporary documentary succeeds in shedding light on religious issues. In the end, the hope is that viewers of both documentaries will turn to and rely upon Scripture for the ultimate answers to these difficult topics.