|
AN ARTICLE HOSTED BY IMPREGNORIUM.NET OMEN OF EVIL BIRTH - DATE 666 APPROACHES FOR pregnant women dreading giving birth on the sixth day of the sixth month of the sixth year there is no need to "heed the omen", according to one of the Catholic Church's leading Australian scholars. With the worldwide release of a remake of the classic 1976 chiller The Omen on June 6 or 06/06/06 – representing 666, the supposed Number of the Beast (or Satan) – the movie's publicity machine has created an international buzz about the fateful date. In the original film, Antichrist Damien had a 666 birthmark and arrived at 6am on the sixth day of the sixth month. The remake's multimillion-dollar advertising campaign slogan is "heed the omen". Reports in overseas press suggest the prospect of giving birth on June 6 has prompted talk of spawning devil children on Armageddon Day, with many pregnant women who are due to give birth around that time ruling out the name Damien if the baby is a boy and others planning inducements to avoid having their child on the day.
But Richard Leonard, a Jesuit
priest and the director of the Australian Catholic Film Office, has
urged parents who have a son born on June 6 to defy superstition and
christen their child Damien if they wish.
Dr Leonard, who spent the past few weeks giving lectures on a Catholic response to The Da Vinci Code before turning his attention to the forthcoming release of The Omen, said that while the film had seen the name become associated with the Antichrist, the moniker also had some very righteous, holy figureheads. "There were several saints called Damien and (boys born on June 6) could well follow in their light. So I would advise parents that they should be very happy to have their baby on that day and to call him Damien," he said. "To be seduced into (not calling your child Damien) is to buy into a false superstition. It is simply a horror film which trades on evil taking us over. "But we believe, in the Christian faith, that good and love is a stronger force than evil. "The release date is exploitative considering there are vulnerable people who could get caught up in it and be upset." Dr Leonard's sentiments were echoed by the Roman Catholic Church's leading international adviser on film. Father Peter Malone, from the World Catholic Association for Communication, said the church was not opposed to films suggesting the incarnation of the Devil and said he recalled that the first version had been "pretty good". "Unbelievers will see it as just another horror film," he told The Times in London. "Believers will say, `yes, we know that already'. It is the lapsed Catholics who will be truly terrified." WA private hospitals, which unlike public hospitals offer bookings for elective caesareans, would not say if pregnant women due to give birth on June 6 were steering away from booking caesareans on that day. The film's director, John Moore, said he wanted to remake The Omen because he thought it relevant to today. "There has never been a more salient time to remind people that evil is neither a concept nor a theory – it has a human face," he said. "In just the past four years alone, the world has been hit with devastating events – political, natural and man-made. One can't help but notice a certain momentum."
DEVIL IN DETAIL It is such an infamous number there is a word for the fear of it: hexakosioihexekonta- hexaphobia. Some argue that 666 is a code that provides a way to identify the Antichrist. Schemes have been devised giving letters numerical values to prove their case. The best known has A as 100, B as 101 and so on. With this code, the name Hitler adds up to, you guessed it, 666. In Chinese, the number 666 is considered to be extremely lucky and literally means triple happiness.
|
|
|
