The following are comments I wrote on the YouTube video, Silence – The Deconstruction of Faith, a great video essay, itself, where I lay out my frustrations with the film. I have recorded them here for posterity and access.
This film was frustrating for its lack of biblical knowledge that would be directly relevant to the moral choices.
Christian martyrs don’t “die for their priests” they stand firm because Christ Himself told us to take up our Cross and follow Him, and Christ Himself also said “he who denies me before men I will also deny before the Father.”
This film displays a lack of respect for the material and the real, recorded lives of Christian martyrs who gave and give their lives still to follow Christ and love their neighbor.
See the Jesus Freaks books for modern tellings of both past and present martyrs, young and old.
Some questioned if the choice was literally a life and death choice for Christians,
@conan263 See the book of Matthew ch 10 the context makes it clear it’s literally a life and death choice. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+10&version=ESV
And there were concerns that taking such a strong position was a sort of flaunting,
@conan263 Show off, flaunt, no. That’s the problem with the film, it’s based on a book, a work of fiction, rather than the source material of both, both historical records of martyrs and the Christian Bible. Scorsese and the book have an agenda, a message they wanted to deliver. They accomplished that at the sacrifice of truth.