Quote from: Ratisbonne

Do you notice any resemblance?

Well, you never see Pope Benedict and Emperor Palpatine together

The anti-humanistic attitude in the Jedi Council is the same kind seen among many pre-Vatican II Catholics

Is there any other party, besides the Emperor and Anakin himself, who deserves responsibility for creating Darth Vader?  Well, I think, honestly, a large portion of the blame falls on the Jedi Council.  You see, the Jedi Council, as depicted in the prequels, is horribly – you could say – conservative.  They are incredibly stiff, rigid, and, frankly, quite boring.  We hoped the Jedi Order would be an awe-inspiring congregation of mystical legionaries, like the Knights of the Round Table, but instead, we get a bunch of disappointing, spiritless, affectionless dullards.  The cause of this, I believe, is their denial of the goodness of human emotion, which in their understanding, leads to the dark side; thus, they condemn all desire, all anger, fear, and even love for other human beings.  This mindset cannot be lived without having one’s emotions eventually erupt forth in treason, for nature rebels when ill-treated.  The passions must be ordered to reason, not repressed by reason, as St. Thomas would say.  Hypocrisy commonly results from this repression, or else just plain and honest apostasy.

For example, Anakin’s emotional attachment to Padme (and his mother, for that matter) is natural but tragically never dealt with properly by the Jedi Council, who teach that such emotions have no business whatsoever in the life of a Jedi.  That is why they almost do not allow Anakin to be trained, for he has an emotional bond to his mother.  This badly handled psychological treatment would be the Jedi’s undoing.

They focus too much on the discipline and the Force and not enough on the human person. The Sith, on the other hand, over-emphasizes the self, seeking only to gratify human appetite without any heed to higher things.  Both lack balance, both of them – Jedi and Sith.  The Force, by itself, is not enough.  The Force, which is symbolically divine, needs to be incarnated harmoniously with the human person … not replacing the human person.  This is what is meant by the “balance of the Force,” which Anakin is destined to bring about by his having been conceived in a human mother but not by a human father.

Before the second Vatican Council, the Church was like this decrepit Jedi Council: rigid, emotionless, and in serious need of reform.  Everyone knew it, even Pius XII.  They had dwelt on the divinity of Christ for too long and needed to regain that sense of humanism that the modern world was thirsting for after the inhumanity of World War II.  But they were a little late, since secular humanism, symbolized by Palpatine, had already waged an impressive campaign.

Owen and Beru Lars (Luke’s Uncle and Aunt) are Disenchanted and/or Traditionalist Catholics

As many Catholics who were scandalized by the fallout of Vatican II and bitter at the pontificate of Paul VI, so are Owen and Beru Lars extremely (and overly?) worrisome about the Empire as well as about Obi-Wan Kenobi, whom they no doubt see as (at least) the partial cause of Darth Vader.  They are the kind of people who, while hating the great evils in society, nonetheless try and hold people back from fixing them out of a small-minded, misplaced paranoia.  The Lars hold Luke back from learning the Jedi ways, just as many extremist Catholics hold back others from learning what their faith actually says.

Where are these photos of Doctor Evil coming from?  Does he post them himself?