The Dark Knight of the Soul

So tonight D-House watched The Dark Knight (it arrived in the mail from Amazon two days ago. obviously i pre-ordered it two months ago.) for our community activity and I am jazzed up about it as I was several months ago after the midnight activity. After watching it, we had an insightful and opinionated discussion after the movie-what other superhero movie does that? I have been thinking for a long time about how The Dark Knight could be used for catechesis and I came up with 3 things.

1) LECTURE: "I have seen now what I would have to become to stop men like him."-Bruce Wayne/Batman. A major theme of The Dark Knight is escalation. Batman had stopped organized crime as it existed for decades and they in turn resort to a man who calls himself an "agent of chaos". The Joker has no code or motive except wanting to watch the burn and kill for kicks. Can/Should Batman stop him by killing the Joker which seems to be the only way possible? It's a discussion of Virtue Ethics. Can we resort to the lowest mean possible in order to achieve a "greater good"? An example of this would be political campaigns that do anything possible to get people to vote not the other guy or another would bombing abortion clinics to stop abortionists.

2) ACTIVITY: The Prisoner's Dilemma. I had my 8th grade CRE act this one out. Two boats. One with citizens and the other criminals. Bombs on both boats. Blow the other up or both blow up. See what happens when people decide. You can mix it up by adding different incentives/punishments for each side like ($1 million for the criminals if they go through with it, jail time for the citizens if they do). Or you can put the bomb on the boat of whoever decides to blow up the other-Tricky tricky.

3) PERSONAL: Who doesn't want to be Batman? Seriously. He's selfless, badass, brilliant, jacked, has the best toys and spiritual director in Alfred, rich, etc. etc. He sacrifices himself and his own desires for Gotham. What a hero.

And always remember, "the night is darkest just before the dawn. I promise you the dawn is coming" and "Why so serious?"