EWTN News portal reports on the upcoming theatrical release of Daniel and the Fiery Furnace, a crowdfunded biblical drama produced by EKKL Entertainment. The article details the casting of Coptic Orthodox actor Mena Massoud as Daniel and Jewish actor Elijah Alexander as Nebuchadnezzar, the directors’ emphasis on “scriptural accuracy” mixed with creative gap-filling, and the film’s therapeutic theme of God “refining” rather than “testing.” This production epitomizes the conciliar sect’s reduction of divine revelation to mere inspirational storytelling, stripped of the Social Kingship of Christ and the necessity of the Catholic Church for salvation.
The Commodification of Scripture: Faith as Marketable Content
The cited article reveals the thoroughly naturalistic genesis of this spectacle: a $1.2 million crowdfunding campaign by laymen Matthew and Daniel Kooman, operating under the commercial entity “EKKL Entertainment.” There is no mandate from legitimate ecclesiastical authority, no nihil obstat, no imprimatur—only the verdict of the marketplace. The directors admit to taking “creative liberties” and “filling in some of the gaps that we don’t know,” treating the inspired Word of God as raw material for a screenwriter’s imagination. This is the Modernist error condemned by St. Pius X in Lamentabili Sane Exitu: the notion that “The Evangelists and Christians of the second and third generations invented the Gospel parables to explain the limited success of Christ’s mission” (Prop. 13) and that “In many narratives, the Evangelists did not report what actually happened, but what they thought would be of greater benefit to the recipients, even if it were false” (Prop. 14). When the Kooman brothers boast of “relying on Scripture” while simultaneously inventing backstories, they usurp the Magisterium’s exclusive right to interpret the Deposit of Faith. “The Magisterium of the Church cannot, even by dogmatic definitions, determine the proper sense of Holy Scripture” (Prop. 4) is the Modernist heresy; here, it is inverted: private entrepreneurs claim the right to expand Scripture for cinematic effect.
Indifferentism on Screen: The Coptic, the Jew, and the Generic ‘Yahweh’
The casting is a deliberate icon of the conciliar sect’s ecumenical apostasy. Mena Massoud, a Coptic Orthodox (schismatic, rejecting the Council of Chalcedon and the Primacy of Peter), portrays the Prophet Daniel. Elijah Alexander, a Jew (rejecting the Messiah entirely), portrays the pagan king Nebuchadnezzar. The article highlights their personal religious backgrounds as qualifications, celebrating a “faith-based project” that transcends doctrinal boundaries. This is the living embodiment of the errors condemned in the Syllabus of Errors: “Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true” (Error 15); “Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation” (Error 16); “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion” (Error 18). The film’s climax—Massoud’s Daniel declaring “We still choose Yahweh”—reduces the actus fidei to a generic monotheistic option, obliterating the necessity of explicit faith in Jesus Christ (Acts 4:12: “There is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved”) and the absolute requirement of Baptism of water (John 3:5). The God of this film is not the Triune God of the Catholic Church, but a vague “Almighty” amenable to all “people of faith.”
Therapeutic Deism: The ‘Refining’ Heresy vs. the Theology of the Cross
The film’s advertised thematic core—“God does not put you through the fire to test you, he puts you through it to refine you”—exposes a Pelagianized, therapeutic deism. Massoud explicates: “God is throwing things at you… to help you become a better, stronger version of yourself.” This is the religion of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, the de facto creed of the post-conciliar world. It denies the doctrina crucis: that suffering is primarily a participation in Christ’s Redemptive Sacrifice, a satisfaction for sin (temporal punishment), and a means of co-redemption for the salvation of souls. It ignores the reality of Hell, the justice of God punishing sin, and the necessity of the state of sanctifying grace. St. Pius X condemned the Modernist reduction of dogma to “practical function, i.e., as binding in action, rather than as principles of belief” (Lamentabili, Prop. 26). Here, the “fiery furnace” becomes a metaphor for self-actualization. The Quas Primas encyclical teaches that Christ’s Kingdom demands “that men, redeemed by His most precious Blood, have been subjected, as it were, to new laws of His reign… let Him reign in the mind… in the will… in the heart… in the body.” This film offers a kingdom of self-improvement, not the Regnum Christi.
Silence on the Social Kingship: The Secularist Fruit of Vatican II
The most damning accusation is what the article omits entirely. There is no mention of the Social Kingship of Christ over nations, proclaimed by Pius XI in Quas Primas: “His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” There is no mention of the duty of the State to “publicly honor Christ and obey Him,” or that “the civil law prevails” over ecclesiastical law is an error (Syllabus, Error 42). Nebuchadnezzar is presented not as a type of the State that must submit to God’s Law, but as a foil for Daniel’s “personal relationship.” The film reinforces the separation of Church and State (Syllabus, Error 55: “The Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church”) by privatizing faith. The “faith-based movie” genre itself is a capitulation to laicism: religion relegated to the entertainment sector, a hobby for consenting adults, rather than the lex credendi governing the lex vivendi of society.
EWTN: The Propaganda Arm of the Neo-Church
That EWTN News—flagship media of the conciliar sect—uncritically promotes this Protestantized product confirms its role as a paramasonic structure manufacturing consent for the abomination of desolation. The reporter, Francesca Pollio Fenton, frames the film as a triumph of “faith-based entertainment,” using the language of Hollywood box-office analysis rather than theological discernment. This is the novus ordo of media: Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex filmandi—the law of filming dictates the law of believing. By validating a production that employs schismatics and infidels to act out Sacred History while stripping it of Catholic dogma, EWTN commits a grave scandal, confirming the faithful in the heresy of religious indifferentism and the illusion that salvation is found in “standing for your faith” generically understood.
Conclusion: A Furnace of Falsehood
Daniel and the Fiery Furnace
is not a catechetical tool; it is a cultural weapon of the Antichurch. It replaces the Unbloody Sacrifice of Calvary with a cinematic spectacle; the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church with a generic “faith community”; the Kingship of Christ with the sovereignty of the autonomous self. As Pius XI warned in Quas Primas: “When God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” This film, born of crowdfunding, acted by non-Catholics, marketed by the neo-church’s media, and centered on therapeutic self-refinement, is a perfect artifact of that destruction. Non possumus. True Catholics must reject this celluloid idolatry and cleave to the immutable Tradition where alone the true Daniel—Christ the King—reigns.
Source:
‘Daniel and the Fiery Furnace’ brings biblical story of faith under pressure to big screen (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 15.09.2026