Terminator, Kindergarten Cop, and Predator star Arnold Schwarzenegger made it very clear when he said there is only one perfect being and that being is God.
Schwarzenegger’s comments came in a wide-ranging interview where he discussed the Terminator franchise, Conan the Barbarian, Hollywood media slaughtering Last Action Hero due to his politics, his divorce, his relationship with his dad, his new role as an influencer, and more.
While discussing his charitable and humanitarian efforts, The Hollywood Reporter’s James Hiberd asked, “Your charity, public service and humanitarian efforts go back decades. But I’ve also read anecdotes of some horrible behavior toward women, which you’ve apologized broadly for. How are you a person who cares so much about helping people yet has also cared so little for people’s feelings in specific situations?”
Schwarzenegger replied, “I think it’s very easy to understand. We are not perfect. We try to be, but there’s only one that’s perfect — God.”
“My mouth is great, but it gets me into trouble. My brain is great — it has the will to make a better world — but sometimes I f**k up,” the seven time Mr. Olympia winner said. “I make mistakes. I behaved badly. All of those things I’ve addressed in the past. I feel bad about it.”
“But I cannot roll the clock back. I have to be careful and be wiser. I’m smarter. I’m more sensitive about other people’s feelings,” he added.
Interestingly, Schwarzenegger was then asked, “Was there anyone — an actor, director or producer — who stood up and said, “Hey, that’s not OK.” Or were people too intimidated to say anything?”
He admitted, “No one said anything. Look, the bottom line is that even though the times were different, it doesn’t matter if it was 100 years ago or today. You have to treat women with respect and you have to treat people with respect. None of it is an excuse. I should have behaved better.”
It doesn’t appear much has changed in Hollywood either. His Dark Materials actress Ruth Wilson recently spoke with The Guardian where she noted that the industry’s #MeToo shift was merely a façade rather than anything substantial.
She said, “To see the survival instinct. You realise how fickle that industry is. There’s no moral backbone. People were like, ‘We’re going to have a meeting about how badly we’ve behaved and then we’ll all be fine.’ It blew my mind.”
“It made me understand a whole swathe of human behaviour. So many people don’t really believe anything – only what makes them money,” she continued. “They’re opportunists. You see that. But it makes you sage about what you want, what’s important. Do you want to live in that world? Or would you prefer to be doing something else, like this weird 24-hour play, where you can explore things in a safe environment?”
Actor Matthew Lawrence also recently appeared on the Brotherly Love Podcast where he admitted he had a responsibility for the casting couch practices in Hollywood, “Because it is a real thing. The casting couch. We all know it’s existed. We’ve all been somewhat complacent, in a way, towards it. And I know I have a responsibility for that, and you guys do as well.”
He went on to recall, “There’s been many times in my life where I’ve been propositioned to get a huge role. I’ve lost my agency because I went to the hotel room — which I can’t believe they would send me to — of a very prominent Oscar Award-winning director who showed up in his robe, asked me to take my clothes off, and said he needed to take Polaroids of me and that — if I did X,Y, and Z — I would be the next Marvel character.”
“I didn’t do that that and my agency fired me because I left this director’s room,” he recounted. “And a lot of these stories, a lot of my other male friends have gone through with both men and women in this industry.
While Hollywood hasn’t changed, Schwarzenegger was asked, “When did you start to change, and what made you change?” He replied, “I just think as time goes on, you just become wiser. You start thinking more about other people and not just about yourself. Not just what’s fun for you, not just what makes you look ballsy.”
“Also — and this is hard to explain to someone who has never had this experience — but once you’ve been in the governor’s office for seven years, you see all the problems out there and all the hardships. It turns you from a ‘me’ person to a ‘we’ person,” he stated.
Schwarzenegger continued, “You become much more aware of what’s going on around you. And then all of a sudden when you walk away, you say, ‘I’ve got to continue with the policy stuff. We’ve got to fight for the environment. We’ve got to fight for redistricting reform.’ And to speak out about the war.”
Schwarzenegger is correct in a sense that the only perfect being is God. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man.”
It also explains, “Christ, the Son of God made man, is the Father’s one, perfect, and unsurpassable Word. In him he has said everything; there will be no other word that this one.”
The Catechism goes on to explain, “The revelation of the ineffable name ‘I Am who Am’ contains then the truth that God alone IS. The Greek Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, and following it the Church’s Tradition, understood the divine name in this sense: God is the fullness of Being and of every perfection, without origin and without end. All creatures receive all that they are and have from him; but he alone is his very being, and he is of himself everything that he is.”
Fr. Edward McIlmail, a contributor for Regnum Christi Spirituality Center also notes Mary, the Mother of God, is perfect, but explains how her perfection differs from that of her Son, “Mary is perfect in a human way, in that she was spared from original sin and never committed actual sin. Her perfection, great as it is, is still small compared with her divine Son’s. Humans can reflect God’s greatness in only a limited way.”
The Catechism also notes, “At the end of time, the Kingdom of God will come in its fullness. After the universal judgment, the righteous will reign for ever with Christ, glorified in body and soul. The universe itself will be renewed: The Church. . . will receive her perfection only in the glory of heaven, when will come the time of the renewal of all things. At that time, together with the human race, the universe itself, which is so closely related to man and which attains its destiny through him, will be perfectly re-established in Christ.”
What do you make of Schwarzenegger’s confession that God is the only truly perfect being?