Altars, Aliens, and Algorithms: The Faith Behind Spielberg’s ‘Disclosure Day’

Steven Spielberg’s upcoming film Disclosure Day is already generating headlines for its promise to raise theological questions among Christians should extraterrestrial life ever be “officially” revealed.

Perhaps the more interesting question is why anyone believes a movie would be capable of doing that in the first place.

That confidence itself tells us something about the age in which we live. It also helps to confirm any suspicion that Operation Mockingbird was and is, perhaps under a different name inside the files, both a government and Hollywood psyop mechanism.

It is also worth noting that it is debatable, at best, on whether the position of the movie is the position of the true Catholic Church, which very well could be—unbeknownst to most out there at this point in 2026—in the form of a remnant right now.

From an article on “The Christian Post”:

[Said Spielberg], “There’s a faction in the film that represents a pretty good position of why — possibly because of ontological shock, social dislocation — if this truth… were just known overnight, if the government announced, ‘Yes, we have been keeping this from you since 1947,’ that would mess up a lot of people.”

Spielberg also said the film, one of whose characters is a former Roman Catholic nun, “also takes the position of the [Catholic] Church.”

“What does this do to the fundamental beliefs that many of us have? Is God, our God, only on this planet, or is God a God for every system where there’s civilization, intelligent life and even developing life?” he said of the questions the movie will raise.

For most of the last 2000 years, a person’s understanding of reality was shaped primarily through Christendom, liturgical worship, inherited tradition, family, and direct experience. Today, however, much of modern man receives his understanding of the world through glowing screens, what this space has alternately dubbed the arena, the stage, and the cave. News, entertainment, education, politics, history, morality, and even spirituality increasingly arrive through electronically mediated narratives crafted by people who not only will we never meet, but do not in any way have our best interest at heart.

It is amazing, really, the psychosis. That reality that already exists and has for a long time should concern Christians eternally more than any hypothetical alien disclosure through a Hollywood film.

Or maybe the point is that the two are diabolically wedded at this point in history, right on the cusp of the collision between Agenda 2030 and the 2000-year anniversary of the three-year earthly mission of Our Lord. If you’ve been following my work on one “Pope Hildebrand,” maybe you see why I am so invested. Something is about to happen, whether that be next month or next year or whenever, something is going to happen, and it is a good guess that every single person alive knows it. The question is how many of us will put off what God is calling us to be under a most paralyzing poison of normalcy bias.

Saint Paul instructed believers to work out their salvation “with fear and trembling,” which means he did it as well. He did not suggest that faith was a casual pastime immune from challenges, work, and penance. He understood that the human soul requires vigilance, discipline, and continual conversion—a concept very, very different from what many churches are preaching out there today. The Christian life has always demanded effort, an effort that points not to us saving ourselves, but to us developing a real relationship with the Christ who suffered and died for us and our recklessness, selfishness, and utter annihilation of soul.

But the world Christ warned about is clearly married to such an approach to faith. Movies are no longer merely movies. Television is no longer merely television. The screen has become the primary instrument through which modern society forms memory, shapes the imagination, and establishes what people even consider believable. It has become a catechism of sorts, teaching lessons about reality long before viewers consciously realize they are being taught something most diabolical and vicious.

And yet there are so many who point the finger at Catholicism for being a man-made religion.

The spotlighted article today is worthless without all of the above as context. Don’t waste your time or soul on it otherwise.

No, this fictional film about extraterrestrials does not pose a single threat to truly devoted Christians. Christians have survived far more serious intellectual challenges than Hollywood science fiction and every other feather dropped by Operation Mockingbird. Rather, and here’s the key, Spielberg’s comments reveal a widespread assumption that beliefs themselves are easily malleable by the media, that a sufficiently compelling, colorful narrative with a spooky trailer delivered through a screen can actually alter how millions understand God, man, and creation.

In a real sense, that assumption is absolutely correct—which is why we have been beating Whitman’s alarum on this almost every day.

Altar or algorithm is the choice. And it must be the true altar, else the power of the algorithm will absolutely sweep us away.

The lesson here is to examine whether our own faith has become so dependent upon pixels that a fictional story can meaningfully compete with what God has already revealed through Scripture and His Church.

If a screen can shake those beliefs, or even get us curious, then the problem is not the movie. It is that we have forgotten to approach eternity with humility and the fear and trembling Saint Paul prescribed long ago.