Lest we forget. The American cemetery at Arromanches-les-Bains, Omaha Beach.
Posted on 02/29/2004 9:12:37 PM PST by churchillbuff
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
Published: March 1, 2004
Columnist Page: William Safire
WASHINGTON — ...Mel Gibson's movie about the torture and agony of the final hours of Jesus is the bloodiest, most brutal example of sustained sadism ever presented on the screen.
...[snip] — the bar against film violence has been radically lowered. Movie mayhem, long resisted by parents, has found its loophole; others in Hollywood will now find ways to top Gibson's blockbuster, to cater to voyeurs of violence and thereby to make bloodshed banal.
What are the dramatic purposes of this depiction of cruelty and pain? First, shock; the audience I sat in gasped at the first tearing of flesh. Next, pity at the sight of prolonged suffering. And finally, outrage: who was responsible for this cruel humiliation? What villain deserves to be punished?
Not Pontius Pilate, the Roman in charge; he and his kindly wife are sympathetic characters. Nor is King Herod shown to be at fault.
The villains at whom the audience's outrage is directed are the actors playing bloodthirsty rabbis and their rabid Jewish followers. This is the essence of the medieval "passion play," preserved in pre-Hitler Germany at Oberammergau, a source of the hatred of all Jews as "Christ killers."
Much of the hatred is based on a line in the Gospel of St. Matthew, after the Roman governor washes his hands of responsibility for ordering the death of Jesus, when the crowd cries, "His blood be on us, and on our children."
Though unreported in the Gospels of Mark, Luke or John, that line in Matthew — embraced with furious glee by anti-Semites through the ages — is right there in the New Testament. Gibson and his screenwriter didn't make it up, nor did they misrepresent the apostle's account of the Roman governor's queasiness at the injustice.
But biblical times are not these times. This inflammatory line in Matthew — and the millenniums of persecution, scapegoating and ultimately mass murder that flowed partly from its malign repetition — was finally addressed by the Catholic Church in the decades after the defeat of Naziism.
In 1965's historic Second Vatican Council, during the papacy of Paul VI, the church decided that while some Jewish leaders and their followers had pressed for the death of Jesus, "still, what happened in his passion cannot be charged against all Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today."
That was a sea change in the doctrinal interpretation of the Gospels, and the beginning of major interfaith progress.
However, a group of Catholics rejects that and other holdings of Vatican II. Mr. Gibson is reportedly aligned with that reactionary clique. (So is his father, an outspoken Holocaust-denier, but the son warns interviewers not to go there. I agree; the latest generation should not be held responsible for the sins of the fathers.)
In the skillful publicity run-up to the release of the movie, Gibson's agents said he agreed to remove that ancient self-curse from the screenplay. It's not in the subtitles I saw the other night, though it may still be in the Aramaic audio, in which case it will surely be translated in the versions overseas.
And there's the rub. At a moment when a wave of anti-Semitic violence is sweeping Europe and the Middle East, is religion well served by updating the Jew-baiting passion plays of Oberammergau on DVD? Is art served by presenting the ancient divisiveness in blood-streaming media to the widest audiences in the history of drama?
Matthew in 10:34 quotes Jesus uncharacteristically telling his apostles: "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword." You don't see that on Christmas cards and it's not in this film, but those words can be reinterpreted — read today to mean that inner peace comes only after moral struggle.
The richness of Scripture is in its openness to interpretation answering humanity's current spiritual needs. That's where Gibson's medieval version of the suffering of Jesus, reveling in savagery to provoke outrage and cast blame, fails Christian and Jew today.
Thank you. NEVER FORGET: THE GOSPEL WAS WHY THE HOLOCAUST WAS DEFEATED. The graves at Normandy are mostly marked by CROSSES. The allied armies were mostly made up of Christians - - - and Churchill said, rightly, that they were fighting for "Christian civilization" against a "barbaric" enemy.
Lest we forget. The American cemetery at Arromanches-les-Bains, Omaha Beach.
I have seen those Crosses... I have walked among those Crosses... Looking for a cousin's grave.... he was a fine upstanding Christian man.
Safire is serving an evil master. He has done it before, no doubt.
Although he held the title of King of the Jews, he was in fact an Edomite from the town of Idumea. He married into a Jewish family, but himself had no Jewish ancestry.
Saffire gets a 2-fer. Attacks the gospels and my Church simultaneously. It feels so good to some folks to bash Catholicism. Saffire is one of those folks.
That is so irrelevent. Please, this film and its message is too important to drag in such trivilities as transitory electoral politics. Seriously.
I saw The Passion last night with a friend, and we were both deeply moved. By contrast, whether Bush or Kerry wins in November is of infinitesimal importance. Christ has nothing to do with Bush or McCain or Kerry.
You are right.
A time is coming, perhaps very shortly, where all such guff will get mowed down for good. Take courage: He has overcome the world.
You are right again.
We knew these people were empty, but it's almost embarrassing to witness just how empty they are. Don't they know how they are exposing themselves?
It is almost as if all these people have indeed sold their souls to the devil to for their success. How else, given their extreme ignorance, bias, hypocrisy, and stupidity could they have done so well?
Read this for some real insight:
'Protesting Gibson 's Passion Lacks Moral Legitimacy'
http://www.towardtradition.org/article_Mel_Gibson.htm
By Rabbi Daniel Lapin
The Passion is a hit. It remains to be seen if it's that rare mega-hit that tops $300 million, such as the Star Wars films and Titanic.
All the top mega-hits have one thing in common: repeat business. They attract diehard fans that see the film several times, maybe every week, maybe several times a week.
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