Posted on 03/20/2004 6:03:12 AM PST by truthandlife
Judging by most of what you read, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ is the most dangerous, disgusting movie of all time. Even if you haven't seen it, you know that it's a gore-filled splatterfest with anti-Semitic overtones, that Mel Gibson's father is a flat-out Holocaust-denier, and that Mel himself is a sinister marketing genius.
The movie has been condemned by most reviewers. This paper's Rick Groen said it "comes perilously close to the pornography of violence." Frank Rich, The New York Times cultural writer, has been flaying Mr. Gibson's movie for weeks. "A joy ride for sadomasochists" was among his kinder remarks. The brilliant Christopher Hitchens called it both homoerotic (in a Nazified kind of way) and sadomasochistic. The Toronto Star's Linda McQuaig called it a "torture flick" that will "fan the flames" of anti-Semitism. Commentators of every faith have deplored it as a religious travesty.
So why is The Passion doing such boffo box office?
Because for millions of people across North America, The Passion is a deeply meaningful devotional experience.
"I was profoundly moved," says Ken Godon , who is pastor of Snowdon Baptist Church in Montreal. "It was a very, very emotional experience for me. I saw it twice, and I wept both times. I'm a devout follower of Jesus, and I love him."
The real rift over The Passion is not between the Christians and the Jews. It's
between certain devout Christians and
all the rest of us, especially those of little or no faith. Virtually everyone who mongers opinions in the mainstream media,
including me, belongs to the latter
category.
Rev. Godon is a fine and thoughtful man who counts several rabbis among his friends. His flourishing urban congregation includes Iranians, Filipinos, Africans, West Indians, Chinese and Koreans. Some are converts to Christianity. They feel as he does about the movie. "In the Hebrew scriptures [the Old Testament], there is a chapter which describes what will happen in the future. The Messiah, or the suffering servant, will be marred beyond recognition," he told me. In other words, the gore is precisely the point. "Mel doesn't want people to see a sanitized version of how horrific this was."
In this rendering of Christianity, the suffering is at the very heart of the faith. God allowed His Son to be crushed in our stead. What was done to Jesus is a metaphor for sin. "This is what sin does," says Rev. Godon. "It destroys, it disfigures, it mars. So when you put it all together it becomes a very, very deep reflection. It's a meditation on Jesus and also on my own personal soul."
In the movie, both Jews and Romans howl for Jesus's blood. But Rev. Godon says no Baptist would take a message of anti-Semitism from this. The real message is that we all bear responsibility for Christ's death, and we are all with sin.
In fact, there's no sign that the movie has provoked any upwelling of anti-Semitism. (Some argue that it might be used as a propaganda tool in the Muslim world, but that's another story.) And ironically, the evangelical community is among the staunchest supporters of Jews and Israel. "I have a deep respect for Jewish people," says Rev. Gordon. "I look up to them. I honour them. My faith is connected to their traditions and their scriptures. Everything started with the Jewish people."
He's distressed that some Jewish groups are officially upset by the movie (others are not). "When I look at the film, there is nothing but a profound love for Jesus and a deep respect for the culture from which he came," he says.
Mr. Gibson belongs to a tiny sect of backward-looking Catholics who reject Vatican II and think that everybody but themselves is going to hell. As Andy Rooney said on 60 Minutes, the guy's a wacko.
So isn't it odd that a movie with such wide appeal to Protestants came from him?
"I'm not a Mel Gibson expert," says Rev. Godon. "But I feel reverence oozing out of the film."
Christian evangelism -- which accepts the literal truth of the Bible -- is the fastest-growing brand of religion in North America today. As the grand old edifices of the Anglican and United Churches empty out, the new fundamentalist congregations are booming. It's not hard to guess why. The churches of the Protestant upper classes have neutered Jesus of his terrifying power. They got rid of all the militancy and gore, which were seen as hopelessly primitive. The suffering of Jesus is Christianity's greatest calling card, and they threw it away.
The Jesus I grew up with was a California hippie with a peace symbol. He was gentle, meek, and it never occurred to me that he was Jewish. The revolutionary Jesus condemning sinners to hellfire was nowhere to be seen. Even as I marched up the aisle on the day I was confirmed, it had begun to dawn on me that Jesus was just a metaphor. You weren't expected to take any of this hocus-pocus literally. In which case, why bother?
The up-market liberal churches have pushed God to the sidelines in favour of ecumenism and social justice. He has all but vanished. For evangelicals, God is real. The blood is not a metaphor. The suffering of Jesus is holy, and to contemplate it is to bear witness. "To me, as horrific as it was, the movie was hauntingly beautiful," says Rev. Godon.
You won't see this view articulated in the mainstream media. Most media folks are proudly secular types who regard openly religious people as distinctly odd. If you're gay, bi, or transgendered, we embrace you. But if your orientation is toward Jesus, you'd better keep it to yourself. We are fairly certain that born-again Christians are bigoted, not very intelligent, and possibly dangerous. This stereotype is easy to sustain because we've never actually met one.
After I talked with Ken Godon, I finally went off to see The Passion. To me, the movie was alternately riveting and revolting, moving and unwatchable. Once or twice it almost touched a chord of rapture in me, the sort of rapture that I vaguely remember feeling as a girl.
The Passion is on its way to being the biggest hit in movie history. Something's happening here, and we ought to find out what it is.
That is not true. I know personally of several very devout Catholics who were received privately after study on their own or with a priest. Perhaps they completed the program by studying the assigned books and meeting with the priest (as we did. We got the books months ago.)
I really think we're a little at cross purposes here. What is the point of simply being present warming a chair in the parish hall for months when you have (1) already read and studied the material (2) already adhere to the doctrines set forth in the material? You could say we have "completed the program" as we have "read, understood, and inwardly digested" the material.
Thank you for posting her article.
Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. -- Luke 12:32
It is a beautiful place. I didn't truly realize how spiritually dead our old church was until I came here. I must have heard thirty sermons on the Prodigal Son, but the homily today was the first time I have heard that parable explicated so beautifully and tied into its place in the Gospel.
Since I'm in the choir, I'm pretty busy - but, on the other hand, I'm up in the choir loft over the narthex, so I can see everything that's going on.
It is astounding how little difference there is between the Catholic and High Anglican services. In this church the choir does not process, just the priests and altar servers (unlike my former church where the choir sat up front so we had to get there somehow). Introit, penitential verses, readings, psalm, all identical. This church does not do a gospel procession; the cantor sings a short preface and the gospel is read from the lectern. No general confession after the prayers of the people (even the highest Anglicans do not as a general rule have auricular confession, general confession is all it takes.) The Mass proper follows the same pattern, many if not most of the words are identical. Here is added, "May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands for the praise and glory of his name, for our good, and the good of all his Church." This church uses Eucharistic Prayer II mostly (not all the time) which is somewhat similar to the Episcopal Eucharistic Prayer A, but perhaps the greatest difference in wording is found in the Preface and Great Thanksgiving. The meaning is largely the same, but the translation is quite different. (That's because the modern Catholic service is a new translation, while the English service is a 1979 revision - read mutilation - of the old Mass which was of course largely the 1549 English translation by Cranmer, who wrote better English than any modern translator, Catholic or Episcopalian.) "Lord I am not worthy" is not said in the Episcopal service. The remainder of the service is pretty much the same. This church does announcements at the very end of the Mass, which is much better than after the Peace (when our old church did it.) It breaks up the flow of the service a lot less, then there's just the final hymn and "Ite, missa est."
The more general differences I have noted are: the priests treat the Blessed Sacrament with much more reverence here than the priests in my old church. The singing is marginally less enthusiastic, the congregation dresses more casually. Bells but not smells, while in my old church it was the other way around. This sanctuary is much more traditional and reverent than the old church - had a long and interesting talk with the priest here, who told me that the sanctuary was carefully designed to comport with all the rubrics of the Church and to bring the worshippers into a proper frame of mind. (It works.)
Did that answer your question?
There's RCIA and there's RCIA - my first RCIA was taught by a laywoman who had me writing essays on my "faith journey" for four and a half months, while providing NO instruction in the Catholic Faith. We never even saw a priest.
My second RCIA (which I jumped to after finding that Parish "A" required a year's worth of the essays before real instruction even began) was taught by the pastor of Parish "B", who gave me a copy of his very complete syllabus, with reading assignments, so that I could both attend the remaining six weeks of that year's class, and catch up so as to be received into the Church that Easter (a gift I had not expected).
LOL. As with any bureaucratic procedure, there are bumps along the way. I'm glad it ultimately worked out for you. Welcome!
2. The Everlasting Man
3. the little bios of Francis of Assisi and Thomas Aquinas
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