Posted on 02/28/2004 6:34:54 PM PST by ultima ratio
Gibson's Passion forced to find sanctuary
Gerald Warner
"ECCE homo." The words of Pontius Pilate - "Behold the man" - with which he exhibited Jesus, scourged and crowned with thorns, to the hostile crowd have inspired many devout works of art down the centuries. Yet only now has the cinema, the popular art form of our time, the challenge of portraying what Christians acknowledge to be the defining moment of human history, with the release of Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ.
Since it is not due for release in this country until March 26, it would not be possible to offer a conventional critique of this production - the actors’ performances, quality of direction, photography and all the other elements by which a film is normally assessed. The need to suspend judgment on such technicalities, however, should not inhibit believers from taking a stand on the issues with which the enemies of the faith are assailing Gibson and - by extension - the entire Christian canon.
The first point of controversy that must be addressed is the distraction - for that is what it is - of the claim that the film is anti-Semitic. There could be no better way of dismissing this canard than by invoking responsible Jewish opinion, as voiced by Rabbi Daniel Lapin, president of Toward Tradition, an American organisation that exists to build bridges between Jewish and Christian communities. Rabbi Lapin has excoriated the activists persecuting Gibson with a robustness that few Gentiles would have dared to exhibit.
Two weeks ago, Lapin predicted that the film "will become famous as the most serious and substantive Biblical movie ever made" and that "the faith of millions of Christians will become more fervent as Passion uplifts and inspires them". Pity no Catholic bishop has gone on record in equally enthusiastic vein. Lapin went on to denounce "Jewish organisations insisting that belief in the New Testament is de facto evidence of anti-Semitism". With heroic objectivity, he also condemned the offence given to Christians because "Jewish groups are presuming to teach them what Christian scripture ‘really means’".
The rabbi’s remarks follow upon an even more devastating broadside he delivered five months ago, on the same theme, when he insisted that protests against Gibson’s film "lack moral legitimacy". He cited the exhibition of blasphemous art shown in 1999 at the Brooklyn Museum, when Arnold Lehman was director, including a Madonna smeared with elephant dung. He also pointed out, with a directness that no Christian could contemplate, that Martin Scorsese’s blasphemous film The Last Temptation of Christ was distributed by Universal Pictures, run by Lew Wasserman, and posed the question "why Mel Gibson is not entitled to the same artistic freedom we accorded Lew Wasserman?"
Rabbi Lapin’s moral integrity and plain speaking have done more for Christian-Jewish relations than a thousand futile ecumenical symposia and weasel-worded scriptural trade-offs brokered by pressure groups and Vatican appeaseniks. It seems reasonable to hope that he speaks for a majority of his co-religionists, rather than the strident protesters. That said, the most vitriolic enemies of the film and its message are not Jews: they are drawn from the forces of militant secularism and the Fifth Column within the Catholic Church.
For, make no mistake, this is an intensely Catholic film. Mel Gibson is a traditional Catholic who rejects the humbug and chaos of the Second Vatican Catastrophe - as do an increasing number of the disillusioned survivors stumbling around in the ruins of the once-mighty Roman Catholic Church. The faithful translation on to film of the scriptural narrative of Christ’s passion and resurrection would, 50 years ago, have presented Catholics with an image that was totally familiar. Bishop Joseph Devine, bishop of Motherwell, is one of the few in Britain to have seen the film and has described it as "stunningly successful... a profoundly religious film."
Yet, today, the Easter People, the dancers in sanctuaries, those who claim They Are Church and all the assorted Lollards and Fifth Monarchy Men who have converted Catholicism into a crankfest regard the Passion with as much alienation as any atheist.
Religion should be nice. It should have no doctrines, since that would create division. There are no moral absolutes, no objective truths. In an ideal world, you should not be able to put a cigarette-paper between a Catholic and a Buddhist. Since we are all going to Heaven, regardless of our conduct on earth, what is the point of all this violence on Calvary? Of course, we need some ritual and collective spirituality: so, let’s go and hang some cuddly toys on the railings of Kensington Palace. What we need is a one-size-fits-all, syncretic religion, centred on the United Nations; an ethical code that does not restrict us from the perpetual gratification of all appetites.
You will find little dissent from those propositions among the smirking, blue-rinse nuns of the post-Conciliar Church, or their ecumaniac male counterparts. To them, the crack of the centurion’s whip and the thud of the hammer on nails are distant, alien sounds - a disturbing echo of Holy Week long ago, of Gregorian plainsong, of ferias in Seville. In a word - ecumenically unhelpful; best washed away by a few more cups of tea at Scottish Churches House.
The militantly secular world is also keenly alert to the challenge of the Passion. In responding to Gibson’s initiative, no double-standard is too blatant, no inversion of truth too shameless. Critics are queuing up to denounce "pornographic violence" (the now favourite weasel phrase) in the literal portrayal of the crucifixion.
These are the self-same people who acclaimed every sadistic and pornographic obscenity with which Hollywood has poisoned the world over the past three decades, who vigorously denounced "censorship" and promoted the "pushing of boundaries". Now, suddenly, they are alarmed about pornographic violence.
Yet, amid all the sound and fury, the most contemptible phenomenon is the trahison des clercs. The Catholic Church will not embrace this film, despite the Pope’s verdict on it ("It is as it was!"), because it expresses a faith it now finds embarrassing. The Passion was made with as much religious dedication as the crafting of an Orthodox icon. The Tridentine Mass was celebrated on the set every morning and there was at least one conversion to Catholicism during the making of the film. Small wonder that modernist Roman theologians are galled by the fact that Tradition has produced the most triumphant artistic articulation of faith and that evangelical Protestants are flocking to experience it.
The Mass, as the bloodless continuation of the sacrifice of Calvary, was the perfect complement to this artistic tribute to God. At the elevation of the host, the Catholic believer knows - although he can scarcely comprehend the fact - that he is as close to Christ as were Our Lady and St John at the foot of the cross. That is the cosmic drama of redemption that is re-enacted on the altar: "Behold the man".
My, my. The same tolerance that JPII showed with the voodoo witch doctors, the animists and the zoroastrians at Assissi ought to be your guiding principle in dealing with poor misguided souls like ultima ratio, who unlike them, are apparently separated from the Church. Everyone else in the world in some mystical manner "subsists in" the Catholic Church, but traditional Catholics alone are on the outside. This is a sad situation, but perhaps the example of your unfailing charity will help to bring them around.
I'm game, and willing to stand corrected ... let's see.
Dignitatis Humanae [link] seems to say that the church will not enforce it's faith on others, that it agrees with the concept of 'separate of church and state', that the church will be made known in man by God and should not be 'forced' upon anyone is kinda of what I read. Correct me if I missed something. I don't see anything wrong with this 'advancement' in the RCC and I definitely don't see the 'super Euchanism' that is warned about by this author in his anti Vat2 zeal .. but let's move on ..
Unitatis Redintegratio[link] "The restoration of unity among all Christians is one of the principal concerns of the Second Vatican Council. Christ the Lord founded one Church and one Church only. However, many Christian communions present themselves to men as the true inheritors of Jesus "
Hmmm - can't see anything wrong with that statement ... perhaps the 'method' of euchanism is what you are most upset with and not the words of Vatican II itself. I may be wrong, and this may deserve more dialogue.
Nostra Aetate [link] "The Church examines more closely he relationship to non-Christian religions. In her task of promoting unity and love among men, indeed among nations, she considers above all in this declaration what men have in common and what draws them to fellowship."
Noble statement, and one that a church that should and would want to claim the title of the 'leader' of Christianity should make. Again, you must be upset about something other than this noble statement, but rather the 'practice' that follows. Again, much more dialogue could follow.
Gaudium et Spes[link] "Hence this Second Vatican Council, having probed more profoundly into the mystery of the Church, now addresses itself without hesitation, not only to the sons of the Church and to all who invoke the name of Christ, but to the whole of humanity. For the council yearns to explain to everyone how it conceives of the presence and activity of the Church in the world of today."
Again, this is what a church should do ... lead, take a stand, inform the world of it's beliefs, etc. Once more I do not find fault with the intent or wording of the Vatican II council, but perhaps may agree with you with what the church has done to supposedly follow it's (perhap's wrongly) understood meaning.
So, maybe this deserves another thread entirely but the topic is of great interest. By the by, I am NOT a Catholic but was raised as one and do remember the church before and after VatII.
In His Name,
AgThorn
Only reason I know is that Irma Rombauer quoted it in an older edition of her classic cookbook The Joy of Cooking.
Isn't this a perfect description of the pope's writings, and wasn't he precisely a member of the generation you describe? Jargon is his watchword and incomprehensibility is his motif. He wrote "Love and Responsibility" back in the time frame you are describing, and it perfectly matches your criteria for what really killed Thomism.
Ecce Agnus Dei: ecce qui tollit peccata mundi.
I've never read Martin Chuzzlewit, but I have heard that the older editions of "The Joy of Cooking" are worth searching for and are much more entertaining than the later editions.
If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, and defecates like a duck, then I say that it is a duck.
does not compromise the teachings of the deposit of faith
True or false -- Jews do not need to convert to the Catholic faith because their own covenant is salvific for them? This is what is being taught today. I say that it DOES compromise the teachings of the deposit of faith.
The church authorities are no longer worried about either Marian shrine; they've offered both of them up to the secular world to worship their own false religions in their own ways.
Well, I didn't necessarily pick out acceptable statements, I just read and posted .. if there are any 'unacceptable statements' please do likewise and educate me.
However, I do feel that the we may find agreement with the latter half of your supposition - i.e. it is my belief that what you are most offended by, 'this whole ecumania' comes not from Vatican II but is the creation of the current pontificate.
The Pope is only a man, but I do feel that in all I have read on Vatican II and how it came to be and what is in it, that this was truly God's working within the RCC, to save it, to use it, to make a better instrument of it. The RCC has yet to figure out it's own true potential - going backwards prior to Vat II would be a terrible move in my view. Having the Church to reevaluate and get on the right track, as IMHO was the intent of Vat2, that is what the RCC should wake up to.
Good dialogue!! God Bless!
They have done no such thing. That is a lie and you know it.
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