Replies

People are still underestimating this phenomenon. Hollywood has from the beginning, mocking Gibson's intention to use ancient languages, suspecting the film might be anti-semitic, and trying to keep the film from being widely distributed. And now the Vatican is underestimating it. It does not openly support the film out of fear of ecumenical damage. It is knuckling under to the forces which hate Christianity and the Gospel narratives themselves.

True, popes are not film critics. But the Pope is charged with preaching the Gospels--and the challenge to the film's truthfulness is identical to the challenge to the Gospels. A few in Rome have responded directly to this. But most are retreating into silence, more worried about the ecumenical fall-out than about preaching the truth about the Crucifixion. This tells us a lot about the conciliar Church and where it is coming from these days.

Personally, such men remind me of Christ's cowardly disciples who went into hiding immediately after His arrest. They don't want to choose sides on this enormous issue for fear of offending the film's enemies--but they have been challenged to do so and have a moral duty to do so because the claim is that by being faithful to the Gospels, Gibson is being anti-semitic. This lie needs to be answered by those in authority. It is unconscionable that they should let it stand.

Back in the nineteenth century Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, an artifact with a moral vision that rocked the nation. Lincoln himself joked her novel had started a civil war. A few years after its publication slavery was gone. The Vatican needs to recognize that the popular culture has an immense influence for good all around the world. Even in the nineteenth century a single work of art could provoke cataclysmic changes. And in contemporary times it should realize that that influence has multiplied exponentially through the movies.

Up till now that influence has been largely negative. Hollywood moguls have encouraged attitudes hostile to religion. They have seriously eroded the Christian message and have often been openly hostile to Christianity itself in many films. The Gibson film, therefore, is a huge counter-statement, a powerful reminder to the entire Christian world of the price Jesus paid for our salvation--and it delivers its message by means of an artistic vision worthy of universal respect. The enemies of Christianity don't like this one bit.

Very well said brother.

Peolple are acting just as they did when our Savior was tortured and murdered over 2 millenia ago. God how I pray that the Vatican would stop being a broken lumbering political machine.

The protestants are correct when they say that the "infallibility" of the Vatican is a joke. It's not only fallible it's darn near broken at this point.

It's now a fact that the Pope implicitly stated "it is as it was", yet they can't say this publicly? They can put together a "pop" list of his fave movies yet an accurtate description of how Christ was brutalized on our behalf gets treated like a radioactive potato, it's devout producer dragged in the dirt.

Traditionalists and devout lovers of Jesus are banging on the door SCREAMING "please let us in" begging for truth and sanctity, yet they put fags, humanists and other religions before us.

Gosh.

"Personally, such men remind me of Christ's cowardly disciples who went into hiding immediately after His arrest."

I think they're much worse. It's as if they have taken a turn at hammering in the nails, just so the crowd won't call them "anti-Semitic."

So much is done and said now, or not done and said, "propter metum Judaeorum." Our masters perceive this film to be as dangerous to their stranglehold on our culture as a public creche or a Christmas carol, and they will fight it tooth and nail.