The idea that all Christian faiths are embraced within "the Church"--meaning, not specifically the Roman Catholic Church, but the body of Christ, the congregation of all believers--is an innovation of Vatican II. True.
Mel belongs to a group of hyper-conservative Catholics who reject the liberalized doctrines put forward by Vatican II. He wants a Latin mass, etc.
True.
So it's not surprising that he has adopted a very nineteenth-century view of salvation.
In the Catholic Church there are no "views" that reflect different centuries. The truth doesn't change. Catholics today still believe what St. Augustine believed back in 400AD and what the apostles believed before him.
People who are new to a faith, a job, or other new commitment sometimes go way overboard. As a new believer he's far more passionate than the cradle Catholics who were raised in the faith.
Gibson is a cradle Catholic. It's just that the other interests in his life -- like being a movie star -- were overshadowing his faith. Now he has gotten back to putting his faith first. But he has always been a Catholic. Witness, for example, that he is probably the only star in Hollywood still successfully married to the same woman for 25 years and with at least 7 children. His oldest daughter is training to be a nun. So he has always been Catholic.
Is Mel's daughter preparing for vows as an SSPX nun? Do y'all have nuns????? Do you have a source for the persistent claim that Mel Gibson is among you (i.e. in schism or whatever you want t imagine your sect to be since it is certainly NOT in communion with JP II as pope?). That he has established a Tridentine only chapel with or without permission from the likes of Mahoney (which permission or non-permission is also not clear to the best of my knowledge) does not make him either a sedevacantist or a schismatic of SSPX. Where is the evidence????? If Mel Gibson rejects this pope or the papacy in general, he is NOT Catholic. His movie is still a very worthwhile movie as it would be if it were produced by a non-Catholic like, say, Franky Schaeffer. The movie is the movie. The Faith is the Faith. Schismatics are excluded from the Catholic Faith by their own pernicious behavior. YOPIOT is NOT Catholicism. No one authorized YOPIOT.