Mel's maligners

american spectator ^ | Feb. 17, 04 | George Neumayr

[churchillbuff]

Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ is provoking religious slights -- on Christians.

Diane Sawyer's Primetime interview with Gibson dripped with an insulting condescension toward Christianity, a condescension liberals would regard as bigoted were it aimed at Judaism or Islam.

Sawyer, brows furrowed, looking almost in a state of physical pain, felt free to question Gibson's faith with a surely-you-can't-believe-that? air. As Gibson spoke about such things as his belief in the Devil and the Holy Spirit, Sawyer's face registered a wincing incredulity. She looked like a horrified anthropologist who had just stumbled upon some grotesque religious sect.

After Gibson said of Jesus Christ's crucifixion -- "He was beaten for our iniquities. He was wounded for our transgressions. And by his wounds we are healed. That's the point of the film. It's not about pointing the fingers, it's not about playing the blame game. It's about faith, hope, love and forgiveness. It's the reality for me. I believe that. I have to " -- Sawyer asked, "Have to?" In other words: Come on, Mr. Gibson, you don't have to take your faith quite so seriously.

Talk show hosts usually coo over the convictions of artists and believers. Not so with Gibson. His convictions are so in need of correction that Sawyer, suddenly an art monitor, demanded to know why he didn't make a different movie. "You could have made a life of Jesus," a nice and fuzzy movie without the crucifixion, Sawyer told Gibson.(The fatuousness of Sawyer reached its bottom when she referred to the movie as an "anti-date movie.") And why didn't he add a postscript denouncing anti-Semitism to his movie? Sawyer wanted to know.

It would be hard to imagine Sawyer behaving like such a busybody with any other director. She suggested to Gibson that he was "playing with fire." Do other directors get reminders from her on their responsibility to make movies that produce only comity and unanimity?

The left loves "art that challenges," and treats turmoil in the wake of art as a mark of its value and truth, but not if it is based on the Bible. Then it is viewed as a dangerous obscenity, a matter of "playing with fire."

Gibson correctly pointed out to Sawyer that those who object to his movie are really objecting to the New Testament. "Read the Gospels," he told her. But Sawyer doesn't want to read the Gospels unless they are rewritten according to liberal sensitivities. The Bible, she reminded Gibson, has been deconstructed. (Though it is never explained why the deconstructionists deconstruct the Sanhedrin's role in Christ's crucifixion while not extending that same deconstructionist generosity to Pontius Pilate.) Why take it all so literally? she in effect asked him. She really caught him out when she established that the blood-be-on-our-children line from the Gospels was still in the film in "Aramaic." Apparently unless the Bible is bowdlerized, it is not safe material for movies.

When not asking belittling questions -- "What does the evil side want?" "Do you believe God wrote this film?" "You have the nonstop ticket [to heaven]?" -- Sawyer was hiding behind phrases like "some critics say," "historians say."

Sawyer found a "former priest" to criticize the movie. He was disappointed that the movie didn't anticipate the moviegoing needs of Martians. "Let's say I'm a Martian, I'm just watching this film. All the time I keep saying to myself, what's anyone got against this guy?" the former priest said. Gibson's response to this criticism was to say basically that he didn't make the movie for Martians. The "former priest" didn't care for the focus on "brutality." (Christianity without the crucifixion appeals to liberal Catholic priests, current and ex. Hence they have been trying to take crucifixes out of Catholic classrooms and churches for years.)

Sawyer also asked Gibson about a 19th century nun whose work on the crucifixion -- a "some say lurid" account of the crucifixion -- supposedly informed his film. "Lurid," "playing with fire" -- this is Hollywood's stock in trade. For such a seasoned Hollywoodized journalist, Sawyer is easily shocked.

"I think it is one of the things that worries and concerns some of the critics" -- meaning her -- "that this is presented as truth," she said to Gibson, casually implying that the Gospels are made up. Sawyer was so determined to make sure that Gibson didn't disparage anyone else's faith she felt entitled to disparage his.

George Neumayr is managing editor of The American Spectator.

[prairiebreeze]

Sawyer DID look like she'd swallowed a bug. Or something.

Prairie

[luvbach1]

If the film is true to the gospels (and who has suggested it isn't?), a challenge of its "truth" on the basis of skepticism of the veracity of biblical accounts is as fatuous as it is irrelevant.

[luvbach1]

Maybe Sawyers' performance was, at least in part, that of Devil's advocate.

[newgeezer]

I'm glad the interview went the way it did. Diane Sawyer did a dandy job of representing willful unbelievers. Twenty years ago, I'd have responded to Gibson with much the same "surely-you-can't-be-serious" attitude, fighting back the urge to laugh in his bible-thumping face.

[luvbach1]

But I take it that today you would not laugh in his bible-thumping face?

[Tempest]

Good article. On a sidenote there's another thread floating around here that attempts to indict Mel Gibson for words supposedly said by his father.

[george wythe]

Related thread:

Mel Gibson's father calls NY Radio station and says Holocaust exaggerated.

In his interview on WSNR radio's Speak Your Piece, to be broadcast on Monday, Hutton Gibson, argued that many European Jews counted as death camp victims of the Nazi regime had in fact fled to countries like Australia and the United States.

"It's all - maybe not all fiction - but most of it is," he said, adding that the gas chambers and crematoria at camps like Auschwitz would not have been capable of exterminating so many people.

[newgeezer]

As might be inferred from my tagline, I no longer have any urge to laugh at believers. :-)

[luvbach1]

Gibson's main point is that the suffering of Christ, that some want to assess blame for, was foretold by God (God's plan?) if not pre-ordained. Ao the blame game is quite irrelevant. Only God could know the course of events for which the conscious decisions that brought them into being had yet to be made. But that's what omniscience is all about.

[Judith Anne]

Sawyer DID look like she'd swallowed a bug. Or something.

You know, if she stopped to realize that it was GIBSON people were tuning in to see, not HER...

She really doesn't get that viewership on her own, or with her ordinary guests. Must be desperate, but can't bring herself to show respect--now that's a sick woman.

[luvbach1]

Gibson's calm demeanor and reasoned, albeit Christian-oriented, responses did not hurt his positve image at all.

[Judith Anne]

Agreed, from the clips I saw. I don't get the alphabet networks, I had them cancelled.

[tallhappy]

Her husband is Mike Nichol's the movie director.

[luckymom]

What's the scoop on that "former priest" anyway? Surely there must be one. When I heard him introduced that way, I immediately smelled a rat.

[Servant of Christ]

Truth
The Passion of the Christ is the latest movie endeavor by Mel Gibson. The movie tells the story of the last 12 hours of Christ's life starting with the Agony in the Garden of Gesthemene and ending with His death on the cross.
The film stars Jim Cavaziel as Christ and Maia Morgenstern as Mary.
According to Mel Gibson, he was partly inspired to create this epic movie because of the book The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The book is based on the visions of a Catholic mystic - Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich and tells the story of the Passion in much more detail than that found in the Bible. The book also contains a brief life of this mystic who will be beatified by the Pope in the near future.
Mel Gibson has based his upcoming movie, "The Passion" on this book!
Sister Emmerich's account of the Passion and Death of Our Lord Jesus Christ, while faithful to the Bible, is heart-rending, edifying and surprising-because of its intimate detail. Based on the visions of this great mystic, The Dolorous Passionrecounts in incredible detail the horrendous sufferings undergone by our Saviour in His (it would seem) superhumanly heroic act of Redemption. Illuminating in its description of Mary's participation in the sufferings of her Son, this book gives the reader a poignant understanding of why Our Lady is sometimes called our "Co-Redemptrix." The Dolorous Passionis a singular book that conveys a lasting impression of the terrible agony of Our Lord's sufferings for us. Here is a book that will melt a heart of stone!
Preceding The Dolorous Passion in this edition is a short life of the remarkable Sister Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774 - 1824), a mystic, stigmatist and visionary. Toward the end of her life, she bore the wounds of Christ, ate no food save Communion, and. was in ecstasy a great deal of the time. It was during these ecstasies that she witnessed in vision the details of Our Lord's life which are recorded in this book
http://www.aquinasandmore.com/index.cfm/FuseAction/store.ItemDetails/SKU/1524

True suffering of Christ
http://www.chick.com/catalog/comics/crucifixion.asp

Servant of the Lord Jesus Christ

[feedback doctor]

The Apostle Paul said that if he preached some watered down Gospel then he would not be stirring up so much trouble. But he preached THE GOSPEL, the Good News. That good news was that a bunch of rules were not what made men right with GOD, that only the shedding of blood does that, and that Jesus was the ultimate and final sacrifice, the Lamb of God. The world really doesn't have a problem with morality. It has a problem with Jesus, He is the stumbling block. So many false religions, and cults have high standards of morality, but they seem to have a problem with Jesus. Even in the church we seem to think that we need to mold people into a certain look and behavior. The truth is when that come to know Him, His nature begins the change. Faith is responding to His life within us.

[LilRhody]

Thank God for Mel Gibson's courage. If we don't fight for our faith we will lose it. No one is forcing anyone to buy a ticket. The trouble with Sawyer and hypocrites like her are that they are afraid of the ones that do buy tickets, that it might somehow influence them in a "good way". They don't want to lose a single one of their flock. They like keeping them dumb so that they can be led around by the nose.
lilrhody

[tuckrdout]

It WAS a pretty bloody, awful death, which Jesus endured. It is time that we face the inhumanity that immoral human beings can dream up to torture people. Roman society did not condemn sexual sin, in fact promoted it. This led to wretched violence. State promoted violence. Instead of killing their children in the womb, they use to leave unwanted babies outside and let them starve to death. Much like Terri Schiavo's husband would like to do to her.

Does anyone doubt that Jesus would have been treated similarly in our society?

[Joe 6-pack]

"...when she referred to the movie as an "anti-date movie."

Funny. I've always thought of Diane Sawyer as an, "anti-date female."