[churchillbuff]

Another commentator who is really attacking the Gospels (in the guise of attacking Gibson) and putting christians on notice that they are not supposed to take their beliefs to the public square --- or they'll be ridiculed, denounced and, if the bigots can pull it off, financially ruined. (Didn't work with the courageous Mel Gibson, but the message -- like a horse's head - - may intidimate other christians in hollywood into keeping their heads down. As in the past, they may take the course of least resistance and let the anti-christian bigots who run the place (many of them, like Safire, jewish, alas) continue to put out their soul-destroying crap without interference or protest.

[churchillbuff]

Mel Gibson's movie about the torture and agony of the final hours of Jesus is the bloodiest, most brutal example of sustained sadism ever presented on the screen.

Has Safire ever before devoted a column to denouncing violence in Hollywood films?

[okie01]

This is one of those cases when you'd want to start a conversation with Safire by saying, "Bill, you're a smart guy. But..."

[jwalsh07]

Not Pontius Pilate, the Roman in charge; he and his kindly wife are sympathetic characters

I could not continue past here. Pilate is not a sympathetic character, he is a despicable coward who suspects the truth but is concerned that Caesar will kill him if he doesn't control the populace. So, what the hell, he was scheduled to crucify two other Jews, why not make it three?

If Safire doesn't see this, then there is little use in reading further. He has seen what he wanted to see, not what was before his eyes like so many others. Such is life.

[Waco]

Saffire and Rooney, blood brothers? (Misfire & Looney?)

[Cold Heat]

In 1965's historic Second Vatican Council, during the papacy of Paul VI, the church decided that while some Jewish leaders and their followers had pressed for the death of Jesus, "still, what happened in his passion cannot be charged against all Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today."

Planet Earth to dumass columnist!

This is precisely what i saw in the film!

[freebilly]

"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword." You don't see that on Christmas cards and it's not in this film, but those words can be reinterpreted — read today to mean that inner peace comes only after moral struggle.

Interpret those lines that way and you interpret them incorrectly. When you read these lines from Matthew there's nothing in there about inner peace and moral struggle. It's about giving up everything to follow Christ.

Matthew 10:34-39

34 Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. 35 For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. 36 And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. 37 He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. 39 He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.

Sorry, Safire, we know you would like the words of Christ to mean something else, but taken in context they have nothing to do with moral struggle.

[Savage Beast]

"The villains at whom the audience's outrage is directed are the actors playing bloodthirsty rabbis and their rabid Jewish followers."

'Fraid not, Bill. You must have dozed off before those sadistic Roman brutes showed up and slept 'til the end of the movie.

[Theophilus]

most brutal example of sustained sadism ever presented on the screen

Sadism requires a sadist. Who is Safire calling a sadist? Safire is famous for being a wordsmith be he has inexcusably erred on this one. Nobody can say that anybody got sexual pleasure from this movie or the events depicted. Safire needs to stop torturing our language and put away the flagellum that is his tongue.

[loudmouths]

Since Saffire raises the issue of Vatican II; in a survey conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, they found most of the sexual abuse cases in the Church occurred after Vatican II. In the 1950’s there were very few.

[right way right]

Jesus says we have to care about non believers.

Does this mean we have to care what they say?

Pray for Safire!

Pray for Osoma Bin Laden for that matter.

Gods love is way beyond our understanding.

[Sloth]

Much of the hatred is based on a line in the Gospel of St. Matthew, after the Roman governor washes his hands of responsibility for ordering the death of Jesus, when the crowd cries, "His blood be on us, and on our children." Though unreported in the Gospels of Mark, Luke or John, that line in Matthew — embraced with furious glee by anti-Semites through the ages — is right there in the New Testament. Gibson and his screenwriter didn't make it up, nor did they misrepresent the apostle's account of the Roman governor's queasiness at the injustice. But biblical times are not these times. This inflammatory line in Matthew — and the millenniums of persecution, scapegoating and ultimately mass murder that flowed partly from its malign repetition — was finally addressed by the Catholic Church in the decades after the defeat of Naziism.

I'm sick and tired of this 'blood libel' business based on this line from Matthew. They SAID it. Period. That doesn't mean it's true. The said lots of things that aren't true.

[hellinahandcart]

It's not in the subtitles I saw the other night, though it may still be in the Aramaic audio, in which case it will surely be translated in the versions overseas.

Why would Safire think that further subtitling would be out of Gibson's control?

That line was removed some time ago, why would he think it still remained in the audio? It's not like that part is set in stone either.

Anyway, if he's so concerned he can just go call James Cavaziel, who speaks Aramaic, and ask him if it's in the final print or not. Yeesh.

[freebilly]

The richness of Scripture is in its openness to interpretation answering humanity's current spiritual needs

The reality of interpreting Scripture for the believer is just a little different than what Safire might think.

Matthew 7:13-14 - "Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few."

The answer to humanity's current spiritual needs is found explicitly in the Gospels. The Message hasn't changed for 2000 years.

[Homer1]

sympathetic?

Knowingly allowing an innocent man to be sadistically tortured and beaten just because one washes ones hands is what passes for sympathetic in the age of klinton.

Really, Mr Safire, most of us know that that is evil.

[fire_eye]

Much of the hatred is based on a line in the Gospel of St. Matthew, after the Roman governor washes his hands of responsibility for ordering the death of Jesus, when the crowd cries, "His blood be on us, and on our children."

I, personally, believe that quote is fabricated - simply because it is out of context for someone in a bloodthirsty mob to call down curses on their own descendents. I think whoever wrote (or edited) the gospel of Matthew added that at some point, out of hatred for the Jews - and not because they killed Christ, but because at the time the Gospel was written, the friction between Christianity and Judaism over doctrinal matters was very intense. Christianity at that time was not quite its own religion, but still a schismatic sect of Judaism, and the Jews were attacking it as heresy, and the Christians were retaliating in whatever manner available to them (such as adding the preceding to their canonical texts).

Just a theory... but as I said, the quote is completely out of context in the circumsatances in which it is claimed to have been uttered. To reiterate, "His blood be on us", while screaming for Jesus' death, makes sense in that context - but to invoke a curse on one's descendents? I don't think so...

But it's too much to hope for a reflexive scribbler like Safire to even have pondered the Gospels enough to analyze them to that extent... it's easier to just come unglued and shoot the messenger.

[Jeff Chandler]

It has become obvious that many otherwise wonderful Jews, like many otherwise wonderful blacks, carry within them the legacy of the historic persecution of their people. Their justifiable paranoia, which in former times served as an effective means of self-preservation, lingers on, despite its obsolescence, and, in present times, only serves as an impediment to clarity of thought and sensibility of reason.

(I figured that a discussion of William Safire deserved a higher level of discourse.)

[Map Kernow]

Shame on Safire. SHAME on him. I'll never have another ounce of respect for him.

[LoneRangerMassachusetts]

The richness of Scripture is in its openness to interpretation answering humanity's current spiritual needs. That's where Gibson's medieval version of the suffering of Jesus, reveling in savagery to provoke outrage and cast blame, fails Christian and Jew today.

Unitarians come to mind as the most open to theological change. I see their meeting houses draped in homosexual agenda. They despise Christian prayer, hymns, and the like. I guess Safire would fit right in with them. Unitarians have drifted from lukewarm attachment to theology in the early Republic to spiritual humanism of today. Gaia is OK with them. I soon expect to see witch doctors dancing in their meeting houses.

[blackbart.223]

"Not peace but a sword"

There is no peace without a sword! Stupid but true.

[Arthur McGowan]

That was a sea change in the doctrinal interpretation of the Gospels...

The Catholic Church never taught anything other than what Vatican II taught. I am sick of THIS particular libel--that the Catholic Church taught anti-Semitism UNTIL 1965.