Posted on 03/04/2004 10:24:16 PM PST by churchillbuff
Edited on 03/05/2004 10:48:45 AM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
Gibson's Blood Libel
By Charles Krauthammer Friday, March 5, 2004; Page A23
Every people has its story. Every people has the right to its story. And every people has a responsibility for its story. ...[snip]
Christians have their story too: the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. Why is this story different from other stories? Because it is not a family affair of coreligionists. If it were, few people outside the circle of believers would be concerned about it. This particular story involves other people. With the notable exception of a few Romans, these people are Jews. And in the story, they come off rather badly.
Because of that peculiarity, the crucifixion is not just a story; it is a story with its own story -- a history of centuries of relentless, and at times savage, persecution of Jews in Christian lands. This history is what moved Vatican II, in a noble act of theological reflection, to decree in 1965 that the Passion of Christ should henceforth be understood with great care so as to unteach the lesson that had been taught for almost two millennia: that the Jews were Christ killers.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
What's wrong with making money? There is a great deal of money to be made in Hollywood and there is no shame in doing so.
Ya, a movie in foreign languages with subtitles gaurantees a box office score.
Let's get real. If Gibson had not been interested in making money he would have released his film with little fanfare, and not engaged in a protracted and well-planned PR campaign that went on for over six months. Nor would he have made lucrative merchandizing deals which pad the bottom line.
That is not to say he was not sincerely interested in sharing his vision of The Passion with world, and that he did so due to deeply-held beliefs.
As this movie has garnered such wildly different reactions from a broad spectrum of viewers, it is clearly open to interpretation and it's viewing is clearly a personal experience.
A discussion of the movie ought to be able to undertaken without people slinging mud and making blanket statements which impugn the character of those who agree, or disagree, with the way the story is told.
EXCUSE ME? HIS COLUMN TITLE ACCUSES GIBSON OF "BLOOD LIBEL" AND YOU SAY I'M TOO HARSH? WAKE UP-- THERE'S NO MORE TOXIC ACCUSATION THAN BLOOD LIBEL. AND HERE IT ISN'T JUSTIFIED. IF HE'D CALLED GIBSON A CHILD MOLESTOR IT WOULDN'T BE MUCH LESS HARSH.
So I shouldn't place some blame Christian Europe for the Holocaust? I should just blame the Europe of the 1930s and 1940s? I shouldn't blame (in part) a church that named Jews as Christ killers for 15 centuries?
Now, Now sink, I know I have pointed out to you before that the Vatican does not consider the SSSPX and it's offshoots, schismatic.....As long as you persist in spreading falsehoods, I will be forced to continue to out you.
(See Bottom of page for Quote reproduced here.)
"The situation of the members of this Society is an internal matter of the Catholic Church. The Society is not another Church or Ecclesial Community in the meaning used in the Directory. Of course the Mass and Sacraments administered by the priests of the Society are valid"(end quote)
Opinions are one thing. Lies are another.
In fact, since Tsarist Russia was more devoted to their Orthodox religion than Weimar Germany was to Lutheranism or Catholicism, there should be a greater tie between Christianity and Communism than between Christianity and Nazism. For over a century prior to Hitler's rise to power, Germany was the home of atheistic and skeptical thought, not to mention the native land of Karl Marx and Frederich Engels. British and American nonbelievers and freethinkers, men like John Dewey and George Bernard Shaw, drew heavily from the works of German philosophers.
You can no more tie the folk religious beliefs of Germans and other mid-Europeans (such as the "blood libel" against the Jews, not part of official Catholic or Protestant dogma) with the neo-pagan, Darwinist beliefs of the Nazis because of a common element of disdain for the Jews than you can tie Russian Orthodoxy with Communism because of common threads of altruism and support for tyranny.
It is not licit for a Catholic to attend an SSPX Mass when another Mass is available.
And, I'm not going to argue this further. This is not the thread for it.
No offense, but your "feelings" about what a Christian is or should be is worth less than zero to many of us.
Empathising with the neuroses of the unnormal is not an obligation that I am willing to take on. You seem unable to make a distinction between real grievances and imagined ones. Knock yourself out.
There is nothing wrong with making money. Ascribing it as his #1 motivitation (unless your a mind reader) is slimy.
Ya, a movie in foreign languages with subtitles gaurantees a box office score.
Let's get real. If Gibson had not been interested in making money he would have released his film with little fanfare, and not engaged in a protracted and well-planned PR campaign that went on for over six months. Nor would he have made lucrative merchandizing deals which pad the bottom line.
You don't think there was substantial financial risk in making this movie? Look how long it took to get a distributor.
That is not to say he was not sincerely interested in sharing his vision of The Passion with world, and that he did so due to deeply-held beliefs.
Thank you
As this movie has garnered such wildly different reactions from a broad spectrum of viewers, it is clearly open to interpretation and it's viewing is clearly a personal experience.
Of course
A discussion of the movie ought to be able to undertaken without people slinging mud and making blanket statements which impugn the character of those who agree, or disagree, with the way the story is told.
I was responding to a mud slinging.
Perhaps open discussion is just a one way street.
It came from ghastly human wickedness. From sin. From the vicious cruelty of which we all are capable.
And it came from bloody-mindedness, from stupid intellectual vanity and petty resentment.
Rather like concerning oneself with a posturing condemnation of a work of religious expression in a free culture, alienating one's natural alies in the process...all the while failing to face the reality of an ever-strengthening and satanic enemy.
Excuse me, but the scourging of Christ is not only mentioned in the Gospels, it's mentioned in Isaiah (and also the Psalms I believe). As for what scourging amounted to - - that's an historical matter, for which they did research, I believe. The movie flows like "the stations of the cross" -- which is a Catholic rite, so Krauthammer shouldn't be concerned about it, since he's so insistent on citing the Vatican against Mel
Ah yes. The attacks on any Jew who does not like this movie continues. I saw Father Andrew Greeley on TV last night. He did not like the film at all. But you people do not attack him relentlessly, do you? How dare you smear good people in this manner. Just because they disagree with you.
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Baloney. An urban legend. The controversy started last April long after the film had been shot and was most likely already in post production.
Controversial 'Passion' presents priceless opportunity for education
A toxic film delivers a dangerous, but teachable, moment
By Paula Fredriksen
"Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" came into my life last April. Gene Fisher, the ecumenical officer for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, convened a group of scholars to assess Mr. Gibson's script - its historical fidelity, use of New Testament materials, and consonance with Catholic instruction.
Why did we on the panel care? This was, after all, just a movie. The answer, in part, lay with Gibson's own publicity efforts. In numerous interviews, he'd presented his movie as an act of God, insisted that it was the most historically accurate depiction of Christ's passion ever filmed, and paraded his own Catholic piety as authentication of his movie.
But Gibson had revealed some historical gaffes. One source for his story came not from the first-century Gospels, but from Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824), a stigmatic nun whose visions enunciated an anti-Semitism typical of her time. (She believed that Jews used the blood of Christian babies for rituals.) And, finally, website stills of the movie were marked with Hollywood gore: "Realism" had less to do with history than with celluloid violence."
So you see, while the ADL jumped on the bandwagon, that horse had left the barn, to mix my metaphors.
1. Christians DESTROYED the Holocaust. The soldiers of the allied armies were overwhelmingly Christian - as the crosses above their graves at Normandy attest. Churchill and Roosevelt sang "Onward Christian Soldiers" at the Atlantic Conference. 2. Your blaming of Christians reminds me of Father Coughlin blaming Jews for communism in Russia because a disproportionate number of the Bolshies were Jewish. 3. Are you saying there was no antisemitism in the world before Jesus? What about Xerxes, who tried to wipe out the Jews but was foiled by Esther? 4. If Christianity is to blame for antisemitism, how do you account for Muslim antisemitism?
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