Posted on 03/31/2003 5:28:35 AM PST by dead
Movie makers know that a dose of pre-release controversy can work wonders for their films at the box office. But even such modern marketing techniques don't quite explain the flak Mel Gibson is drawing over the film he is making based on the final hours in the life of Jesus.
Called The Passion, the movie has been directed, co-written, and largely privately financed by Gibson who says it will be an authentic - and graphic - presentation of the gospel story even to the point of having the actors speak exclusively in Latin and Aramaic.
The Passion has been panned in advance by some critics who say the story has been done to death. Some reports have linked it to Gibson's religious beliefs with one scathing attack recently suggesting he is peddling an outmoded theology favoured by "conspiracy-minded Catholics, mystics, monarchists and disaffected conservatives".
The film has also raised concerns among Jewish groups who fear it will revive the charge that Jews are collectively responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus.
Gibson went so far as to claim, in a March 14 interview with an American Catholic cable network, that "the other world" was "warring" with him to prevent his retelling how Jesus died a horrible death for the sake of humanity.
The real war Gibson has joined, however, is a culture war within the Catholic Church which is spilling across the frontiers of inter-religious dialogue.
Gibson has never made a secret of his Catholicism or of the particular variety of the faith with which he feels comfortable. This is a traditionalist Catholicism that is deeply suspicious of the changes brought about in the church by the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s and determined to retrieve a sense of its own separateness from the world.
He was quoted in Time magazine in January as arguing that Vatican II had "corrupted" the church.
"Look at the fruits," Gibson had said, "dwindling numbers and pedophilia."
This ignores the fact that attendance levels at Mass now are about what they were a century ago (high attendance levels in the decades before 1960 were the anomaly), that many cases of clerical sexual abuse go back well beyond the past 40 years, and that it was Vatican II which encouraged Catholics of Gibson's generation to take the study of the Bible seriously.
Gibson is also a devotee of the Latin Mass - he is said to attend daily in his private chapel - which Vatican II replaced by Mass celebrated in the vernacular.
Vatican II reasoned that the adoption of Latin as the universal language of the church in the fourth century was merely a concession to the times and that by conducting Mass in the language of the participants they could take a more active part in the ceremony.
But active involvement brings with it differences of opinion and outlook. It was such differences, taken to their extreme by Protestant reformers and also by those Catholics who sought to counter the Reformation, that led to the Council of Trent in the 16th century. The council sought to impose order amid the chaos by, among other things, standardising the Mass. This became known as the Tridentine Rite, commonly referred to as the Old Latin Mass.
Among traditionalists the popularity of this Mass is essentially an expression of support for the type of church that produced it - one that placed a premium on order, stability and certainty rather than innovation, participation and inclusiveness. Its appeal has very little to do with any inherent beauty associated with the Latin language.
This explains why clerics such as Bishop Daniel Dolan, who ministers to traditionalist Catholics in Cincinnati, told The New York Times recently that for Gibson "to put the weight of his Hollywood celebrity behind the truth that the whole modern church structure is rotten to the core is excellent". (Dolan was ordained by a French archbishop who broke with Rome over Vatican II and was later excommunicated.)
The symbolic importance of the Latin Mass also explains why Gibson, and by extension the publicity for his views The Passion will attract, draws criticism from mainstream Catholics and from non-Catholics who are thankful that the church finally embraced the modern world and all its complexity in the 1960s.
The moral for Gibson is obvious: if you are going to be a combatant, expect to be shot at from time to time.
The message for everyone else is simple: celebrities are entitled to their opinions but, for all the influence they wield, their views are no more valid than anybody else's.
As Sir Thomas More notes in his Dialogue Concerning Heresies, pre-Tyndale translations of the Bible were certainly permitted. Considering literacy levels of the time, such translations were largely redundant, since the literate classes could already understand Latin. Most of the general populace couldn't understand written English.
Right, but most of them couldn't afford books, anyway. Books weren't really accessible except to the rich (or those prepared to make financial sacrifices for them) until the relatively cheap process of making paper from wood pulp was developed in, I think, the eighteenth century.
The catholic church was corrupted long before Vatican II. The moment the Pope and his court appointed themselves as universal dictators over Christendom. All one has to do is look at the wickedness of some of the popes who committed murder (Borgia), adultery, fornication, the heresies of indulgences and the purchase of the Papacy (simony).
Catholics who sought to counter the Reformation, that led to the Council of Trent in the 16th century. The council sought to impose order amid the chaos by, among other things, standardising the Mass.
It did much more than that. It unleashed the Jesuits and persecution on anyone who didn't buy into the extra-biblical catholic doctrines, and resulted in the Inquisitions and 30 years war. They tried to FORCE people to abide by catholicism - sounds alot like miliitant islam to me.
No group during those times had a monopoly on "intolerance".
Henry VIII's Protestant reign resulted in the burning of 81 individuals for their Catholic religious beliefs. Mary Tudor's Catholic reign then resulted in the burning of 280 individuals for their Protestant religious beliefs.
One may argue that 280 is almost three and a half times worse than 81 but the fact remains that the conduct of both sides was loathsome during those times.
This is something I have been wondering about. Greek was the common language of the Empire. It seems strange that Latin would have edged it out totally in the film. While Latin may well have been used by some of the officials, any intercultural communication, including PP's interaction with Christ and the Jewish leaders was much more likely to have taken place in Greek, I would have thought.
As much as I admire Gibson and am looking forward to the movie, is this more Gibson's preference for boosting Latin than historical accuracy?
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