[drstevej]

This story was on Drudge Report. Did the Pope comment on Mel's film or not? Just curious

[veronica]

The Passion may be the greatest film ever made. I will reserve judgement until I actully see it.

But Mel Gibson and his people have acted in a tawdry manner IMO, rolling out the film in a cynical campaign. Nothing new for Hollywood, it's how the game is played. But hyping it by misquoting THE POPE?? That's rather beyond the pale, even for Hollywood.

[NYer]

*"I said the Holy Father saw the film privately in his apartment, but gave no declaration to anyone," he said. "He does not make judgments on art of this kind; he leaves that to others, to experts." *

Imagine you and your wife are given an exclusive viewing of a movie that has not yet been released. You turn to her and say - "that's just the way it was". Later that day, an editorialist who is a personal friend calls and asks your wife what you thought of the movie. She repeats your comment.

Suddenly, that comment becomes the title of an editorial. Within hours, it is picked up by other news services and becomes Dr. Steve's "official" comment. But was it?

From all that I have read on this situation (and that would be lots), this is apparently what happened. The pope made no "official" commentary. Due to his limited access to the media, as a result of his illness, the press rely entirely on any comments that he makes. If I can track down the article that expounded on this, I will post it to this thread.

For my part, this is the most feasible explanation. It is highly unlikely that Peggy Noonan would make up a comment from the pope. She is a catholic with great respect for the pope and enthusiastically shared his personal comment. The Vatican, politically, does not want the 'comment' to be construed as an official stance.

[heyheyhey]

The earliest report about the Pope's comment appeared in The Wall Street Journal on December 17, 2003. It would appear to be rather late to publish the Pope's original comment because John Paul II watched the movie on December 7, 2003.

Another interesting thing is that one John Thavis of the same Catholic News Service the agency which published the above article, complained on January 16, 2004 about misinformation allegedly coming from the Vatican on the subject of Pope's comment and other bad things. (When Vatican officials speak, things are not what they appear to be)

But.....
It gets more exciting, when you check old news at the same Catholic News Service, Vatican officials say pope didn't comment after viewing 'The Passion'. The 'no comment' article appeared on December 24, 2003!

I love the way the Catholic News Service and other self-acclaimed "catholic" media show their true "catholicity."
The leader of them all is the National Catholic Reporter - the most anti-Catholic p.o.s. I've ever seen.

(Sinky, whenever I mention the NCR I feel I should give you a ping.)

[Tantumergo]

"Did the Pope comment on Mel's film or not? Just curious"

I think its quite likely that he did, but they didn't expect the story to go right round the world's media.

I imagine that Kaspar got onto them and said "Don't upset the Jews", and so they have been back-pedalling ever since.

Two points I would make for background:

1) There is a growing power vacuum in the Vatican as JPII has to do less.

2) The Italians spawned Machiavelli and some of them still regard him as some kind of national hero.

[Coleus]

Thanks, maybe somebody ought to straighten out this jerk.

Frank Rich: Chutzpah and spiritual McCarthyism
Frank Rich NYT
Friday, January 16, 2004

NEW YORK Pope John Paul II, frail with Parkinson's at 83, is rarely able to celebrate Mass. But why should his suffering deter a Hollywood producer from roping him into a publicity campaign to sell a movie?

In what is surely the most bizarre commercial endorsement since Eleanor Roosevelt did an ad for Good Luck Margarine in 1959, the ailing pontiff has been recruited, however unwittingly, to help hawk "The Passion of the Christ," as Mel Gibson's film about Jesus's final 12 hours is now titled. While Eleanor Roosevelt endorsed a margarine for charity, John Paul's free plug is being exploited by the Gibson camp to aid the movie star's effort to recoup the $25 million he personally sank into the film.

"Mel Gibson's 'The Passion' gets a thumbs-up from the Pope," was the jolly image conjured up by a headline over Peggy Noonan's column for the Wall Street Journal Web site as she relayed the "happy news this Christmas season" on Dec. 17. Daily Variety, a day earlier, described John Paul as "a playwright and movie buff," lest anyone doubt his credentials.

Gibson's longtime producer, Steve McEveety, told Noonan that "The Passion" had been screened "at the pope's pad," after which John Paul declared of its account of the crucifixion, "It is as it was." That verdict was soon repeated by virtually every news outlet in the world, including The New York Times. In Noonan's view, the pope's blessing was likely to settle the controversy over a movie that Jewish and Christian critics alike have faulted for its potential to reignite the charge of deicide against the Jews. It was also perfectly timed to boost the bookings of a movie scheduled to open in the United States on Feb. 25, Ash Wednesday.

Since I am one of the many curious Jews who have not been invited to press screenings of "The Passion," I have no first-hand way of knowing whether the film is benign or toxic and so instead must rely on eyewitnesses. In November, The New York Post got hold of a copy and screened it to five denominationally diverse New Yorkers, including its film critic. The Post is hardly hostile to Gibson; it is owned by Rupert Murdoch, whose Fox film studio has a long-standing deal with the star. Nonetheless, only one member of its chosen audience, a Baptist "Post reader," had kind words for "The Passion." Mark Hallinan, a priest at St. Ignatius Loyola Catholic Church, found its portrayal of Jews "very bad," adding, "I don't think the intent was anti-Semitic, but Jews are unfairly portrayed." Robert Levine, senior rabbi at Congregation Rodeph Sholom in Manhattan, called the film "appalling" and its portrayal of Jews "painful." On Christmas Day, Richard Ostling, the religion writer of The Associated Press, wrote that "while the script doesn't imply collective guilt for Jews as a people, there are villainous details that go beyond the Bible."

So, John Paul's plug notwithstanding, the jury remains out. What can be said without qualification is that the marketing of this film remains a masterpiece of ugliness typical of the cultural moment, when hucksters wield holier-than-thou piety as a club for their own profit. For months now, Gibson and his supporters have tried to slur the religiosity of anyone who might dissent from his film's rollout. (And have succeeded, if my mail is any indication.) In The New Yorker last autumn, the star labeled both The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times "anti-Christian" newspapers for running articles questioning his film and, in this vein, accused "modern secular Judaism" of wanting "to blame the Holocaust on the Catholic Church," a non sequitur of unambiguous malice.

This game of hard-knuckle religious politics is all too recognizable in the new millennium, when there are products to be sold and votes to be won by pandering to church-going Americans. The us-vs.-them religious one-upmanship is more about political partisanship than liturgical debate. Its adherents practice what can only be called spiritual McCarthyism, a witch hunt in which "secularists" are targeted as if they were subversives and those who ostentatiously wrap themselves in God are patriots.

A private screening of "The Passion" was attended by another conservative ideologue, the columnist Robert Novak, who was born to Jewish parents and converted to Catholicism. The movie, he wrote in November, is "free of the anti-Semitism that its detractors claim." He has since joined other journalists in applying spiritual McCarthyism to the presidential race, noting darkly that reporters who followed Howard Dean on the campaign trail "recently observed that they never had seen so secular a presidential candidate, one who has never mentioned God and certainly not Christ."

That a movie star would fan these culture wars for dollars is perhaps no surprise, but it demeans the pope to be drafted into that scheme. It also seems preposterous - so much so that I wondered whether the reports of the gravely ill John Paul's thumbs-up for "The Passion" were true. A week after the stories first appeared, the highly respected Catholic News Service also raised that question, quoting "a senior Vatican official close to the pope" as saying that after seeing the movie, the pope "made no comment. The Holy Father does not comment, does not give judgments on art."

I sought clarification from the Vatican spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls. His secretary, Rosangela Mancusi, responded by e-mail that "this office does not usually comment on the private activities of the Holy Father" and would neither confirm nor deny the pope's feelings about "The Passion." But she suggested that I contact "the two persons who brought the film to the Holy Father and gathered his comments" - McEveety, Gibson's producer, and Jan Michelini, the movie's assistant director.

McEveety declined to speak with me, but last week I tracked down Michelini, an Italian who lives in Rome, by phone in Bombay, where he is working on another film. As he tells it, McEveety visited Rome in early December, eager "to show the movie to the pope." Michelini, it turned out, had an in with the Vatican. "Everyone thinks it's a complex story, the pope, the Vatican and all," Michelini says. "It's a very easy story. I called the pope's secretary. He said he had read about the movie, read about the controversy. He said, 'I'm curious, and I'm sure the pope is curious too.'"

A video of "The Passion" was handed over to that secretary - Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, whom Vatican watchers describe as second in power only to the pope - on Dec. 5. The archbishop later convened a meeting with McEveety and Michelini in the pope's apartment. There, Michelini says, the archbishop quoted the pope not only as saying "it is as it was," but also as calling the movie "incredibile." Michelini was repeating the archbishop's Italian and said that "incredibile" translates as "amazing," though Cassell's dictionary defines the word as "incredible, inconceivable, unbelievable." But why quarrel over semantics? Followed by an exclamation point, it will look fabulous in an ad.

In the meantime, you've got to give Gibson's minions credit for getting the pope, or at least the aide who these days most frequently speaks in his name, to endorse their film. In keeping with every other public relations strategy for "The Passion" - Gibson has said he felt that the Holy Ghost was the movie's actual director - Michelini says that the successful campaign for the Vatican thumbs up is an example of divine providence. Jews in show business might have another word for it - chutzpah.

The New York Times

[BlessedBeGod]

"He does not make judgments on art of this kind; he leaves that to others, to experts."

But he IS an expert on the content of this art. I find it hard to believe he didn't say anything at all.

[karenbarinka]

The Catholic Church is an international joke. Again.

[ultima ratio]

The first thing to realize is that the Catholic news service which released this story is controlled by the US Bishops' Conference. These are the same people who instigated the controversy in the first place.

The second thing to realize is that this comes a full month after the Pope was initially quoted--without a statement from Rome to the contrary--which makes this new twist highly suspicious to say the least.

The third thing to realize is that the Gibson team either lied--highly unlikely--or the Pope's Secretary is lying--or the reporter who quotes the Pope's secretary is lying. Given the tensions that presently plague the Church, I will bet it is the secretary at the instigation of the US bishops.

The fourth thing to realize is that the NYTimes' Frank Bruni tonight stated that a source close to the Pope has stated privately the quote widely reported is probably accurate notwithstanding this denial.

What I find reprehensible about all this is that a film about Christ's Passion which is faithful to the Gospels and which is widely believed to have the potential to convert millions and even to convert the culture itself is NOT being encouraged by the Pope. To my way of looking at things this is like Peter's denial of Christ all over again. If this silence is allowed to stand, it will be one more indication this Pope is ineffectual. This back-tracking by Rome is appalling and unforgivable--but typical of the modernist Church.

[ultima ratio]

Here is Frank Bruni's take from an article that appeared today in the International Herald Tribune:
__________________________________________________________
Until Dziwisz’s interview with Wooden of the Catholic News Service, a news agency for Catholic publications that is affiliated with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, no Vatican official had gone on the record to confirm or deny the pope’s reported remark.
.
That Dziwisz spoke out is extremely unusual. He is closer to the pope and spends more time with him than virtually anyone else at the Vatican. Partly because of that, he almost never gives formal interviews to reporters.
.
His decision to talk to Wooden suggests that either he, the pope or other Vatican officials close to the pope had become concerned about the degree to which the pope’s imprimatur was being placed on ‘‘The Passion.’’
.
A telephone message left on Monday at Icon Productions, which is responsible for the movie, got no immediate response.
.
One prominent Roman Catholic official close to the Vatican said Monday, ‘‘I have reason to believe — and I think — that the pope probably said it.’’
.
‘‘But I think there’s some bad feeling at the Vatican that the comment was used the way it was,’’ the official added. ‘‘It’s all a little soap-operatic.’’
.

[Eva]

Peggy Noonan has an article on this subject on Opinion Journal. She says that the sect'y is now claiming that the e-mails that she received and that the Gibson spokeman recieved are not authentic. She says that they came from the Vatican e-mail server with the same address as the e-mail saying that they were not authentic. She doesn't know what to think, but is waiting for further clarification. That's it.

[sweetliberty]

"Did the Pope comment on Mel's film or not?"

I think he did, it's just that it was not meant to be official. The following link addresses the conflict surrounding your question. I haven't been through the thread yet, so apologies if someone has already posted this.

Peggy Noonan: 'Passion' and Intrigue- The story of the Vatican and Mel Gibson's film gets curiouser