"The Passion" Isn't Anti-Semitic, Says Vatican Aide

ZENIT ^ | 2004-03-11

[PeoplesRep_of_LA]

Rome's Jewish Community Wanted the Film Condemned

VATICAN CITY, MARCH 11, 2004 (Zenit.org).- A Vatican spokesman says the film "The Passion of the Christ" cannot be considered anti-Semitic without also regarding the Gospel the same way.

Joaquín Navarro-Valls made this statement in response to a request from Riccardo Di Segni, chief rabbi of Rome, who, after seeing the film Tuesday, asked that the Vatican condemn it officially.

The film "makes us go back to a period before the Second Vatican Council," the rabbi contended.

In statements published today by the Roman newspaper Il Messaggero, the director of the Vatican press office said: "The film is a cinematographic transcription of the Gospels. If it were anti-Semitic, the Gospels would also be so."

"It must not be forgotten that the film is full of 'positive' Jewish personages: from Jesus to Mary, from the Cyrenian to Veronica, including the moved crowd, etc.," Navarro-Valls stressed.

"If such a story were anti-Semitic, it would pose a problem for the Judeo-Christian dialogue, because it would be like saying that the Gospels are not historical," he said. "One must realize the seriousness of these affirmations."

That there have been no official statements does not mean that the Church condemns the film, Navarro-Valls said.

In fact, he said, the film "has nothing anti-Semitic about it. Otherwise, it would have been criticized" by the Pope and by his aides in the Holy See. The Holy Father saw the movie in December.

Navarro-Valls referred to a Vatican II declaration that pronounces itself against anti-Semitism.

"The declaration 'Nostra Aetate' was issued by the Catholic Church and, if it has not reacted in this case, it means that it has seen no reason to do so," he explained. "Otherwise, the hierarchy would have spoken out -- either the Vatican or the local episcopates."

Navarro-Valls revealed that some time ago, Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, came to Rome to make contacts in the Vatican on the issue.

"Archbishop John P. Foley, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, replied: 'I don't see anything in this film that can be considered as anti-Semitic,'" the Vatican spokesman continued.

"The secretary of the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, Father Norbert Hofmann, explained to [Foxman] that the Church has pronounced itself against anti-Semitism with the declaration 'Nostra Aetate,'" he concluded.

[Qwinn]

Wait a minute, now you're going to blame Christians for SOVIET pogroms?!

Qwinn

[PeoplesRep_of_LA]

I'd also like to be able to critique this film like we would with any other film, and not having people respond to even the slightest criticism of it like G-d himself were being blasphemed. We ARE talking about a movie.

In that respect you can't really. Sorry. Even though you'd like to be able to, its not practical. As you have noted many of the critiques of the movie---have not been about the movie. People have their dander up, at this point making subtle points about the film is like harrassing a farmer dumping soil into the Mississippi River, its futile. Its counterproductive.

The River has always been muddy-this film has always been about somebody's religion. I say, go after the "new" Republicans in Sacramento, that issue is important and everyone on the right seems to want to ignore it and your efforts are far more valueable there than picking nits about this movie.

[ambrose]

Interestingly enough, I should also point out the following:

While Gibson seems to portray Barabas in a much more negative light than he was portrayed in the Gospels, Gibson also puts a much more positive light on Simon. I believe the Gospels only portrayed him as a passerby pressed into service. In the film, he becomes much more than that. A Jew who wasn't a follower of Jesus, but was nevertheless portrayed in a extremely positive light.

[PeoplesRep_of_LA]

OK you caught me, the Communists were bad Christians.

I am hesitant to blame the Poles for the actions of recently conquoring Soviet armies. I certainly won't link anything Soviet with the practice of Christianity.

[Qwinn]

"Quite simply because millions of Jews have been murdered over the centuries, precisely due to the fact that Christians have directly blamed them for the death of your savior."

The only way this statement can be true is if you think Nazism's main problem with Jews was based in Christianity, which is absurd. Hitler posed for cameras with people dressed up as priests, sure. And then he drew up plans to assassinate the Pope.

As for the centuries that came prior, well, the total number of dead (including Jews, pagans, etc.) from the 350 years of the Inquisition is pegged at no more than 300,000, most of them in Spain, and most of that number was -not- done with the blessing of the Church but by uneducated rural peasants.

300,000 was a bad -month- under Stalin or Mao. Lenin wasn't a whole lot better. I'm just wondering when we're actually going to see a negative movie about -them- come out of Hollywood.

Now, I could mention that five of the original nine members of the original Soviet Politburo were Jewish... but that would be anti-Semitic, now wouldn't it?

Qwinn

[presidio9]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Christians are often better friends to the Jews than the Jews themselves. Don't make your religious identiy about persecution. Christianity has had nothing to do with antisemitism for centuries.

[presidio9]

Crown Heights

Crown Heights was about a black mob attacking Jews because a Jew accidently killed a little boy. It had nothing to do with Christianity.

[af_vet_1981]

The original contention was that Jews were being killed in revenge for Christ.

Yet in the late 1970s, Oberammergau began to draw the ADL's ire. Sensitized by the Holocaust, Jews, especially in Germany, turned a more skeptical eye on Passion plays. Oberammergau, in particular, had been a source of tangible pain. Adolf Hitler had visited the 1934 performance, giving it his eager blessing. "It is vital that the Passion play be continued at Oberammergau; for never has the menace of Jewry been so convincingly portrayed as in this presentation of what happened in the time of the Romans," Hitler had said. "There one sees Pontius Pilate, a Roman racially and intellectually so superior, that he stands out like a firm, clean rock in the middle of the whole muck and mire of Jewry."

To make matters worse, the Dachau concentration camp had performed its horrific duty not far from Oberammergau. While Hitler's brand of murderous anti-Semitism owed far more to scientific determinism than Christianity, he preyed on a history of faith-based persecution. When convenient, Hitler and his Nazi henchmen dredged up the anti-Semitic writings of an elderly Martin Luther to justify their hatred for Jews.

Hitler employed Oberammergau in a similar fashion. He remembered that during and immediately following the Middle Ages, enraged Passion play spectators sometimes invaded the ghettos to exact revenge on Jews for killing Jesus. He hoped Christians would react similarly after viewing the Oberammergau Passion Play. This and other Nazi overtures to the racism simmering barely below the surface of German religious culture produced mixed results, with some churchmen eagerly advocating Nazism and others opposing Hitler on Christian grounds.

Yet as Pope John Paul II acknowledged in 1997, many sincere Christians looked the other way during the Holocaust because in their estimation the Jews were getting what they deserved for rejecting Christ. "The erroneous and unjust interpretations of the New Testament regarding the Jewish people and their presumed guilt circulated for too long" and "contributed to a lulling of many consciences at the time of World War II, so that, while there were 'Christians' who did everything to save those who were persecuted, even to the point of risking their own lives, the spiritual resistance of many was not what humanity expected of Christ's disciples," the Pope told a group meeting to discuss "The Roots of Anti-Judaism in the Christian Milieu."

[OldFriend]

Not a pogrom?

[PeoplesRep_of_LA]

"Well, there you go again" (in Reagan voice.)

Yes I agree, although I would say the gospels I quoted for you were ambivalent on Barabba's "cause" for insurrection. Hale he was not. I always pictured the guy pretty much as Gibson did (except for the teeth)

[af_vet_1981]

OK you caught me, the Communists were bad Christians.

1881-1884 Pogroms sweep southern Russia, propelling mass Jewish emigration: about 2 million Russian Jews emigrated in period 1880-1920. The Russian word "pogrom" becomes international.

[presidio9]

I think the problem a lot of Christians have is with Jews habitually looking for ways that the film could have presented Jews in a more favorable light.

First, because the obvious motivation of their questions leads us right back where we started: "You think we killed your God. That's why you oppress us."

Second, because if you read the New Testament, you'd understand that Gibson actually bent over backward to present Jews in that fair light. If anything, he went easy on the Jews.

Third, and a lot of us are getting pretty tired at your inability to accept this at face value, because it doesn't matter. When we say that we don't blame the Jews for killing Christ, that we are all equally guilty for his death, that is exactly what we mean. No more. No less.

[af_vet_1981]

Crown Heights was about a black mob attacking Jews because a Jew accidently killed a little boy. It had nothing to do with Christianity.

Are you asserting that blacks, including the Reverend Al Sharpton have nothing to do with Christianity ?

[presidio9]

I'm saying that the mob mentality was "Kill the Jews! They killed a black kid!" It was not "Kill the Jews! They killed Jesus."

[ambrose]

Cosacks.

Interestingly, many of the anti-Jewish pogroms of the past were instigated by ruling elites as a means to control the peasants. The peasants might be upset about their miserable lot in lives and might even consider an insurrection - but the nobility would whip them up in an anti-semitic fever with stories that Jews were poisoning the wells, etc. So the peasants would then focus their fury on the Jews.

[Tribune7]

If it was just about religion, he wouldn't have gone after Jews who had converted to Chistianity.

Of course racial theories had a lot to do with Hitler's treatment of the Jews. But Hitler hated Christiantiy. He sought to destory it.

However, Hitler's motivations do not explain the motivations of the rabble and peasants who were only too happy to cooperate with Hitler's aims.

Well, even Jews served in the Wermacht.

The vast majority of Germans did not work in concentration camps or belong to the SS. The majority just wanted to be left alone and ignore the evil around them. Remember: First they came for the Jews . . .. etc.

[af_vet_1981]

I'm saying that the mob mentality was "Kill the Jews! They killed a black kid!" It was not "Kill the Jews! They killed Jesus."

Yes, I see your point of view.

The other point of view is that some of the mob might have been exposed to the New Testament and come away with a bias against all Jews because of the murder of Yeshua of Nazareth. I would certainly not blame genuine Christians for this but in the eyes of the victims it may have been difficult to think that the Reverend Al Sharpton was not a Christian.

[Tribune7]

Are you asserting that blacks, including the Reverend Al Sharpton have nothing to do with Christianity ?

Well, what exactly does the killing of someone during a riot have to do with Christianity?

[AHerald]

...the total number of dead (including Jews, pagans, etc.) from the 350 years of the Inquisition is pegged at no more than 300,000 ...

Ann Coulter's article pegged the number at 30,000, not 300,000.

[presidio9]

Did you bother to read the article, or did you just skim for what you were looking for?

"It is vital that the Passion play be continued at Oberammergau; for never has the menace of Jewry been so convincingly portrayed as in this presentation of what happened in the time of the Romans," Hitler had said. "There one sees Pontius Pilate, a Roman racially and intellectually so superior, that he stands out like a firm, clean rock in the middle of the whole muck and mire of Jewry."

Hitler knew that the deicide theme might have played well in the superstituous Middle Ages (when we were also burning witches, might I add), but his motivation in 1934 was an appeal to the German sense of cultural superiority.