Posted on 11/03/2003 8:27:06 AM PST by Brian S
November 3, 2003
BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
When a private viewing of Mel Gibson's ''The Passion of Christ'' was completed at a Washington hotel 10 days ago, my wife and I along with a dozen other invited guests were emotionally frozen into several minutes of silence. The question is whether public presentation of the film four months hence shall be welcomed by tumultuous demonstrations outside the theaters.
Hollywood actor Gibson, who spent more than $25 million of personal funds to produce ''The Passion,'' has finally found a distributor to begin its showing Feb. 25 -- Ash Wednesday. A campaign by some Jewish leaders to radically edit the film or, alternatively, prevent its exhibition appears to have failed. This opens the door to religious conflict if the critics turn their criticism into public protest.
That is not because of the content of ''The Passion.'' As a journalist who has actually seen what the producers call ''a rough cut'' of the movie and not just read about it, I can report it is free of the anti-Semitism that its detractors claim. The Anti-Defamation League and its allies began attacking the movie on the basis of reading a shooting script without having actually seen the film. The ADL carries a heavy burden in stirring religious strife about a piece of entertainment that, apart from its artistic value, is of deep religious significance for believing Christians.
The agitation peaked in early August when New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind told a rally: ''This film is dangerous for Jews all over the world. I am concerned that it would lead to violence against Jews.''
Hikind had not viewed the film. After an ADL representative viewed a rough cut, longtime ADL director Abraham Foxman on Aug. 11 declared the movie ''will fuel hatred, bigotry and anti-Semitism.'' Foxman called on Gibson to change his film so that it would be ''free of any anti-Semitic message.''
This renews the dispute over the Jewish role in the crucifixion of Christ, the source of past Jewish persecution.
''The Passion'' depicts in two hours the last 12 hours of Jesus Christ's life. To watch him beaten, scourged and crucified so graphically is a shattering experience for believing Christians and surely for many non-Christians as well. It makes previous movie versions of the crucifixion look like Hollywood fluff. Gibson wants to avoid an ''R'' rating, but violence is not what bothers Foxman.
Foxman and other critics complain that the Jewish high priest Caiphas and a Jewish mob are demanding Christ's execution, but that is straight from the Gospels.
Father C. John McCloskey, director of the Catholic Information Center in Washington, told me: ''If you find the Scriptures anti-Semitic, you'll find this film anti-Semitic.''
Complaints by liberal Bible scholars that ''The Passion'' is not faithful to Scripture are rejected by the Vatican. Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, who heads the Congregation for the Clergy, called the film ''a triumph of art and faith,'' adding: ''Mel Gibson not only closely follows the narrative of the Gospels, giving the viewer a new appreciation for those biblical passages, but his artistic choices also make the film faithful to the meaning of the Gospels.''
As for inciting anti-Semitism, Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos contended ''the film does nothing of the sort.'' This Vatican official is denying that Gibson violates the 1965 papal document Nostra Aetate, which states: ''What happened in [Christ's] passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today.''
No such libel is committed by ''The Passion,'' where the mob's Jewish identity is not specified. As a Catholic convert, I was taught we are all sinners who share in guilt for the crucifixion.
At the heart of the dispute over ''The Passion'' is freedom of expression. Liberals who defended the right to exhibit Martin Scorsese's ''The Last Temptation of Christ,'' which deeply offended orthodox Christians, now demand censorship of ''The Passion of Christ.'' As a result, Abe Foxman and his allies have risked stirring religious tensions over a work of art.
Too late for what? I think the war dragged on for a few more years. BTW, have you come up with any creditable sources for your fantasies yet?
What dose anything you have posted have to do with the fact that Hitler was in no way recognizable as a Catholic?
Ah, after about 10 or 15 repetitions, someone actually notices. Good for you.
We have also demonstrated that you mischaracterize evidence. While you also sidestep issues, but I'm willing to let that pass for now.
Good plan, since you'd fall on your face trying to demonstrate this.
Now, moving forward, do you acknowledge that Pius XII used his papal authority to save a large number of Jews?
Sure. Do you acknowledge that he saved most of the jews he did save through stealth and silence? Such as by forging Holy See citizenship papers? Which would make a great deal of sense, since he drafted a document between the church and Hitler to shut about the jews, along with every other politically sensitive issue?
I'm not your hand puppet, make your point if you have one, without the condescending socratic dialog, if you don't mind.
Oh, let me think--I've got it: a couple of dozen quotes from Hitler's speeches in which a affirms the nazi intention to carry out the agenda of the Catholic church. Dozens of private quotes in which he contrasts his own catholicism with lutheranism, & various other similar remarks. Several extracts from respected autobiographies. Uncontested references to the undisputed fact that he was born, and spent most of his life as a baptized catholic. As for Hitler being "unrecognizable" as a Catholic, I'd remind you that the Pope who genocided the anabapists was a catholic, and so was Torquiemada.
So, since Bill Clinton talked about being a Christian, carried a Bible and quoted from it, was born one, was seen singing in the choir, and went to church every Sunday, does that mean he was a Christian? Even though he didn't lead a "Christian life"?
Face it, even IF your quotes exist (links to them would be a nice change), tyrants have misused religion for political purposes for millennia.
And since you have, shall we say, "moved away" from your "Pius the Silent" slur, can we now take it that you admit the numbers posted (around 800,000) are true?
Well said.
In order to be rude, I guess, since it helps your argument not an iota. If Hitler can be forgiven his sins, according to catholic doctrine, than, contrary to what has been argued here--nothing that he did could have put him permananently, irredemably outside the church.
It's not a point of being born or babtized a Catholic. It is a point of how you live your life and practice your faith. Hitler wasn't Catholic-you are not Catholic,
Based on what? My criticism of the church? Church officials, including Popes, criticize the church all the time, without being automatically tossed out. Explain to me what, that you have observed, puts me outside the church? Nothing, of course. You are just sucking air here, looking desperately for something to be on about, other than to defend against the charges brought.
regardless of what is on paper or on church roles. It's not a matter of a label but a state of being.
Hitler was sufficiently serious about catholicism to have been a catholic choir boy. Some statements critical of the catholic church do not, contrary to some overboard public opinions expressed here, automatically exclude anyone from the church. As you just explained regarding the doctrine of salvation. Neither does being a political opponent of the Pontiff's. Neither does expressing loopy natural philosophies of various brands. Here is a snippet from The History Place that's fairly typical of most of his autobiographies that cover this subject:
For young Adolf, the move to Lambach meant an end to farm chores and more time to play. There was an old Catholic Benedictine monastery in the town. The ancient monastery was decorated with carved stones and woodwork that included several swastikas. Adolf attended school there and saw them every day. They had been put there in the 1800's by the ruling Abbot as a pun or play on words. His name essentially sounded like the German word for swastika, Hakenkreuz.
Young Hitler did well in the monastery school and also took part in the boys' choir. He was said to have had a fine singing voice. Years later Hitler would say the solemn pageantry of the high mass and other Catholic ceremonies was quite intoxicating and left a very deep impression.
As a young boy he idolized the priests and for two years seriously considered becoming a priest himself. He especially admired the Abbot in charge, who ruled his black-robbed monks with supreme authority. At home Hitler sometimes played priest and even included long sermons.
That's a good deal more passion for the church than my sister, for example, ever displayed--but no one is threatening her status as a catholic--just as no one is threatening my status just because I haven't been to mass in a coon's age. Apparently, because no one feels--I might suggest, justifiably--embarassed about it--unlike the case with Hitler.
Should a serial murderer go free because he's not being prosecuted for all the people he's killed?
BS polemikos, BS. Because you haven't the apparent capacity or willingness to stand up the the charges and debate in open court, you hope that cherry-picking my arguments and acting like an condescending schoolmarm will give you an out. Put up or bug off. Did or did not PIUS XII engineer the accords between the Holy See and Hitler which was an explicit promise to shut the hell up--all by itself making PIUS the Silent an appropriate sobriquiet whether it was the best strategy for saving jews (which I doubt) or not? Did or did not PIUS excommunicate participants in the "FINAL SOLUTION"? Did or did not the Pope tell church officials such as the prelates of Slovokia, Father Coghlin in the US, and the priests attending the German army to stand down? How hard can this question be? Whether you think it was a good plan or not--he was plainly silent on some very big issues.
Are you paying no attention at all? Of course it did not. Much of catholic germany was anti-semitic and anti-jewish to the bone, including participants in the Jewish solution, including high ranking clergy in Slovokia. The church supplied the SS with her marriage and birth documents to help ferret out jews, unless they were jews who'd converted, in which case the church kindly refrained. As I have cited, for those who actually engage in arguments by absorbing what their deponents say.
It is, in fact, as thoughoughly documented in the first and second of my long list of cites, absurd to think that a country that was 90% avowed christians could have foully, pornographically, murdered 6 million of their brethern who were jews, in their midst, unless the "jewish solution" just didn't seem so extraordinary a response to the "jewish problem".
They tell you no such thing.
The church did much to save the Jews as you have acknowledged. The Pope did much to save the Jews as you have acknowledged.
Some serial murderers are not doubt loving parents. Does that mean we should let them go free?
The Church today as part of the Jubilee year made an effort to apologise for any and all actions it ever failed in to live up to the standards it should have.
Indeed. In the "We Remember" document. And the church almost, but, not quite, will give up it's commitment to jews being second class citizens of God's world. See here, near the bottom for details:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/vat_hol1.htm
Could it have done more or differently? The lense of hindsight is often used by bigots.
It takes no hindsite to read Dominus Iesus or Nostra Aetate, and see that jews are still, for all the self-flagilation of "We Remember" doctrinely deficient in catholic eyes.
The Church today is one of the primary efforts of charity in the world.
So is the communist party. "from each according to his efforts, to each according to their need." Does that mean we shouldn't talk about the 50 million or so that Stalin and Mao killed? Or the intellectual birthmother of those genocides: Karl Marx?
The message of Christ from the Church he founded is undiminished after 2,000 years. The church is still a light to those in darkness. Why don't you pick up a catechism and a Bible and look again. Let go of the hatred. God's love and mercy are infinate. That is why Hitler could have been forgiven. It's also how you can heal yourself from your bitterness.
God gave us bitterness for a reason, which the jews understand. The catholic roll in the holocaust should be painted on the side of every catholic church, for about as long as anti-jewish policy was prominent in the church: about the next 1400 years. Failing that, I believe I'll continue to bring it up any time I get a convenient chance.
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