Novak: No anti-Semitism in Gibson's 'Passion'

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.

My personal favorite is how anti-Pius sites use the fact that he didn't protest the murder of Jews in LITHUANIA as evidence against him! Lithuania! Where they had just made any religious weddings illegal! Where all Church land was being transferred to the State!

Where he did not protest, was in Germany, where they were being gassed, until near the end of the war, just as he promised to do in the accords he signed with Hitler.

But Pius didn't flick a lightning bolt from the Holy See and stop the murder of Jews in a country where Catholicism for almost all intents and purposes was outlawed!

"all intents and purposes, eh"? That would be a good trick if it were true, since about half of the German army, like the German population, would have been catholic. I'll say this one more time, for those with apparent ADD--Pius protested the gassing of infirm old catholics and protestants, and it stopped dead in it's tracks. He did not protest the gassing of ALL jews, and it did not stop dead in it's tracks.

Let me just point out that the Pope is not primarily some lame italian prince who is supposed to read Machiavelli, and defend the holy see at all costs (in this case, probably virtually no cost). He is supposed to be the Shepard of the Lord and the Voice of Jesus. He is supposed to raise his voice to protest vast moral iniquities--like he did for the infirm in Germany. Why are the infirm worthy of such high moral concern, and the jews are not?

The answer is pretty obvious, unless you are just determined to ram your head into the sand as hard as you can by considering anything other than the relevant facts. Lithuania, indeed. Dinner testimonials indeed.

The Communists always march to the beat of the Vatican's drum, we all know that.

Uh, huh. That must be why Pius the silent excommunicated them all.

He should have sent more protests to the Lithuanian government over the poor treatment of Jews! The fact that he didn't proves he didn't care!

It's so sad, it really is. The Communist propaganda tactics are obvious for anyone who cares to see it.

It's so sad, the hysterical irrelevancies Pius's defenders manage to dredge up.

It's so sad, the hysterical irrelevancies Pius's defenders manage to dredge up

You dismiss the documentation provided of the Pope being responsible for the saving of hundreds of thousands of lives as irrelevant

I'd have to see it before I can dismiss it. There is plenty of documentation of Christians saving jews. The documentation that actually ties any significant portion of that to direct action or commission by Pius don't seem to survive rigorous inspection, despite several scholarly attempts.

You dismiss the universal praise by Jewish leaders around the world as irrelevant

Yes, I dismiss dinner testimonials as irrelevant, when I have primary sources to look at.

You dismiss the Nazi's own record of hating the man as a great enemy irrelevant

That is correct, 10 pounds of hatred and a buck and a half will buy you a cup of coffee at starbucks. They didn't hate him enough to remove him from the the holy see, despite it being in axis territory, did they? Apparently not--I guess this was one of Hitler's cream puff hatings, eh?

You dismiss the conversion of the Grand Rabbi of Rome as irrelevant

Pius the Silent did make a somewhat belated move to save some jews in the vatican's own personal forced ghetto in Rome. I am not as overwhelmed as the Grand Rabbi with the universal implications of this.

To you, the fact that throughout the war, Pius was universally recognized in the press as being an anti-Hitler beacon, despite the fact that he had no secular authority or military might, and was entirely within truly hostile territory is irrelevant

Like I said--the pope is not supposed to be some mincing little machiavellian political machine peeping up only as he dares. This is the lame, lame excuse the newpapers offered for his silence. He's supposed to be the Voice of Jesus. vague-as-to-facts Hosannas from newspapers are worth just about as much as dinner testimonials to historians.

It seems to me that the only hysterical person on this thread is you

Which of the facts I have talked about here do you think are in contention? I will leave a space below for you to list the catholic SS death camp commanders who were excommunicated by Pius the Silent.

True enough. But the modern Christian interpretation is that this is not aimed at the Jews per se -- but rather all of us. That we -- who now call ourselves Christian -- would have been right in the midst of the rabble, saying the same thing. We share a collective guilt for which we are forgiven only by grace. The grace of the same One we condemned.

uh huh. The "modern" christian interpretation. Meaning the fluffy bunny coverup we've all agreed to in the aftermath of WWII. So as soon as WWII is a sufficiently distant memory we will go back to reading what it plainly says in Matthew?

Matthew 27:5 serves only as an anti-semitic verse to those who want an anti-semitic cop out.

It is not a cop out. It is exactly what I explained to you it was in my first post. The church does not deny any more that it was explicitly intended to condemn jews as it was written at a time when christianity was struggling to win converts from the orthodox jewish faith. And it reads like it condemns jews, just as it was intended to. It is, furthermore, exactly the case, as I stated, and which no one has denied, for obvious reasons, that the fundamental doctrine of salvation through the crucifixion holds that those who know OF Jesus, but do not accept him as savior are condemned, condemns specifically the central sacred teaching of the orthodox jews embodied in the Shema.

This is not an accident, and it is not a trivial point. It was the basis for the Church condemnations of jews for 1400 years up until the Holocaust--and to suggest it had little or nothing to do with the holocaust, to be charitable, unhistorical.

"Where he did not protest, was in Germany, where they were being gassed, until near the end of the war, just as he promised to do in the accords he signed with Hitler."

"Following the publication of the pastoral letter by the German Catholic bishops who met at their annual conference in Fulda in 1939, “which was one of the sharpest attacks ever made by Catholics against Nazis”, Nazis seized Catholic presses and closed printing facilities used in production and distribution of the pastoral letter. (N.Y. Times, January 14, 1939, p. 5, 3)

Perhaps there's a difference between "silent" and "silenced".

Here's a list of what he did BEFORE the war (next time before you do a rebuttal you might actually want to read the link provided to you, so you don't make an ass of yourself):

"Of the forty-four speeches Pacelli gave in Germany as Papal Nuncio between 1917 and 1929, forty denounced some aspect of the emerging Nazi ideology."

"In March 1935, he wrote an open letter to the Bishop of Cologne calling the Nazis “false prophets with the pride of Lucifer.”

"In 1935, he assailed ideologies “possessed by the superstition of race and blood” to an enormous crowd of pilgrims at Lourdes."

"In 1937, at Notre Dame in Paris, he named Germany “that noble and powerful nation whom bad shepherds would lead astray into an ideology of race.”"

"The Nazis were “diabolical,” he told friends privately. Hitler “is completely obsessed,” he said to his long-time secretary, Sister Pascalina. “All that is not of use to him, he destroys; this man is capable of trampling on corpses.” Meeting in 1935 with the heroic anti-Nazi Dietrich von Hildebrand, he declared, “There can be no possible reconciliation” between Christianity and Nazi racism; they were like “fire and water.”..."

Pope Pius XI: “Abraham is called our patriarch, our ancestor. Anti-Semitism is not compatible with the reality of this text; it is a movement which Christians cannot share. No, it is not possible for Christians to take part in anti-Semitism. We are Semites spiritually.” - The New York Times published these words for all to read (December 12, 1938, p. 1, 1). The document Pius XI was reading from was drafted by Pacelli, his closest adviser and the future Pius XII (the "silent" one). Pius XI battled against the Italian government’s implementation of laws against the Jews, (N.Y. Times, December 25, 1938, p. 1, 1) , and condemned the violence against the Church wherever Nazi influence held sway.

It was also Pacelli who drafted Pius XI’s encyclical Mit brennender Sorge, With Burning Concern, a condemnation of Germany among the harshest ever issued by the Holy See. Indeed, throughout the 1930s, Pacelli was widely lampooned in the Nazi press as Pius XI’s “Jew-loving” Cardinal, because of the more than fifty-five protests he sent the Germans as the Vatican Secretary of State."

That's all WAY before the beginning of the war, much less the end. Nice try.

Am I done? No. Let's move on to newspaper records from the first few years of the war:

“We record the Jewish people’s deep appreciation of the stand taken by the Vatican against the advance of resurgent paganism which challenges all traditional values of religion as well as inalienable human rights upon which alone enduring civilization can be found. The Congress salutes the Supreme Pontiff, symbol of the spiritual forces which under many names are fighting for the re-establishment of the rule of moral law in human society.”
- from the Jewish Congress, meeting in Geneva in January, 1939. The chairman, Dr. Nahum Goldman and the committee adopted resolutions concerning the Jewish people of Europe, one of which stated the above, as reported by the New York Times, January 17, 1939, p. 1:3) .

NY Times headline, October 28, 1939: “Pope Condemns Dictators, Treaty Violators, Racism.” at the issuance of first encyclical as Pope. Thousands of copies of this encyclical were dropped over Nazi Germany by the Allies in an effort to spur Anti-Nazi sentiment. Despite the fact that according to donh, all Nazis -were- Catholics, this effort proved unsuccessful.

New York Times editorial on December 25, 1941 (Late Day edition, p. 24): "The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas... he is about the only ruler left on the Continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice at all... the Pope put himself squarely against Hitlerism... he left no doubt that the Nazi aims are also irreconcilable with his own conception of a Christian peace."

The London Times of October 1, 1942, explicitly praises him for his condemnation of Nazism and his public support for the Jewish victims of Nazi terror. "A study of the words which Pope Pius XII has addressed since his accession," noted the Times, "leaves no room for doubt. He condemns the worship of force and its concrete manifestations in the suppression of national liberties and in the persecution of the Jewish race."

New York Times editorial on December 25, 1942 (Late Day edition, p. 16) states: "This Christmas more than ever he is a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent... Pope Pius expresses as passionately as any leader on our side the war aims of the struggle for freedom when he says that those who aim at building a new world must fight for free choice of government and religious order. They must refuse that the state should make of individuals a herd of whom the state disposes as if they were lifeless things."

Enough? I would freaking hope so.

"would be a good trick if it were true, since about half of the German army, like the German population, would have been catholic."

Aaaah I see, so now the agitprop is Catholics -were- Nazis. Uh huh. Hitler too! Reciting the novena over and over as they gassed Jews, they were. No evidence actually required on that one. I see the picture of Hitler praying posted all over anti-Pius sites to prove it... the source of the picture? Why, Hitler's own photo-op propaganda, of course! The most reliable source of all! Never mind that as Papal protests and actions against Hitler grew, by the end of the war Hitler was publically railing against the Pope, and making plans to disguise the 8th S.S. infantry as Italians and murder everyone in the Vatican, with SPECIFIC citation of the Church's protests in defense of Jews as the cause.

As for how sincere Nazi "Christianity" was, check out the following:

"Shortly after taking power, Hitler explained to some of his closest collaborators in the Reich Chancellery that, like Mussolini, he would make a formal peace with the churches:

"Why not? That will not prevent me from totally uprooting Christianity in Germany and eliminating it lock, stock and barrel. It is, however, decisive for our people whether they have the Judeo-Christian faith and it's flabby morality of sympathy, or a strong, heroic faith in god in nature, in god in one's own people, in god in one's own fate, in one's own blood.... One is either a Christian or a German. One can't be both."

- Hermann Rauschnig, "Conversations with Hitler (Zurick: Europa-Verlag, 988), 50.

You site no sources for your claims. I cite Albert Einstein, Israeli Prime Ministers, Time Magazine, the New York Times, the London Times, the United Nations archives, and various non-Catholic scholars... who's making the stronger case here?

Qwinn

I can make out a case for the opposition, though not one I really buy. And not one that would justify condemning the movie, though it might lead anyone to not like it I suppose.

The charge would be that the movie has anti-semitic elements because the early church had such elements, and elements of them therefore appear in the gospels. That this is at least possible is admitted by the present catholic church.

There was a fight against anti-Jewish heresies in the first 3 centuries (e.g. the Marcionites, who condemned the old testament), so it was a live issue at the time, one the church was aware of, and combatted. Acknowledging that there were factions within the early church esposing such views.

Nor is it the position of the church that the gospels themselves are in any way infalliable. It has maintained that they are approved by the church, not the other way around, and has consistently limited the status accorded to passages appearing only in a single gospel, as opppose to the substance they agree on. Protestant literalists might disagree on that subject, but that is a disagreement between them and the church, not between the church and secular or Jewish critics.

But to the substance of the issue. The theological defense is that all sinners are to be regarded as guilty in the death of Jesus. As a point of theological doctrine this may be important, it may be moral, it may have no trace of anti-semitism. But from a secular or ecumenical point of view, this is a freely offered doctrine, not anything it is a dictate of reason or justice for everyone to embrace regardless of their other views.

Now this creates a bit of an issue for a non-catholic who disputes this theological point, and prefers the ordinary sense of guilt and innocence in human affairs to this theological understanding of common human sinfulness. He may understand the offered defense but still not regard it as remotely sufficient.

That is, someone, say me, says "look, I didn't kill Jesus so kindly stop accusing me of having done so." The reply is, "we are all sinners, and as sinners we are all guilty of it." To which I may reasonably reply, "it is all very well for you to admit your own sinfulness. You may call that humility I suppose. You perhaps know the depth of your own heart, I don't pretend to. But when you move on to asserting *my* sinfulness, you pass the bounds of humility and enter the realm of accusation. I repeat, I didn't kill Jesus; please stop saying that I did. Kindly leave me out of your "we all". I don't recognize that "we", and I simply deny the charge."

Now something of a dialogue of the deaf can hear ensue. One is reading as a particular accusation what the other intends as a universal theological doctrine. When the latter insists, not it is perfectly universal, he thinks he is clarifying and in doing so removing all just cause for offense. Which amounts to seeing possible offense only in a particular charge. But the former is not concerned with the particularity of the charge, but that it is a charge at all. Of which he considers himself quite innocent. He is not appeased by being accused along with a whole flock of other people, including the accuser. Because to him the offense lies in being unjustly accused, not in any invidious particularity in the charge.

What this amounts to, however, is taking offense at a theological doctrine of human sinfulness. All are sinners, says that doctrine. I'm bloody well not, says the objector, or at least not that particular sin. If you find another to condemn me for that I actually have committed, we can talk about that. But of this particular misdeed I am utterly innocent.

I do not think this disagreement is unreasonable. But I see no anti-semitism in it. Instead it ought to be formulated as an ecumenical objection to a piece of theological doctrine taught by another faith. Which is a plane on which reasonable dialogue is possible, and on which both can understand the other's position. A catholic could then argue in favor of this doctrine as reflecting a profound moral understanding of failing mankind. An objector might argue against its possible misinterpretation or misuse, or indeed on principle oppose its tendency to lump the truly guilty in with the comparatively righteous. That is a productive disagreement and a basis of moral dialogue. Mutual accusations over past injustices are not.

Indeed, there is a curious and almost comical reversal in the positions people take in these matters, when the subject shifts to present human politics. Some who are completely opposed to the idea of any kind of association with past misdeeds allegedly - and no more than allegedly - committed by some adherents of a certain faith, turn right around and accuse whole faiths of such responsibility for later deeds. Others defending the doctrine of human fallenness and inherent inadequacy, turn right around and justify particular leaders as entirely righteous in their conduct.

One should laugh. The most I manage is a thin smile.

As noted previously, you are ignoring and not answering what you don't want to see. Did you read a single one of the very detailed and exhaustive listings in the replies above for anything other than a line to copy for your non-response responses?

Has anyone answered my original, rather specific as to detail, points? Has anyone denied that Pius signed the accords? That priests blessed with holy sacrament the butchers of the SS? That the church handed over records? That the church could have excommunicated participants in the holocaust, but chose not to? Is there some historian that denies any of this, or even thinks it's obscure?

Why am I obligated to wrestle with the usual piles of flack that are thrown up around Pius the XII, when no one feels obligated to wrestle with the essential issue: that, whatever the good works and motive of Pius XII, 1400 years of official doctrine prevented him from seeing that he could do just as well for the jews, as, say, for the converts, or the cripples, in hauntingly similar circumstances.

Boldly saving a few thousand, or a few hundred thousand, out of 6 million might impress you and the Rabbi of Rome, once the door's been open and the wolf let in, but it doesn't absolve you of helping to hold the door open for 1400 years previously. Or, being more specific, of being the current embodiment of that failure during xmas of 1942. The first time, loquacious intimations to the contrary offered here notwithstanding, that the Pope (the signer of the accords which first lent Hitler the legitimacy of sanction by another state, I'll remind you) was willing to seriously throw the formal weight of Jesus behind his condemnations of Hitler--long after the wolf had eaten most of the sheep.

I am, by the way, quite used to dealing with boatloads of flack on the subject of Pius doing good works for jews, when I try to bring this up. Pius was a good man, and he helped some jews. He was not calloused, cowardly or hypocritical or an anti-semite, but he was an accurate embodiment of his churches very long standing overt dotrinal inability, which I have detailed here, to see jews as worthy of the same moral regard as christians. Which is why, for whatever worthy acts he might have performed, he chose to be a firefighter, instead of a fire inspection warden to prevent the fires in the first place.

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