Posted on 01/11/2004 5:56:57 AM PST by NYer
Everybody likes Mel Gibson. He’s an award-winning actor, he’s box-office gold and he seems like a nice guy. But because of his fame and The Passion, his forthcoming movie about Christ, a lot of his fans would like to be clear on where he stands with respect to the Catholic Church, a Dallas-based author says.
Kevin Orlin Johnson, Ph.D., is an associate of the Canon Law Society of America and a best-selling writer whose book Rosary: Mysteries, Meditations, and the Telling of the Beads includes one of the most graphic accounts of the Crucifixion ever published. He’ll definitely see Gibson’s film about the sufferings of Christ on the Cross. But Gibson’s campaign to build a church in Malibu, California, raises some serious issues about the actor’s relationship with the Catholic Church.
“You can’t just build your own church,” Johnson says. Parishes are geographical entities, set up by bishops in conformance with the Church’s laws and subject to their authority. “There are no free-lance churches in the Catholic Church. You live in a parish, and you go to its church.” Every place in California is already part of a parish, which has its own church.
Gibson’s parish, then, would be the aptly named Our Lady of Malibu on Winter Canyon Road, Johnson says, looking through a Los Angeles Catholic directory. But, according to The New York Times Magazine, the actor’s privately funded Church of the Holy Family in Malibu is not affiliated with any diocese. So, according to Church law, it’s schismatic, not a Catholic church at all.
The Church’s Code of Canon Law defines schism--separation from the Church--as “the refusal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him.” Gibson’s father, Houston, Texas resident Hutton Gibson, is an outspoken critic of the Catholic Church and a vocal adherent of the “sedevacantist” movement, so called from the Latin phrase meaning “empty seat”--their claim being that every pope since 1960 has been spurious.
While Gibson himself is said to disagree with his father on many counts, the actor has been quoted often as waxing nostalgic for the Mass said in Latin and the doctrines as they were for almost 2000 years. But, as Johnson explains in his booklet What About the Latin Mass?, the Latin Mass that traditionalists long for is nothing like 2000 years old--the early Mass was often in Greek, and Gibson probably remembers only the Latin Mass that wasn’t finalized until 1962. “So if he was born in 1956,” Johnson says, “his Latin Mass is really younger than he is himself.” That Latin version is still used in the Church by special permission, and it’s actively encouraged by authentic Catholic organizations like the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, headquartered in Elmhurst, Pennsylvania.
The difference is that these groups nurture the Latin Mass in full unity with the Catholic Church. “Fringe groups who reject Vatican II stand away from the Church and go off on their own,” he says. “They’re largely reacting to the sloppy or even destructive way in which Vatican II’s decrees were put into effect here in the United States.”
Vatican II--officially the Second Vatican Council--was convened by Pope John XXIII in 1962 and strove to clarify the Church’s activities to better serve the modern world, mandating simplification of the liturgy and the use of the local vernacular languages instead of Latin everywhere.
“Of course, you have to use the liturgy as a way to look to the substance of the Faith,” Johnson says. “You can’t just stop at appearances.” Vatican II mandated no changes in Church doctrine whatever--“the Church’s teachings are the teachings of Christ,” he says, “and therefore no human agency can add to them or take any away, and the Church never has,” although many Catholics still seem to be confused about that point.
Johnson believes that the confusion started when American bishops took Vatican II as an excuse to sweep away any part of the Church that they didn’t like personally--“not just the Latin of the liturgy but, as we’ve seen, even the most basic doctrines of human decency.” Since 1993, more than 80 percent of the Catholic bishops in the United States have been directly implicated in court cases of priestly pedophilia or in using their positions to shield such activity over the past 40 years or more, according to a study compiled by reporters Brooks Egerton and Reese Dunklin of the Dallas Morning News last year.
That corruption of the clergy makes it hard to find authentic teaching or authentic liturgy in the United States today, Johnson says, but it doesn’t mean that people can just run out and start up their own church instead. The new English Mass is perfectly legitimate and a lot closer to the simplicity of early-Christian practice--when Latin itself was the vernacular, the everyday language of the people. And with a little effort, he says, “you can get a Latin Mass celebrated regularly at your proper parish, and know that you’re doing so in full communion with the Church that really is almost 2000 years old.”
So where does that leave Gibson? “Well, I hope he’s Catholic," Johnson says. "We’d love to have him.” END
Gibson's church may prove to be far more controversial than his film. An interesting perspective, by a canon lawyer, on the extent of traditionalism.
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A little background would be helpful here. Some time ago, sinkspur had posted an uncomplemenatary article about Fr. Groeschel, written by this reporter. I did a little googling, and found out that this is no ordinary reporter; he is chairman of the Texas chapter of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists.
So, when he refers to all of these cases as "pedophilia," (which some of them undoubtedly are) instead of "homosexual," (which most of them undoubtedly are) recognize that he may have an agenda in so doing.
And with a little effort, he says, "you can get a Latin Mass celebrated regularly at your proper parish, and know that you're doing so in full communion with the Church that really is almost 2000 years old."
Ha!
If it were that simple, I don't think we'd have schismatic groups setting up their own chapels.
No, your memory is not askew ;-D
According to Orthodox News (http://www.orthodoxnews.netfirms.com/Mel%20Gibson%20Is.htm)
"Gibson and his son, the star of blockbuster films like "Braveheart" and "Lethal Weapon," are practitioners of an ultraconservative Catholic movement known as traditionalism. The small splinter group seeks to revive orthodox practices that were abandoned several centuries ago by mainstream Catholicism.
The actor has been especially forthcoming about his religious affiliation recently. Gibson is building a traditionalist church on a 9,300-square-foot complex in Malibu, Calif., for about 70 members, the Times said. He is serving as the director, chief executive officer and sole benefactor of the church, which intends to conduct its Sunday Mass entirely in Latin. The property was purchased by a church group called Holy Family."
No need for Roger Cardinal Mahoney to feel threatened ... lol.
What's wrong with that? Monsignor Perle says it's OK.
I'm missing something. Where does your quote mention that Gibson attends SSPX Masses?
For an associate of the Canon Law society, this jerk is clueless.
So, according to this offer, all churches run by Jesuits, Benedictines, Franciscans, Carmelites, etc. is schismatic? According to this writer, while I attended Santa clara University and often went to Mass there, I was a schismatic for four years? I never realized or intended to that. Everyone at Notre Dame, Boston College, Georgetown, etc, is a schismatic?
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