But Is Mel Gibson Catholic?

Pangaeus ^

[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

[Canticle_of_Deborah]

Mahony and several other US Bishops are in de facto schism.

Many dioceses allege to be in union with Rome but practice whatever they please. Then there's the SSPX who pledge loyalty, practice Catholicism and are at least honest about their disobedience to Rome in certain conditions.

At least I know the SSPX are Catholic. I'll go there before I set foot in the TajMahony.

[drstevej]

***I can't imagine him submitting his movie to the Vatican if he thought the chair of Peter was unoccupied.***

Good observation

[B Knotts]

I don't disagree, particularly in the spirit of the thing. I was just wondering if he was kind of getting by on a technicality.

[sydney smith]

Are you Milanese? Was the Ambrosian rite the rite of the western world? Anyway it's not the "rite" that is the only issue. Lex orandi, lex credendi. You don't understand yet. When you mature in the Faith I think you will.

[Canticle_of_Deborah]

If you had only two choices for Sunday Mass, an SSPX Mass or a Mass at the TajMahony complete with dancing girls, hand holding and bongo drums, which would you attend?

[Coleus]

Yes, that is true; however, only a priest under a bishop can perform the sacraments. In Gibson's case, the priest can not perform sacraments since he's not in concert with the Holy See.

[Salvation]

The references to the SSPX were in one of the first threads about Gibson and his movie.

But then should we believe everything we read in a thread?

[Salvation]

**Not likely, many bishops have barred it from their dioceses, and the number of staff who actually know how to say traditional mass is pretty small.**

Where are you getting this information? And speaking in generalities, too? MANY bishops??

I can speak for this diocese and there are several parishes where I could attend a Latin Mass. I choose not to.

[Salvation]

"Lead us not into temptation, but deliever us from evil. Amen"

Your mouth has you going down the wrong path here, friend. Only God can be the judge of these people. You can not speak knowingly about the state of their souls -- unless you are their confessor, and then you would be breaking the seal of confession.

Clean up your language, please.

[Land of the Irish]

In researching Mel Gibson's mass attendance, no one resource specifically used the acronym SSPX.

So why did you imply it in your response to Salvation? Ever heard of SSPV or the the others?

[welfareworker]

Where are you getting this information? And speaking in generalities, too? MANY bishops??

According to ecclesiadei.org, 120 dioceses have at least one traditional mass. That leave 57 dioceses with exactly zero traditional masses allowed. And even in those with the traditional mass, e.g. Pittsburgh, they are few and far apart. In the 6 county Pittsburgh diocese , there is a grand total of one parish with the traditional mass.

[ultima ratio]

Here is what you're missing. Refusal to obey authority is always contingent on what is commanded. No authority has the right to command someone to do what is evil--for example, to do something enormously damage to the faith. Not even a pope may command this. If he does, he must be disobeyed. This is why Canon Law explicitly exempts from punishment anyone morally inculpable.

[ultima ratio]

damage=damaging

[rogator]

"I can speak for this diocese and there are several parishes where I could attend a Latin Mass. I choose not to."

The USCCB link at the archdiocesan web site lists only one Sunday Latin Mass in the diocese, the 8:00 AM Mass at St. Birgetta's. If you know of several, I would sure like to know where they are.
By the way, no adjacent diocese north of Sacramento has a regularly scheduled Sunday Latin Mass according to this link.

[nmh]

Does anyone really care?

Also what diffrence does it make? ZILCHO! Either the movie is accurate or it is not. This has nothing to do with his "religion".

[ultima ratio]

Hi, all. Just dropped in for a short visit. Anything about this film intrigues me. It has God's "fingerprints" all over it.

[Tantumergo]

"In Gibson's case, the priest can not perform sacraments since he's not in concert with the Holy See."

A lot of people seem to be jumping to this conclusion, but it is not necessarily the case.

There is nothing to stop anybody building a chapel anywhere they want to. The Catholic Church in my country survived through penal times because private families had chapels built in their homes and estates.

Some of these continue to be used now for Traditional Masses where the local bishop or priest is not prepared to make diocesan Churches available (I'm sure they fail to see the irony of the situation!)

Gibson could quite feasibly be inviting priests in good standing to come and say the old Mass at his chapel. I know several orthodox N.O. priests who will travel miles to say the old Mass where there is a need to be met.

Until someone finds out the facts about which priest(s) are serving the chapel, no-one should jump to any conclusions about whether he is "schismatic" or not.

[drstevej]

I am anxious to see the film and trust it will be used of the Lord. I do respect Mel's courage and perseverance in bringing it about.

[Domestic Church]

Gibson might well be canonized in the future...I wouldn't want to have to explain to St.Peter that "Mel Gibson is NOT Catholic".

[ultima ratio]

I care. By their fruits you will know them. Gibson is a traditional Catholic. The film is the fruit of his profound faith--a faith nurtured by Tradition. What, besides scandals and equivocation, have been the fruits of the Novus Ordo Church?