Posted on 01/11/2004 5:56:57 AM PST by NYer
Everybody likes Mel Gibson. Hes an award-winning actor, hes 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. Hell definitely see Gibsons film about the sufferings of Christ on the Cross. But Gibsons campaign to build a church in Malibu, California, raises some serious issues about the actors relationship with the Catholic Church.
You cant just build your own church, Johnson says. Parishes are geographical entities, set up by bishops in conformance with the Churchs 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.
Gibsons 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 actors privately funded Church of the Holy Family in Malibu is not affiliated with any diocese. So, according to Church law, its schismatic, not a Catholic church at all.
The Churchs 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. Gibsons 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 wasnt 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 its 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. Theyre largely reacting to the sloppy or even destructive way in which Vatican IIs 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 Churchs 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 cant just stop at appearances. Vatican II mandated no changes in Church doctrine whatever--the Churchs 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 didnt like personally--not just the Latin of the liturgy but, as weve 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 doesnt 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 youre doing so in full communion with the Church that really is almost 2000 years old.
So where does that leave Gibson? Well, I hope hes Catholic," Johnson says. "Wed love to have him. END
That's your loss. Do you think any Catholic had a "choice" 50 years ago? Now you've got "31 Flavors", take your pick.
Who do you blame that on? Countless Catholics have gone before us with nothing but the Traditional Mass. Some had missals, many did not. But I never heard of them complaining of being "bored".
You cant just build your own church, Johnson says.
What a stupid comment! Of course you can. You just can't make it into a parish willy nilly. I have a couple of wealthy friends who have just gone and "built their own Church" on their property.
69 posted on 01/11/2004 6:11:45 PM PST by Hermann the Cherusker
The tradition of maintaining a private chapel has a long history in the Catholic Church. The major qualifications are whether the patron can afford to keep a priest on retainer and that the priest is in good standing. The status of the Malibu church really rests upon the priest, not upon Mr. Gibson. And I don't believe the priest's name has been made public.
To NYer and Salvation: Like Land of the Irish and nickcarraway, I have never heard that Mel's father Hutton -- or Mel -- attends an SSPX church. In fact, in the one Hutton Gibson book I have read (Time Out of Mind), he seems to have serious differences with the SSPX. Post #12 certainly offers no evidence associating the Gibsons with the SSPX.
(Not that there's anything wrong with attending SSPX Masses.)
Canticle_of_Deborah and Snuffington are correct that it is Mahony whose Catholicism should be examined under a microscope. Gibson's craft is acting and film-making; examine how well he performs and directs.
And I agree with Land of the Irish, welfareworker and Snuffington that this Kevin Johnson seems to be clueless.
NYer: I think it's a bit ironic that you invoke the Ambrosian liturgy. Did you know that we would not have the Ambrosian Rite today if it were not for irregular and clandestine performance of the Ambrosian liturgy, as well as open resistance against the pope by priests and laity when Popes Nicholas II and St. Gregory VII (and others) tried to abolish the Ambrosian Rite?
In this case, the people were right to resist, disobey and defy an attempt by the pope to break a tradition of the Church handed down from time immemorial.
I went to Santa Clara University for four years and never realized I left the Catholic Church.
By this standard many bishops and religious orders in the United States are schismatic. Perhaps the majority?
We should work to undo that blasphemous misconception.
For we have nothing in commoon with them as articulated by God through His apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 6:14 and on.
That about sums it up. Regardless, the movie will stand or fall on its own merits. I'm betting that it will become one of the biggest grossers of all time, but more importantly, it will become one of the greatest evangelical films of this century.
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