http://www.amconmag.com/2004_04_26/feature.html
> The Passion and Its Enemies > The campaign against the movie bespeaks deeper animus. > > By Patrick J. Buchanan > > At the Latin Mass at old St. Mary?s, the church was packed and the line outside the > confessional was unusually long. ?The Passion,? I thought to myself. And so it was. > ?Worshipers Take ?Passion? Back to Church,? was the headline in that Sunday?s > Washington Times. The sub-head ran: ?Mel Gibson?s film is inspiring parishioners to > join congregations, go ?back to the faith.?? > > Thirty million Americans have seen ?The Passion of the Christ.? According to Gallup, > two-thirds of the nation intends to see the film in a theater or on DVD. By Good > Friday, the crowds should be enormous. For this movie is a religious experience, a > masterpiece, a work of art of immense power. The images of Christ and his Mother > are burned forever into the imaginations of those who see it. ?It is as it was,? > said the > Holy Father in Rome. > > Though it is a Catholic film that faithfully replicates the Sorrowful Mysteries of > the > Rosary, the Stations of the Cross, the Seven Last Words, with allusions to the > Eucharist and the war between Satan and the Mother of God, as Tom Piatak writes in > Chronicles, evangelical Christians are as moved as traditional Catholics. It is an > ecumenical moment. For once, Christians have come together, not to denounce some > blasphemous filth funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, but in celebration > and praise of an inspired work of art. > > And despite the dire warnings of the Anti-Defamation League, not one synagogue has > been torched, nor one American Jew assaulted. Yet still the attacks come. Not since > D.W. Griffith portrayed the Klan as heroic defenders of white womanhood in ?The > Birth of a Nation? has a movie been so reviled. > > ?[A] wasted exercise in sadomasochism,? writes Al Neuharth. ?A repulsive > masochistic fantasy, a sacred snuff film? that uses ?classically anti-Semitic > images,? > rants Leon Wieseltier in the New Republic. ?A sickening death trip,? says David > Denby in the New Yorker. ?It is sick,? writes James Carroll in the Boston Globe, ?a > blood libel against the Jewish people,? echoes Robert Scheer of the Los Angeles > Times, ?Jew-baiting,? says William Safire in the New York Times, ?fascistic,? agrees > Richard Cohen in the Washington Post. Daniel Goldhagen, author of A Moral > Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled > Duty of Repair, calls ?The Passion? ?a sadomasochistic, orgiastic display that > demonizes Jews as it degrades those who revel in viewing the horror.? Gibson, > Goldhagen writes, ?restores a blood-drenched Christian culture of death.? > > And here is the New York Times? Frank Rich, ten days after the Ash Wednesday > opening: > > With its laborious buildup to its orgasmic spurtings of blood and other > bodily fluids, Mr. Gibson?s film is constructed like nothing so much as > a porn movie, replete with slo-mo climaxes and pounding music for the > money shots. Of all the ?Passion? critics, no one has nailed its artistic > vision more precisely than Christopher Hitchens, who ... called it a > homoerotic ?exercise in lurid masochism? for those who ?like seeing > handsome young men stripped and flayed alive over a long period of > time.? > > That ?The Passion of the Christ? is loved by Christians and loathed by such as these > is a measure of the breadth of our religious divide. > > But why all this venom against a movie these writers knew by then that millions of > Christians had taken to their hearts? To vent, to insult, to provoke? Having failed > to > have the film censored, banned, or boycotted, some are now crossing a forbidden > frontier to commit hate crimes against Christianity. They have begun to attack the > Gospels as responsible for the Holocaust. > > In a Washington Post column titled ?Gibson?s Blood Libel,? Charles Krauthammer > links the crucifixion story to ?a history of centuries of relentless, and at times > savage, > persecution of Jews in Christian lands.? For 2000 years, he says, the Catholic Church > taught that ?the Jews were Christ killers.? Only at Vatican II did Rome take > responsibility for the ?baleful history? that came out of the ?central story? of the > Gospels. > > The blood libel that this story [of the crucifixion] affixed upon the > Jewish people had led to countless Christian massacres of Jews and > prepared Europe for the ultimate massacre?6 million Jews > systematically murdered in six years?in the heart, alas, of a Christian > continent. It is no accident Vatican II occurred just two decades after > the Holocaust, indeed in its shadow. > > But Krauthammer stands truth on its head. Not until the ideas of Rousseau, Darwin, > Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud had poisoned the soul of Europe and Christianity had lost > the continent did Hitler and Stalin come to power to work their evil will upon > Christians and Jews. Hitler learned his hatreds in Viennese gutters, not Catholic > schools. Speaking of blood libels, has there been one greater than Krauthammer?s > accusation that the Gospel of Jesus Christ paved the way to Auschwitz? > > Krauthammer echoes Richard Cohen who says the movie is ?anti-Semitic ... in the > way portions of the New Testament are?an assignment of blame that culminated in > the Holocaust.? > > Both columns are of a piece with the slanders of Pius XII. Credited by one Jewish > historian with saving 800,000 Jews, praised by the Rabbi of Rome, publicly mourned > on his death by Golda Meir, Pius XII, too, has fallen victim to the blood libel that > he > was ?Hitler?s Pope.? > > Krauthammer and Cohen have picked up the new line advanced by Eli Wiesel, that > Nazis and Christians in the Holocaust were one and the same. > > [A]ll the Jews were victims, and all the killers were Christians. They > didn?t become killers in a vacuum. They emerged from a certain > civilization, teaching, and tradition of hate. They?re an example of what > happens to people who learn to hate, and that?s a Christian problem. > > Krauthammer repeatedly invokes Nazi analogies. Mel Gibson?s defense of his film > about Christ reminds him of Leni Riefenstal?s defense of her films about Hitler. He > calls Gibson?s interpretation of the Gospels ?spectacularly vicious.? Why ?vicious?? > Because Gibson places the High Priest Caiaphas at the scourging, and this cannot be > found in the Gospels. > > But this is to cavil on the ninth part of a hair. According to Mark 15:31-32, ?the > chief > priests? were mocking Christ at the foot of the cross, even as he was dying: > > In like manner also the chief priests mocking, said with the scribes one > to another: He saved others; himself he cannot save. Let Christ the King > of Israel come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe. > > Does Krauthammer contend that Caiaphas was not central to the plot to have Christ > killed? If so, his argument is not with Mel but with Matthew 26:2-3: > > Then were gathered together the chief priests and ancients of the people > into the court of the high priest, who was called Caiaphas: And they > consulted together, that by subtlety they might apprehend Jesus and put > him to death. > > Something not clear here, Charles? And if Caiaphas conspired to kill Jesus, is it > artistic > injustice to have him observe the scourging he had brought about? > > What motive did the religious establishment have? Consider these lines from Matthew > 23, spoken by Christ right in the face of the Pharisees who had repeatedly sought to > entrap him: > > Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you devour the > houses of widows, praying long prayers. For this you shall receive the > greater judgment .... Blind guides who strain out a gnat and swallow a > camel .... Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you > are like to whited sepulchres, which outwardly appear to men beautiful, > but within are full of dead men?s bones, and of all filthiness .... So you > outwardly indeed appear to men just; but inwardly you are full of > hypocrisy and iniquity .... Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees ... you are > the sons of them that killed the prophets.You serpents, you generation > of vipers, how will you flee from the judgment of hell? > > This probably did not go down all that well at the Temple. And Jesus acted upon his > words (Matthew 21:12-13): > > And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold > and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the > moneychangers, and the chairs of them that sold doves. And he saith to > them: It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but > you have made it a den of thieves. > > The Scribes, Pharisees, and chief priest had every reason to hate Jesus and want him > dead. Is this so difficult to understand? And did not the mob assembled by the high > priests seek the death of Christ? > > Here is Matthew 27:22-25: > > Pilate saith to them: What shall I do then with Jesus that is called > Christ? They all said: Let him be crucified. The governor said to them: > Why, what evil hath he done? But they cried out the more, saying: Let > him be crucified. And Pilate seeing that he prevailed nothing, but that > rather a tumult was made; taking water washed his hands before the > people saying: I am innocent of the blood of this just man; look you to > it. And the whole people answering, said: His blood be upon us and > upon our children. > > Krauthammer is also upset with the appearances of Satan in the film. ?Satan appears > four times. Twice, this sinister, hooded, androgynous embodiment of evil is found ... > where? Moving among the crowd of Jews.? > > But Satan first appears besides Jesus as he undergoes the agony in the Garden of > Gethsemane, alone. When Satan appears in the crowd, it is to observe Christ > suffering, his scourging at the pillar by Romans, or to stare across at his Mother as > she watches her Son carrying the cross up Calvary. If Satan is in a crowd, it has to > be a Jewish crowd. Jerusalem was a Jewish city. The only Romans are Pilate and his > soldiers. > > As for the repellent term ?Christ killers,? Krauthammer mouths myths he must have > heard down at shul. As a cradle Catholic, I never heard this term until a Jewish > friend > told me this was what we Catholics were taught in our schools. But this crude > blasphemous phrase is not one devout nuns of the 1940s or 1950s or Catholics of the > Holy Name Society would ever use. It is a term ascribed to us by those who never > knew us. > > Krauthammer refers to the ?baleful history? of the Crucifixion story. What did the > Crucifixion give mankind? Salvation, the opening of the gates of heaven, Western > civilization, the greatest art, architecture, music, painting, sculpture, cathedrals > and > churches in history, the idea that all men are children of God and that each has an > innate worth and dignity, which puts limits on the power of any state?and an end to > slavery. > > No Cross, no Christianity. No Christianity, no West. No West, no freedom, no human > rights, no America. Where does Krauthammer think our civilization and culture came > from? > > In her column ?Hating the Jews,? Mona Charen accuses Gibson of seeding ?his film > with images of Jewish guilt and perfidy.? But how can one tell the story of how > Christ was betrayed by Judas for 30 pieces of silver, how the scribes and Pharisees > and high priest plotted against Him, how the crowd cried ?Give us Barabas,? and ?Let > Him be crucified!?, how Pilate cravenly capitulated?without having a touch of ?guilt > and perfidy?? > > What is the attachment of columnists in 2004 to a high priest of the first century > A.D.? Why the Caiaphas Defense Fund? Is it not possible to accept that after Jesus > berated the scribes and Pharisees in front of the people they might want to kill > him? Is > it not possible that the high priest would plot the death of so charismatic and > threatening a figure? > > What these writers are saying is that it is fine to say Pilate ordered the > crucifixion, and > the Romans did it, but anti-Semitic to say Caiaphas was the prime mover in the > Passover plot. Yet, for Caiaphas to be innocent, the Gospels must be myths or lies. > My film is anti-Semitic only if the Gospels are anti-Semitic, says Gibson. > > Exactly the point, says Stanley Kauffmann of the New Republic: ??The Passion? is > anti-Semitic, because the Gospels themselves are anti-Semitic?in the sense of fixing > Jewish responsibility for the Crucifixion.? Abe Foxman agrees: ?the Gospels, if taken > literally, can be very damaging.? But what if the Gospels ?taken literally? are true? > > To Boston University?s Paula Fredriksen, an apostate Catholic and convert to > Judaism, ?anti-Semitism has been integral to Christianity.? In the Toronto Globe & > Mail, Donald Akinson writes, ?To film a literal version of the Gospel of John is like > filming a faithful version of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.? > > With folks who believe this, dialogue seems pointless. For they are saying that > Christianity is anti-Semitic at its root and either we rewrite the Gospels to > eradicate > any ?perfidy? by the Jewish authorities who delivered Christ to Pilate, or we are > colluding in anti-Semitism and responsible for its consequences. If being faithful to > the Christian imperative to tell the Gospel truth about the suffering, death, and > resurrection of Christ is, to non-Christians and post-Christians, to spread > anti-Semitism, our conflict is irreconcilable. > > Yet a point bears repeating. Though Jewish leaders did conspire to put Jesus to > death, > this does not mean, has never meant, that all Jews were or are culpable in his death, > or even that the Jewish establishment knew Christ was the Son of God. Common > sense suggests they did not believe it?as does Christ himself from the Cross, > ?Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.? > > And while many whose hatred for ?The Passion? knows no bounds are Jewish, other > Jewish writers?Michael Medved, Don Feder, Matt Drudge, Paul Gottfried?have > urged their co-religionists and ethnic kinsmen to control the hysteria. Rabbi Daniel > Lapin of Toward Tradition accuses Foxman and the ADL of ?driving a wedge > between American Jews and Christians.? But Rabbi Lapin seems a voice crying in the > wilderness. For Ms. Charen puts ?The Passion? in the context of the following events: > an assault on a Kiev synagogue by thugs yelling ?Kill the Kikes,? the desecration of > a > Jewish cemetery in Greece, the French Ambassador in London blurting out at a dinner > party that Israel is a ?shitty little country.? > > But is it really fair to include Gibson?s film in this litany? Is it wise to keep up > this > vendetta against a movie that Christians have embraced, when millions of these > Christians give uncritical loyalty to Israel? > > Safire rails that ?The Passion? is the ?bloodiest, most brutal example of sustained > sadism ever presented on the screen ... reveling in savagery to provoke outrage and > cast blame ...? > > The villains at whom the audience?s outrage is directed are the actors? > playing bloodthirsty rabbis and their rabid Jewish followers. This is the > essence of the medieval ?passion play? preserved in pre-Hitler Germany > at Oberammergau, a source of the hatred of all Jews as ?Christ killers.? > > But this is nonsense. The only people who come away from this film in ?outrage? are > those who went into it in outrage. Even Foxman, who slipped into a preview, > acknowledges as much: > > As the lights came up, the silence was etched with stifled sobs and > tears. The 3,000 Christian pastors, leaders, students and others who > attended the preview of the film?s graphic portrayal of the events > leading up to the Crucifixion were visibly moved by the images that > brought them closer than they may have ever been to bearing witness to > the Passion of Jesus. > > Does this sound like the ?kind of sentiment we would expect from Christians ready to > act on their latent anti-Semitism?? asks Dr. William Donohue of the Catholic League. > That brings us to the heart of the matter. Though we all see the same movie, we hear > and see different messages. Where they see Caiaphas, perfidy, and anti-Semitism, we > see Christ, his suffering, and what salvation cost. As Bruce Anderson writes in the > Spectator, Christians do not focus on the characters that so captivate Safire, > Charen, > and Krauthammer. > > [T]he horror does not come from the artist?s imagination. It comes > from the self-sacrifice of the son of God who, after preaching to and > living among the poor and the outcast, endured a felon?s humiliating > death. Mocked for His pretensions to kingship, He revealed the nature > of His Kingdom by embracing His Cross. > > For centuries, Christians have read the Gospel story of the passion and death of > Christ > in Holy Week. Yet, never has there been a pogrom in America. America is not the > Russia of Alexander III. But if these writers truly believe millions of Christians > have > sat through two hours of endless ?Jew-baiting? and failed to recognize it, what does > that tell us about what they think of our intelligence, our sensitivity, our decency? > > Safire twice refers to Oberammergau and calls it a Jew-baiting passion play > ?preserved in pre-Hitler Germany, a source of the hatred of all Jews as ?Christ > killers.?? The famous Oberammergau passion play dates back to 1633 and the Thirty > Years War when villagers in this tiny Alpine town were spared from the Black Plague > and vowed to give thanks to their God by producing a play on his passion and death, > once every ten years. It is a six-hour thing of beauty known to Catholics worldwide, > few of whom have ever seen it. Were that play a cause of the Holocaust, why was > there no Holocaust in the centuries when Catholic kings ruled the Holy Roman > Empire? Why did it happen only after the Hitler came to power and Europe was > convulsed in the worst war in its history, 300 years after the play was first > performed? Blaming a six-hour play, put on once every ten years, by 2,000 amateur > actors, in a tiny town of 5,000 buried in the Tyrolean Alps, for Hitler?s pogrom > against the Jews is so preposterous it calls up the old adage: ?Anti-Catholicism is > the > anti-Semitism of the intellectuals.? > > To Safire, Catholicism leads straight to the Holocaust. The line from Matthew, ?Let > his blood be upon us and our children,? he writes, has led to ?millenniums of > persecution, scapegoating and ultimately mass murder that flowed partly from its > malign repetition.? This was ?finally addressed by the Catholic Church after the > defeat > of Nazism.? > > In 1965?s historic Second Vatican Council during the papacy of Pope > Paul VI, the church decided that while some Jewish leaders and their > followers had pressed for the death of Jesus, ?still, what happened in > his passion cannot be charged against all Jews, without distinction, then > alive, nor the Jews of today.? > > That was a sea change in the doctrinal interpretation of the Gospels, and > the beginning of major interfaith progress > > This statement is historically and patently false. Nostra Aetate, the Vatican II > document to which Safire refers, is not any ?sea change in the doctrinal > interpretation > of the Gospels.? It is a reaffirmation of traditional Catholic teaching for the > benefit of > Jewish groups that requested it. > > Christianity and the Church have always taught it was our sins that put Christ on the > Cross. As Legionary Father Thomas Williams, dean of the school of theology at > Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University in Rome, a consultant to Gibson?s film, > tells > the National Catholic Register: > > [T]he fathers of the Second Vatican Council didn?t see themselves as > reversing any prior teachings on this question [of Jewish responsibility > for Christ?s death]. The council categorically reaffirmed perennial > Catholic teaching that all of humanity?s sins, and the sins of Christians > in particular, are responsible for Christ?s death, as stated, inter alia, in > the catechism of the Council of Trent. > > Gibson drives the point home with brutal force as he plays the Roman soldier who > hammers the first nail into the palm of Christ. His message is reaffirmed in the > penultimate scene described in America by Lloyd Baugh, S.J., > > In a physically static but morally dynamic representation of the Pieta, > Mary stares not at the dead Jesus but directly into the camera, and > therefore directly at the viewer .... This shot, lasting a long 20 seconds, > invites the viewers to enter the narrative and assume their responsibility, > as sinners, for the death of this Jesus, who the film repeatedly makes > clear has died for our sins. Gibson here is saying, more strongly than > any other director has done, that it is not the Jewish people who killed > Jesus; every one of us sinful human beings is responsible for his death. > > This is why, at film?s end, men and women sit in stunned silence or sob. Gibson has > charged us with moral complicity in the suffering and death of the Son of God we > have just witnessed in all its horror. That is why we are moved. But for Mona Charen, > it is all just another attempt to blame the Jews: ?There is a seemingly unquenchable > thirst to vilify Jews, to deny them their humanity, to strip them of their history > and to > transform them?in propaganda?into oppressors rather than oppressed.? > > Give it a rest, Mona. > > This is a film in which every heroic figure is a Jew: Jesus, his Mother, Mary > Magdalene, the Apostles Peter and John, St. Veronica who wipes his face on the road > to Calvary, Simon of Cyrene who, though first bitter at being conscripted to carry > Christ?s cross, is soon trying to lift the burden from his shoulders. Jewish members > of the councils are heard at the court proceedings crying out against a ?travesty > ... a > beastly travesty.? At the crucifixion, a member of the Jewish council, most likely > Joseph of Arimathea, is seen helping take Christ down from the cross. Along the road > to Calvary, the women of Jerusalem weep openly. The entire film underscores the > words of Christ (John 4:22) to the Samaritan woman at Jacob?s well, ?Salvation is > from the Jews.? > > If there is any ?unquenchable thirst to vilify,? it would appear to be on the part of > those who cannot stop vilifying Mel Gibson. What has this man done but defend > himself and his film against the most savage charges ever leveled at a work of art? > As > for Ms. Charen?s suggestion that Jews are ?oppressed,? one must ask: When have > Jews ever been oppressed in this country? > > In World War II, millions perished at the hands of the Nazis. A horrific and historic > atrocity about which we are regularly reminded. But in that 20th century tens of > millions of Christians?Armenians, Mexicans, Spaniards, Russians, Ukrainians, > Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Poles, Chinese, Hungarians, Cubans, Vietnamese, > Sudanese, Timorese?were martyred for their faith by Communists, Nazis, and > Islamic fanatics. No nation, no race, no people have cornered the market on > suffering. > Nor on oppression. As there were renegade Catholics in Hitler?s Reich, so there were > atheistic Jewish Bolsheviks like Lazar Kaganovich, Stalin?s man in the Ukraine, who > were as guilty of genocide as Heinrich Himmler. > > Author Gertrude Himmelfarb asks how Christians would react if ?a Hollywood so > notoriously populated by Jews? made a film about how Jews were falsely accused > and put to death during the Spanish Inquisition. But the event in 1481 Ms. Himmelfarb > brings up is not remotely comparable to the Crucifixion that is the central event in > 2000 years of Christendom. As for her admonition that we stop coarsening the culture > by going ?over the edge? with films rooted in violence and sadism, is Ms. Himmelfarb > asking for a moratorium on movies about the Holocaust? > > Frank Rich, who has reviled Gibson and his film since he first heard of it, now frets > for his safety: ??The Passion? has made me feel less secure as a Jew in America than > ever before.? Well, Frank, if you were not insulting millions of Christians by > telling > them a beloved film about their Savior is a homoerotic ?jamboree of bloody beefcake? > and calling the Pope ?a shill,? you might not be at risk of having your lights > punched > out. > > A decade ago, Irving Kristol warned his kinsmen and co-religionists not to antagonize > a huge friendly Christian majority by using the courts to de-Christianize the > country. > Jews who wish to maintain their separate and unique religious and ethnic character > ought not be in the vanguard of those seeking to prevent Christians from maintaining > the Christian character of their country, said Kristol. He added pungently: > > One can easily understand the attractiveness of this vision to Jews. > What is less easy to understand is the chutzpah of American Jews in > publicly embracing this dual vision. Such arrogance is, I would suggest, > a particularly Jewish form of political stupidity. > > Kristol subtly titled his piece, ?On the Political Stupidity of the Jews.? > > Yet still the questions arise. Why do a handful of writers continue to rage that the > film > is a moral atrocity, a horror, the product of a deranged or anti-Semitic mind? Why do > they hate ?The Passion of the Christ? so? > > The answer I believe may be found in words this writer spoke at the Republican > convention, 12 years ago: ?There is a religious war going on in our country for the > soul of America. It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one > day > be as was the Cold War itself.? > > Those who hate ?The Passion? are, almost all, on the other side in that war. They > hate > the movie and the messenger, and, as they admit, the ?central story? of the Gospels, > the Crucifixion of Christ. Why? Because if ?The Passion? is true to the Gospels and > the Gospels are themselves true, then there is a painful truth to be faced. It is > found in > John 1:11, inside ?The Last Gospel? of the Tridentine mass Mel Gibson attends. ?He > came unto his own, and his own received him not.? Admittedly, that is a hard > message to hear. > > Safire quotes Christ (Matthew 10:34) as saying: ?Think not that I am come to send > peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.? But Christ is using a > metaphor here, the meaning of which follows: > > For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter > against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. > And a man?s enemies shall be they of his own household. > > Again and again, Christ refers to this coming divide between those who will follow > him and those who will reject him. ?He who is not with me is against me; and he who > does not gather with me scatters? (Luke 11:23). > > The venom spewed at ?The Passion of the Christ,? only testifies to the truth of the > Savior?s warning, ?As the world has hated me, so also it will hate you.? Braveheart > has led and won a great victory in the crusade that is the culture war that will > determine the fate of the civilization that came out of what happened on Calvary and > on that first Easter morning. > > April 26, 2004 issue > Copyright Š 2004 The American Conservative
