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Propaganda or masterpiece?The Passion ? the verdict - 27 March 2004
 Mel Gibson?s film of Christ?s Crucifixion is a number one box office hit in America. As it goes on general release around the world, we asked experts for their views
A humbling experience
The film brought me face to face with the saving work of Christ. It was a humbling experience, which left me feeling profoundly grateful. And I believe God will use it in an amazing way to both strengthen the Church and bring many to saving faith ? I won?t ever think about the Crucifixion and what happened in the few hours that preceded it in the same way ever again.
Peter Kerridge
Managing director
Premier Christian Radio, London
Premier says it is ?facilitating the Church?s response to the film? in the UK
Mel Gibson oversees a scene from The Passion of the Christ.Photo: Philippe Antonello
Hard to understand
For kids struggling with their faith, the movie didn?t help at all. If you don?t understand Jesus? life and mission, it?s hard to understand the Crucifixion. I was hoping it would be more of an evangelisation tool.
Nancy Longo
Youth minister
Parish of St Bernard?s
Bellflower, Los Angeles
A popcorn movie
The Passion over-individualises the Christian message by portraying violence against Jesus himself as a central concern of Christian faith, separating this violence from violence in our own lives today. At the showing I attended in Boston, people were eating popcorn, drinking Cokes and eating pretzels, while we all sat in comfortable cushioned reclining chairs during the mayhem. The movie further over-individualises Christianity by divorcing Jesus? Crucifixion from other crucifixions, as if his were utterly unique, as if he were the only one to suffer such intense and humiliating violence. In this way, we are kept from seeing the banality of his death as something suffered by thousands of other political prisoners in his day. For these reasons, The Passion cannot be called a Christian film.
Tom Beaudoin
in the National Catholic Reporter
Kansas City
Rekindling of prejudice
Ideologically, the film provides cinematic expression for the world of the American Christian Right post-11 September. That world is a dark and violent place, where the only reasonable response is to do battle with the Axis of Evil whose threat is ever-present. Its sense of God is drawn to visions of judgement and of wrath, close to apocalypse and anticipating Armageddon. A religion of intimacy, love and hope is at odds with experience; human viciousness can only be atoned for in terms of entering into its darkness and its horror as an expiatory sacrifice. The film does not target Jews collectively; it is aimed at specified individuals and groups rather than Jews in general. It is, however, a close-run thing. Gibson is surely well aware of the impact of some of his scenes on Jews down the ages, but he does not hesitate about intensifying them; clearly they will rekindle prejudices in at least some of his audiences, and Jewish leaders have every right to be concerned.
Revd Jonathan Gorsky
Council for Christians and Jews, London
An eighteenth-century Jesus
The Second Vatican Council marks the entry of the Roman Catholic Church into the modern world, and especially the beginning of a process of reconciliation with Judaism. This is rejected by Gibson. By focusing solely on the negative ? the suffering of Jesus ? rather than on the positive ? the willingness of Jesus to give himself up to the will of his Father ? Gibson returns to a time when visions of Christ centred wholly on his suffering. His is an eighteenth-century vision when Christians took it for granted that Jews were collectively cursed for the Crucifixion, and when narratives emphasised Jewish evildoing as well as the graphic suffering of Jesus. Jews and Christians have, in the past 100 years, transformed their relations for the better. Part of this is through the realisation that Jesus was a Jew: he was circumcised, attended synagogue, observed the dietary laws, participated in Temple sacrifices and, like other first-century rabbis, taught a group of disciples. Even up to his Crucifixion by the Romans he never abandoned his Jewish heritage. Jews and Christians alike need to remember that Jesus was not only born and lived as a Jew ? he also died one.
Dr Edward Kessler
Director, Centre for Jewish-Christian Relations, Cambridge
Nothing anti-Semitic
If telling the story were anti-Semitic, it would create a problem for Jewish-Christian dialogue because it would be tantamount to affirming that the gospels are not historical? If the Pope saw the film, the successive silence of the hierarchy is very eloquent. There is nothing anti-Semitic in it; otherwise they would condemn it. It is absolutely clear, precisely because there is nothing to object to. Otherwise, the hierarchy would have spoken: both the Vatican as well as local bishops.
Joaqu?n Navarro-Valls
Pope John Paul II?s spokesman
Interview with Il Messaggero
A classic worthy of Caravaggio
Mel Gibson?s film The Passion is a contemporary masterpiece, artistically and technically. It is not absurd to compare it with the paintings of the Italian master Caravaggio, because of its beauty and drama. As a film it belongs to the twentieth century, the cruellest in history, because of its graphic violence and its technical mastery. But more importantly the film shows us how Jesus redeems us from our sins. His message is one of universal love, certainly love for his own people, the Jews. This film is not anti-Semitic because the multitude of heroes are Jewish. We witness a terrible quarrel within the Palestinian Jewish community. Neither Jesus nor anyone else calls for revenge. He explains that his attackers do not know what they are doing. Neither does the film lay the blame for Jesus? death on the Jewish nation. The message is forgiveness and love.
Generations of believers will see Mel Gibson?s The Passion as a classic.
Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
A failure of theology
Gibson is trying to convey the idea that Jesus? agony and brutalisation was so extreme because his suffering had to have the measure of all human sin and suffering from the beginning to the end of history. But the correlation between extreme flogging and extreme crucifixion just fails at this theological point. How can a flogging literally equate to hundreds of thousands being vaporised in an atomic blast over a city? The relationship between these events is not of an outward ?like for like? kind.
Revd Canon Dr Ivan Head
Warden, St Paul?s College
Sydney University
Explosive portrayal
Whether or not the film is intentionally anti-Semitic there is the danger that it can be used in the sense of anti-Semitic propaganda. It does contain signs of differentiation in its portrayal of Jewish figures, but overall it gives rise to an impression of overdrawn negativity in the Sanhedrin and large sections of the Jewish population. The portrayal in the film conceals the danger of the revival of anti-Semitic prejudice. This is especially explosive given the situation in Europe where growing anti-Semitic tendencies are discernible.
Joint statement by: Cardinal Karl Lehmann, president, German Bishops? Conference, Bishop Wolfgang Huber, Evangelical Church, and Dr Paul Spiegel, president of the Central Council of Jews, Germany
Banality of evil
The New Testament will offer us no justification for dwelling on the gruesome details of the Passion of Christ because the people who wrote the New Testament, and for whom it was written, knew that these details were banal. If you belonged to the social class of Jesus and his disciples or, indeed, of most Christians in the early centuries, a humiliating and savagely painful death wasn?t just a point for devout meditation at your prie-dieu, or for less devout gratification in the cinema: it was a grim reality ? as much on the cards for you as any other kind of death? That is the context in which the New Testament asks us to contemplate the Passion and death of Jesus; that is how, according to the gospels, Jesus approached it himself. There is no deep meaning to it; nothing to be gained from picturing it in our minds, or on the cinema screen. It is just the awful banality of evil, the utter predictability of the unfeeling cruelty human beings mete out to one another, and then justify by reason of statecraft or religion. And it still goes on today, and is still defended today, even by religious leaders, and by the leaders of the so-called ?free world?.
Denis Minns OP
Prior of Blackfriars, Oxford
Error that taints the film
The mistake that Mel Gibson has made is that he has separated the birth from the death. The tainted blood which courses through Jesus? veins, the conclave of Herod, the King of the Jews, and all the chief priests and scribes of the people, the magi and their prescient gifts, the death of the babies of Bethlehem ? all these point to the end at the Place of the Skull. The same chief priests with the scribes and elders, with Pilate standing in for Herod, will be there again at the death, all conspiring to bring about that which will save his people from their sins (Matthew 1:21). And not only his people, for in this son of Abraham all the families of the earth shall be blessed (Genesis 12:3). For Matthew, the end of Jesus is in the beginning, in the birth, and the beginning of Jesus is in the end, in the death.
Dr Joseph O?Hanlon
A priest of Nottingham diocese and lecturer in biblical studies, Franciscan International Study Centre, Canterbury
Time for new thinking
The film gives the wrong answer to the question: why God became man. It was to share our human condition, announce the kingdom of God, and teach us how to live. There is small hint of this in Gibson?s treatment, which concentrates on how much he could suffer. It illustrates Anselm?s atonement theory, which has held devotional meaning for a very long time but needs to be replaced. The biblical statements that seem to say all this was divinely planned need new interpretation; what is foreordained is God?s victory over death. The Cross remains important because suffering is so much a part of human life. But the Resurrection is the foundation of our faith.
Fr Joseph T. Nolan
Department of Theology, Boston College
Whitewash and libel
Mel Gibson?s script is full of historical errors and theological time-bombs. Claiming to be the Messiah was not a crime in Jewish law. The person might be regarded with disdain once it was clear his claim was false, but there was no punishment for it. Moreover, the portrayal of Pilate must rank as one of the greatest whitewashes in history, while the depiction of first-century Jerusalem Jews as a baying mob lusting for Jesus? blood is one of the worst cases of group libel. Whatever its merits as film, The Passion sends the religious clock spinning backwards.
Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain
Maidenhead Synagogue, Berkshire
Watch it through the prism of love
In 1989, in the Ashaninka community of Tzomaveni in the Peruvian region of Ayacucho, Isa?s Charete was crucified, killed but not buried, because the Shining Path guerrilla would not allow it. Fortunately ? I thought while watching The Passion ? Jesus suffered only 12 hours and not 15 or more days. Fortunately, he was a man and they did not mass-rape him, nor did they open his womb to take out an eight-month-old foetus. Happily, his mother could embrace him, clean him, cover him with a clean sheet and bury his lacerated body. In my country there exist around 12,000 Marys for whom up to now this consolation has not been available. If the film is watched through the prism of the New Testament?s message of love, no one will be left unaffected by it. Let us hope that our solidarity does not remain with Christ alone ? who not for nothing became man and was born poor ? but will reach out to others. That way, perhaps, people will no longer consider human rights an idiocy. They won?t demand the freedom of Barabbas, as they did with the Amnesty Law of 1995. Instead they will feel that what is done to the least of our compatriots, is done to us.
Carlos Iv?n Degregori
Chronicler of Peru?s ?dirty war?, in Per? 21
Why the fuss?
It is extraordinary that it would create such a fuss. Anyone can see the same thing in any church ? just look at the Stations of the Cross hanging on the wall.
Fr Jean-Marie Charles-Roux
Rosminian priest, Rome
Celebrated the liturgy for Gibson during the last two months of filming
A favour to us all
I had a rather nice Japanese meal afterwards with a bunch of other people who saw it, and for an hour we couldn?t talk, argue, joke or debate about anything else. By reminding our society once again that however post-Christian we may be, we can?t stop caring about Jesus, Gibson has done us all a favour ? even if it leaves a less pleasant taste in the mouth than sushi.
Steve Tomkins
Film critic
www.surefish.co.uk
Propaganda or masterpiece?The Passion ? the verdict - 27 March 2004
Mel Gibson?s film of Christ?s Crucifixion is a number one box office hit in America. As it goes on general release around the world, we asked experts for their views
A humbling experience
The film brought me face to face with the saving work of Christ. It was a humbling experience, which left me feeling profoundly grateful. And I believe God will use it in an amazing way to both strengthen the Church and bring many to saving faith ? I won?t ever think about the Crucifixion and what happened in the few hours that preceded it in the same way ever again.
Peter Kerridge
Managing director
Premier Christian Radio, London
Premier says it is ?facilitating the Church?s response to the film? in the UK
Mel Gibson oversees a scene from The Passion of the Christ.Photo: Philippe Antonello
Hard to understand
For kids struggling with their faith, the movie didn?t help at all. If you don?t understand Jesus? life and mission, it?s hard to understand the Crucifixion. I was hoping it would be more of an evangelisation tool.
Nancy Longo
Youth minister
Parish of St Bernard?s
Bellflower, Los Angeles
A popcorn movie
The Passion over-individualises the Christian message by portraying violence against Jesus himself as a central concern of Christian faith, separating this violence from violence in our own lives today. At the showing I attended in Boston, people were eating popcorn, drinking Cokes and eating pretzels, while we all sat in comfortable cushioned reclining chairs during the mayhem. The movie further over-individualises Christianity by divorcing Jesus? Crucifixion from other crucifixions, as if his were utterly unique, as if he were the only one to suffer such intense and humiliating violence. In this way, we are kept from seeing the banality of his death as something suffered by thousands of other political prisoners in his day. For these reasons, The Passion cannot be called a Christian film.
Tom Beaudoin
in the National Catholic Reporter
Kansas City
Rekindling of prejudice
Ideologically, the film provides cinematic expression for the world of the American Christian Right post-11 September. That world is a dark and violent place, where the only reasonable response is to do battle with the Axis of Evil whose threat is ever-present. Its sense of God is drawn to visions of judgement and of wrath, close to apocalypse and anticipating Armageddon. A religion of intimacy, love and hope is at odds with experience; human viciousness can only be atoned for in terms of entering into its darkness and its horror as an expiatory sacrifice. The film does not target Jews collectively; it is aimed at specified individuals and groups rather than Jews in general. It is, however, a close-run thing. Gibson is surely well aware of the impact of some of his scenes on Jews down the ages, but he does not hesitate about intensifying them; clearly they will rekindle prejudices in at least some of his audiences, and Jewish leaders have every right to be concerned.
Revd Jonathan Gorsky
Council for Christians and Jews, London
An eighteenth-century Jesus
The Second Vatican Council marks the entry of the Roman Catholic Church into the modern world, and especially the beginning of a process of reconciliation with Judaism. This is rejected by Gibson. By focusing solely on the negative ? the suffering of Jesus ? rather than on the positive ? the willingness of Jesus to give himself up to the will of his Father ? Gibson returns to a time when visions of Christ centred wholly on his suffering. His is an eighteenth-century vision when Christians took it for granted that Jews were collectively cursed for the Crucifixion, and when narratives emphasised Jewish evildoing as well as the graphic suffering of Jesus. Jews and Christians have, in the past 100 years, transformed their relations for the better. Part of this is through the realisation that Jesus was a Jew: he was circumcised, attended synagogue, observed the dietary laws, participated in Temple sacrifices and, like other first-century rabbis, taught a group of disciples. Even up to his Crucifixion by the Romans he never abandoned his Jewish heritage. Jews and Christians alike need to remember that Jesus was not only born and lived as a Jew ? he also died one.
Dr Edward Kessler
Director, Centre for Jewish-Christian Relations, Cambridge
Nothing anti-Semitic
If telling the story were anti-Semitic, it would create a problem for Jewish-Christian dialogue because it would be tantamount to affirming that the gospels are not historical? If the Pope saw the film, the successive silence of the hierarchy is very eloquent. There is nothing anti-Semitic in it; otherwise they would condemn it. It is absolutely clear, precisely because there is nothing to object to. Otherwise, the hierarchy would have spoken: both the Vatican as well as local bishops.
Joaqu?n Navarro-Valls
Pope John Paul II?s spokesman
Interview with Il Messaggero
A classic worthy of Caravaggio
Mel Gibson?s film The Passion is a contemporary masterpiece, artistically and technically. It is not absurd to compare it with the paintings of the Italian master Caravaggio, because of its beauty and drama. As a film it belongs to the twentieth century, the cruellest in history, because of its graphic violence and its technical mastery. But more importantly the film shows us how Jesus redeems us from our sins. His message is one of universal love, certainly love for his own people, the Jews. This film is not anti-Semitic because the multitude of heroes are Jewish. We witness a terrible quarrel within the Palestinian Jewish community. Neither Jesus nor anyone else calls for revenge. He explains that his attackers do not know what they are doing. Neither does the film lay the blame for Jesus? death on the Jewish nation. The message is forgiveness and love.
Generations of believers will see Mel Gibson?s The Passion as a classic.
Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
A failure of theology
Gibson is trying to convey the idea that Jesus? agony and brutalisation was so extreme because his suffering had to have the measure of all human sin and suffering from the beginning to the end of history. But the correlation between extreme flogging and extreme crucifixion just fails at this theological point. How can a flogging literally equate to hundreds of thousands being vaporised in an atomic blast over a city? The relationship between these events is not of an outward ?like for like? kind.
Revd Canon Dr Ivan Head
Warden, St Paul?s College
Sydney University
Explosive portrayal
Whether or not the film is intentionally anti-Semitic there is the danger that it can be used in the sense of anti-Semitic propaganda. It does contain signs of differentiation in its portrayal of Jewish figures, but overall it gives rise to an impression of overdrawn negativity in the Sanhedrin and large sections of the Jewish population. The portrayal in the film conceals the danger of the revival of anti-Semitic prejudice. This is especially explosive given the situation in Europe where growing anti-Semitic tendencies are discernible.
Joint statement by: Cardinal Karl Lehmann, president, German Bishops? Conference, Bishop Wolfgang Huber, Evangelical Church, and Dr Paul Spiegel, president of the Central Council of Jews, Germany
Banality of evil
The New Testament will offer us no justification for dwelling on the gruesome details of the Passion of Christ because the people who wrote the New Testament, and for whom it was written, knew that these details were banal. If you belonged to the social class of Jesus and his disciples or, indeed, of most Christians in the early centuries, a humiliating and savagely painful death wasn?t just a point for devout meditation at your prie-dieu, or for less devout gratification in the cinema: it was a grim reality ? as much on the cards for you as any other kind of death? That is the context in which the New Testament asks us to contemplate the Passion and death of Jesus; that is how, according to the gospels, Jesus approached it himself. There is no deep meaning to it; nothing to be gained from picturing it in our minds, or on the cinema screen. It is just the awful banality of evil, the utter predictability of the unfeeling cruelty human beings mete out to one another, and then justify by reason of statecraft or religion. And it still goes on today, and is still defended today, even by religious leaders, and by the leaders of the so-called ?free world?.
Denis Minns OP
Prior of Blackfriars, Oxford
Error that taints the film
The mistake that Mel Gibson has made is that he has separated the birth from the death. The tainted blood which courses through Jesus? veins, the conclave of Herod, the King of the Jews, and all the chief priests and scribes of the people, the magi and their prescient gifts, the death of the babies of Bethlehem ? all these point to the end at the Place of the Skull. The same chief priests with the scribes and elders, with Pilate standing in for Herod, will be there again at the death, all conspiring to bring about that which will save his people from their sins (Matthew 1:21). And not only his people, for in this son of Abraham all the families of the earth shall be blessed (Genesis 12:3). For Matthew, the end of Jesus is in the beginning, in the birth, and the beginning of Jesus is in the end, in the death.
Dr Joseph O?Hanlon
A priest of Nottingham diocese and lecturer in biblical studies, Franciscan International Study Centre, Canterbury
Time for new thinking
The film gives the wrong answer to the question: why God became man. It was to share our human condition, announce the kingdom of God, and teach us how to live. There is small hint of this in Gibson?s treatment, which concentrates on how much he could suffer. It illustrates Anselm?s atonement theory, which has held devotional meaning for a very long time but needs to be replaced. The biblical statements that seem to say all this was divinely planned need new interpretation; what is foreordained is God?s victory over death. The Cross remains important because suffering is so much a part of human life. But the Resurrection is the foundation of our faith.
Fr Joseph T. Nolan
Department of Theology, Boston College
Whitewash and libel
Mel Gibson?s script is full of historical errors and theological time-bombs. Claiming to be the Messiah was not a crime in Jewish law. The person might be regarded with disdain once it was clear his claim was false, but there was no punishment for it. Moreover, the portrayal of Pilate must rank as one of the greatest whitewashes in history, while the depiction of first-century Jerusalem Jews as a baying mob lusting for Jesus? blood is one of the worst cases of group libel. Whatever its merits as film, The Passion sends the religious clock spinning backwards.
Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain
Maidenhead Synagogue, Berkshire
Watch it through the prism of love
In 1989, in the Ashaninka community of Tzomaveni in the Peruvian region of Ayacucho, Isa?s Charete was crucified, killed but not buried, because the Shining Path guerrilla would not allow it. Fortunately ? I thought while watching The Passion ? Jesus suffered only 12 hours and not 15 or more days. Fortunately, he was a man and they did not mass-rape him, nor did they open his womb to take out an eight-month-old foetus. Happily, his mother could embrace him, clean him, cover him with a clean sheet and bury his lacerated body. In my country there exist around 12,000 Marys for whom up to now this consolation has not been available. If the film is watched through the prism of the New Testament?s message of love, no one will be left unaffected by it. Let us hope that our solidarity does not remain with Christ alone ? who not for nothing became man and was born poor ? but will reach out to others. That way, perhaps, people will no longer consider human rights an idiocy. They won?t demand the freedom of Barabbas, as they did with the Amnesty Law of 1995. Instead they will feel that what is done to the least of our compatriots, is done to us.
Carlos Iv?n Degregori
Chronicler of Peru?s ?dirty war?, in Per? 21
Why the fuss?
It is extraordinary that it would create such a fuss. Anyone can see the same thing in any church ? just look at the Stations of the Cross hanging on the wall.
Fr Jean-Marie Charles-Roux
Rosminian priest, Rome
Celebrated the liturgy for Gibson during the last two months of filming
A favour to us all
I had a rather nice Japanese meal afterwards with a bunch of other people who saw it, and for an hour we couldn?t talk, argue, joke or debate about anything else. By reminding our society once again that however post-Christian we may be, we can?t stop caring about Jesus, Gibson has done us all a favour ? even if it leaves a less pleasant taste in the mouth than sushi.
Steve Tomkins
Film critic
www.surefish.co.uk
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In this week’s issue
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Making markets moral
Iron and velvet
Love in a Catholic climate
Someone to talk to
A good Lent takes planning
South American surprise
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Elena Curti
Is the Church too slow in recognising that academies are the future for Catholic schools?
Christopher Lamb
Goodwin the scapegoat
Elena Curti
The pain of being a coeliac Catholic
Sr M, guest contributor
The Church's moral obligation to victims of clerical sexual abuse
Speeches from this week's conference in Rome
This week in Rome bishops and religious superiors met at the first Vatican-backed symposium devoted to forging a global response to the crisis of clerical sexual abuse that has disgraced ...
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