Such insensitivity to how much suffering this text has caused Jews over the centuries is deeply disturbing. Gibson included this questionable text in his original script, deleted it because he claimed Jews would have his throat, put it back and then removed it from the final version. “This text has been used over the centuries by Christians to keep Jews miserable and marginal in society and at times even to justify their deaths. Gibson has continued to blame the Jewish leadership in defiance of this scholarly and ecclesial consensus…. Christians who react favorably to Gibson’s film are shamefully evading their religious responsibility.”īaltimore Sun, FebruFather John T. “Far too many Christian leaders and Gibson himself seem totally oblivious to the pain and suffering such portrayals have inflicted on Jews in the course of history.
“Unfortunately, the version Gibson brings to life on the screen has proved toxic over the centuries-leading to the persecution and killing of millions of Jews at the hands of Christians…. “The main story line of Mel Gibson’s ‘The Passion of the Christ’ focuses on an evil cabal of Jews that relentlessly pursues Jesus until it can blackmail a weak-kneed Pontius Pilate into issuing a writ of execution….
#PRODUCTION PICTURES FROM THE PASSION OF CHRIST MOVIE MOVIE#
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Ma“Pro and Con: Is Movie Anti-Semitic? Film perpetuates the pain,” by Father John T. “He has featured the single-most divisive issue in Jewish-Christian relations….He has taken this potent, dangerous issue and put fire to it….This is the religious equivalent of road rage.” The new wine of post-Vatican II teaching cannot be contained in the old wineskins of the pre-Vatican II Passion play that is the film ‘The Passion of the Christ.'” “In a church whose highest leadership has prayed for God’s forgiveness for exactly those sins over the past millennium and whose teachings repudiate such practices, the answer can only be no. “Catholics who take seriously Pope John Paul II’s commitment, made during his visit to the Western Wall in Jerusalem in March 2000, ‘to genuine fellowship with the people of the Covenant’ should ask whether it is acceptable for a filmmaker-even though he repeats the teaching of the Council of Trent that Christ died for the sins of all humanity-to combine scenes from the four Gospel accounts with many unbiblical elements so that the malice of the Jewish characters is magnified. “‘The Passion of the Christ’ unquestionably fails to follow the official Catholic teaching on biblical interpretation and the presentation of Jews and Judaism….
The campaign against him has been ruthless, and that is why the Catholic League mounted a counter-offensive.Īd Hoc Committee of Catholic and Jewish ScholarsĪmerica, ApPhilip Cunningham: The following is a list of some of the more incendiary remarks made about the Mel Gibson movie, “The Passion of the Christ.” We do not maintain that it is anti-Catholic to criticize a film, even before it has been released, but we do contend that the hostility to Gibson and to his work is unseemly.