February 9, 2004

 Pope John Paul saw Mel Gibson's epic movie "The Passion of the Christ", in a private showing.  His secretary Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz saw it together with him.  The movie will open in theaters across our country on Ash Wednesday, February 25th.

 Whatever the Holy Father thought of the film probably mattered more to Mel Gibson than to anyone else, but there are those of us who wouldn't be surprised if he thought it was a faithful presentation of the Gospel writers' Passion narrative.  After confirming that the Pope and Dziwisz saw the film, Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls stated, "The film is a cinematographic transposition of the historical event of the Passion of Jesus Christ according to the accounts of the Gospel."  In plain English, "It is as it was", meaning the movie is in line with how the Evangelists recorded the Lord's Passion.

 Navarro-Valls didn't say, however, that the Pope said anything about the film's authenticity, but only that the Holy Father doesn't publicly express his opinions on artistic works.  Something like "It is as it was" could have been said privately and even if his words were made public, they wouldn't have been, necessarily, a critique of the film's aesthetic character.  In plain English, even if the Pope liked it, he wouldn't say so.

 However, The Wall Street Journal and The National Catholic Reporter on December 17 cited Dziwisz as telling Steve McEveety, the movie's producer and McEveety's wife that the Pope's reaction was something like "It is as it was".  That was the English translation of what Dziwisz allegedly said in Italian, with Italian journalist Alberto Michelini as the interpreter.  McEveety passed it on to the reporters, and major news services picked it up and ran with it.  Dziwisz then disavowed saying any such thing, but only that "I said clearly to McEveety and Michelini that the Holy Father made no declaration . . . Clearly, the Holy Father made no judgment of the film."

 What difference does it make whether or not our Holy Father thought the film was faithful to the Scriptures?  The best reason for the Pope to leave it to film critics to comment on the movie's artistic qualities, and to biblical scholars and theologians to judge the fidelity of its interpretation of the Evangelists' Passion Narratives, is that some people fear it will feed or stir up once again the fire of anti-Semitism that caused so great a horror as the Holocaust of the last century.  The thought that this could happen is more than disturbing to faithful Christians and Jews alike, and a challenge to Christians to make sure it doesn't happen and that the Passion of Jesus as portrayed in the film inspires us to learn the lessons the story unfolds for us.

 Nothing in the film can change or in any way dilute the Catholic Church's teaching in Vatican II's "Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to non-Christian Religions" (Nostra Aetate), approved October 28, 1965:

 "What happened in Christ's passion cannot be blamed without distinction upon all the Jews then living nor upon the Jews of today.  Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if such views followed from the Holy Scripture."

 Did anyone of any importance ever preach or teach that Christians could and should dislike, hate, and punish the Jews, especially because of Matthew's inclusion of the words attributed to the Jewish crowd, "His blood be on us and on our children" (Matt 27:25)?  Yes, Father Raymond Brown in The Death of the Messiah tells us, citing the frightening ferocity of some of the greatest names in Christian history: Augustine, John Chrysostom, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, etc.  Gibson deleted these Matthean words from the script which he had originally transferred from the Jewish crowd to the High Priest Caiphas.

 Christ suffered and died for our salvation, and he died because he was willing to do so.  He suffered and died out of love for us sinners and he even absolved those who crucified him.  We need reminders of God's love for us manifested in the price the Son of God paid for our salvation.  The Sacred Triduum that concludes Lent and Holy Week is the celebration of Christ's passion, death and resurrection.  Every Eucharistic Liturgy is a memorial of the offering of his Body and Blood for us and our salvation.  "Do this in memory of me," he told us, and that's what we do.

 We remember that Jesus offered his blood for us and for all.  Anyone who would ever hate Jews or anybody after such a divine act of love would be unfaithful to Jesus.

 It does more harm than good, on the other hand, to discount the complicity of some Jewish leaders and those who followed them in calling for Jesus' death, as the writer in the recent edition of Newsweek tries to do.  Pilate was worse than Caiphas, and the Romans were worse than the Jews, he maintains.

 More helpful to me is Father Brown's effort to explain why the Jewish leaders and those who followed them - not all the Jewish people - may have been involved in Jesus' death.  He asks us to imagine Jesus coming among us today with his challenge rephrased in terms of our present time, being arrested, tried again and found guilty; wouldn't many so-called Christians think he was an imposter, "someone who claimed to be Jesus but did not fit into their conception of who Jesus Christ was and how he ought to act?."

 Another thing Father Ray Brown points out: The religious dispute with Jesus was an inner dispute.  For us Catholics, Jesus is the fulfillment of God's promises of a Messiah, Jesus is our redeemer, and the Church is his Body; Jesus is not merely the founder of a Jewish sect that became the Church or of just another one of the major religions.  Again, that's the slant of this week's Newsweek cover story article.  At the time of Jesus the Jews who were dealing with him were dealing with a Jew.  This may not help everyone understand what was going on in the minds of those Jewish leaders and people who opposed Jesus, but it is something for us to keep in mind as we view Gibson's The Passion of the Christ and celebrate the Sacred Triduum.

 Is The Passion of the Christ anti-Semitic?  Not if "it is as it was," i.e., if it is faithful to the accounts written between 60 and 100 A.D., and attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  Jews and Romans had a part in Jesus' Passion and it might be more comfortable for some people to put all the blame on either or both of them than to accept the blame that falls upon all sinners, including those of us who know, love and follow Jesus.

 Sinners we are.  Redeemed we are.  If The Passion of the Christ tells it as it was, we'll be blessed to see the dramatization of what the Son of God endured to show God's redemptive love for us.  All of us.