THE WANDERER, MARCH 18, 2004
JOSEPH SOBRAN'S
WASHINGTON WATCH
That Movie
Christian America has finally found a way to send
Hollywood a message: by going to a movie.
The movie I allude to, lacking a single big-name
actor and filmed in foreign -- indeed, dead -- languages,
had some trouble even finding a distributor. And in its
first week of release, it garnered more revenue than all
of Hollywood's current films *combined.*
Hollywood is now torn between its hatred of God and
its love of Mammon. It despises all things Christian,
especially Catholic, but it harbors a profound reverence
for those box-office receipts.
Still, putting principle above profit, some
Hollywood moguls are vowing revenge on producer-director
Mel Gibson. They'll never hire him again, they swear,
forgetting that he has successfully defied them and will
never *need* them again.
I should mention at once that even some serious
Catholics have found flaws in THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST.
One thoughtful criticism is that the motives of the
rabid high priest Caiaphas are never satisfactorily
explained. I must say that I was too overwhelmed by the
film to notice this, and I must watch it again when my
nerves are up to it. It's hard for anyone to keep a sense
of proportion about this stunning movie, and I admire
those who, when watching it, can separate their emotional
experience of it from their memory of the Gospels.
Even Gibson's undoubtedly good intentions mustn't
exempt the film from rational judgment. That would be
merely the reverse of his enemies' position that his
supposedly evil motives make THE PASSION a terrible film.
A Sign of Contradiction
In the end, Catholics will disagree about it; and so
will Jews. Some Jews already fear that Jewish attacks,
not only on the film but on the Gospels and Christianity,
will alienate "evangelicals who have been staunchly
supporting Israel, but who also packed movie houses
during the past week," reports the Jewish newspaper
FORWARD.
Some conservative Christians want to blame the anti-
Gibson, anti-Christian barrage on "liberals," but this is
silly. Two of the most vicious smears have come from the
neoconservative columnists William Safire and Charles
Krauthammer; Gertrude Himmelfarb, wife of Irving Kristol,
has made a more reasonable case against the film, though
she also calls it "sadistic" (without having seen it).
Safire, however, traces the Holocaust back to Christ
Himself, who laid the groundwork for violent persecution
with the words "I come to bring not peace, but a sword."
Safire neglects to explain that this is a metaphor; Jesus
immediately goes on to explain that His teaching will set
father against son, mother against daughter, and so
forth. He also says (it's in the movie) that those who
live by the sword will die by the sword.
So our Lord once again proves to be "a sign of
contradiction" -- this time for the conservative
movement. The dispute goes far deeper than politics.
Krauthammer is slightly less absurd than Safire, but
more adroit in his insinuations. He blames the Catholic
Church for the "blood libel" the Gospels "affixed upon
the Jewish people [that] had resulted in countless
Christian massacres of Jews, and prepared Europe for the
ultimate massacre -- six million Jews systematically
murdered within six years -- in the heart, alas, of a
Christian continent. It is no accident," he goes on,
"that Vatican II occurred just two decades after the
Holocaust, indeed in its very shadow."
Gibson, he writes, has committed "a singular act of
interreligious aggression," "openly rejects the Vatican
II teaching," and "gives us the pre-Vatican II story of
the villainous Jews." The council had tried to "unteach
the lesson that had been taught for almost two millennia:
that the Jews were Christ-killers."
Note what Krauthammer is doing here: He is turning a
goodwill gesture of Vatican II into a smear of almost two
millennia of Christendom. Evidently the council was
summoned, "in the shadow of the Holocaust" (a word not
even in currency until years after the council), for the
chief purpose of "unteaching" what the Church had always
taught, causing "countless" Christian slaughters of Jews.
You'd think Catholics had greeted the council's
teaching with the incredulous question, "You mean we
can't even kill Jews anymore?"
In all the raging against the film, I've read the
word "countless" countless times. The further these
alleged Christian atrocities recede into the past, the
worse they seem to become.
But this propaganda insults Jews as well as
Christians, and defies common sense. It means to tell us
that Christians constantly behaved inhumanly, with what
Krauthammer calls "a history of centuries of relentless,
and at times savage, persecution of Jews in Christian
lands." But it also suggests that the Jews, living in
Christian lands where they were bitterly hated, were
uncommonly passive, unlike any Jews (or normal human
beings) ever known.
In response to Gibson's film, many hoary anti-
Catholic slanders have been revived, including the
beloved myth of the Spanish Inquisition, which (we are
told) also killed "countless" Jews, though it had no
authority over Jews and was by modern standards a rather
pokey affair.
One hostile historian estimated that it executed a
total of about 10,000 people over the more than three
centuries of its existence; modern historians believe the
total was far lower.
Behaving like Christians
The remarkable success of Gibson's film won't kill
off the myths that never die, but it does prove that
American Christians, despised by Hollywood, are more than
a niche market.
They have been attending the film by the tens of
millions, and they have behaved like the Christians they
are, with absolutely none of the violence against Jews
that was predicted. Even one beating of a Jew would have
produced nationwide headlines and several Krauthammer
columns.
The "predictions" themselves were only more of the
anti-Christian propaganda we have come to expect.
+ + +
I'll soon be examining the fear of Christ, which I
call crying "Wolf!" at the Lamb, in my monthly
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--- Joseph Sobran
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