Reply #74: Christian Science Monitor: [View All]

[rman]

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0202/p09s02-cogn.html
Christian Science Monitor
February 02, 2004
Controversial 'Passion' presents priceless opportunity for education
A toxic film delivers a dangerous, but teachable, moment

Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" came into my life last April. Gene Fisher, the ecumenical officer for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, convened a group of scholars to assess Mr. Gibson's script - its historical fidelity, use of New Testament materials, and consonance with Catholic instruction.

Why did we on the panel care? This was, after all, just a movie. The answer, in part, lay with Gibson's own publicity efforts. In numerous interviews, he'd presented his movie as an act of God, insisted that it was the most historically accurate depiction of Christ's passion ever filmed, and paraded his own Catholic piety as authentication of his movie.

But Gibson had revealed some historical gaffes. One source for his story came not from the first-century Gospels, but from Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824), a stigmatic nun whose visions enunciated an anti-Semitism typical of her time. (She believed that Jews used the blood of Christian babies for rituals.) And, finally, website stills of the movie were marked with Hollywood gore: "Realism" had less to do with history than with celluloid violence.

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