Given this enflamed setting, it not difficult to discern why a Roman prefect might want to execute Jesus. Jesus came from the Galilee, the homeland of earlier foes of Rome; he had been proclaiming the dawning of the Kingdom of Israel’s God, which would result in the overthrow of Caesar; he had spoken of the Temple’s destruction and caused a disturbance there; he had been coy about the question of tribute to Rome; and he had arrived in Jerusalem with followers in the incendiary Passover season. The quickness with which Jesus was executed after his surreptitious arrest, and the fact that he was publicly crucified (not quietly assassinated) as a seditionist “king of the Jews” as a warning to all malcontents, makes it all but certain that Pilate chose to remove an evident troublemaker from the scene and to make an example of him. None of these historical considerations influenced Gibson’s Emmerich-driven storyline.
This makes the movie deficient according to Catholic teaching since, “a guiding artistic vision sensitive to historical fact and to the best biblical scholarship are obviously necessary”[13] in composing passion dramatizations.
Theological Concerns
Finally, the film’s graphic, persistent, and intimate violence raises theological questions from a Catholic perspective. It closely resonates with an understanding of salvation that holds that God had to be satisfied or appeased for the countless sins of humanity by subjecting his son to unspeakable torments. This sadistic picture of God is hardly compatible with the God proclaimed by Jesus as the one who seeks for the lost sheep, who welcomes back the prodigal son before he can even express remorse, or who causes the rain to fall on the just and unjust alike.
This understanding of salvation is constricted because it fails to incorporate the Incarnation. The Word of God enters into human history not to pay back in pain some debt that the Father will not otherwise remit. No, among other things the Word became flesh to take on human mortality and overcome it.
This explains why none of the Gospel writers felt it is necessary to communicate God’s love by writing extensive scenes of the unremitting torture of Jesus. Yet they have communicated God’s love for two millennia. Is it a sign of some cultural pathology that some people are looking forward to the feeling of being actually present at the scourging and crucifixion?
Moreover, one cannot properly understand the meaning of the cross without pondering the meaning of the resurrection, as 1 Corinthians 15 and Philippians 2 make clear. By focusing on Jesus' torments, the film minimizes the central and defining reality of the resurrection for Christian faith. Christ has conquered death. Therefore, all creation is being renewed. This happens not because Jesus endured superhuman amounts of pain, but because God, in union with human nature, has removed death's sting.
Conclusion
The Passion of the Christ is a powerful cinematic experience that will no doubt emotionally move many viewers. Whether this emotion is the result of the trauma of seeing someone graphically tortured to death or a genuine spiritual encounter or some combination of the two is difficult to assess. Grief and shock are not automatic promoters of Christian faith. Moreover, simply because some viewers do not personally experience feelings of hostility to Jews after seeing the film does not excuse the unbiblical intensification of Jewish culpability that the film conveys.
The movie’s problematic aspects outweigh some positive features. For example, many Catholics will appreciate the prominence given to the mother of Jesus, even though in the New Testament she appears only briefly at the foot of the cross in just one Gospel. Likewise, the visual Eucharistic allusions are praiseworthy, although they depict the Mass only in sacrificial terms and minimize its fellowship meal dimensions.
Is it acceptable for a filmmaker to combine Gospel elements and to add scenes not found in the New Testament so that the evil of Jewish characters is magnified? |
The controversy over the film has brought to light the most disturbing claim that to criticize the movie is to criticize the New Testament. For example, Paul Lauer, Mel Gibson’s publicist had this to say:
Are some people going to make the argument for anti-Semitism [in the film]? Maybe. But to do that, they would have to call the New Testament gospels anti-Semitic, which, as you know, some people do. You can’t change the story told in the gospels any more than Steven Spielberg could be expected to change the history of the Holocaust to avoid blaming the Germans.[14]
This argument has been echoed by admirers of a pre-release version of the film, including some Catholics, who, frankly, ought to know better.
According to one commentator, “[t]o take issue with this movie is, essentially, to take issue with the Gospels, to take issue with the Christian faith and to take issue with a monumental artistic achievement by a filmmaker of increasing stature.”[15] Another declared, “I really don’t think all the liberal caterwauling is going to hurt the movie. For some people, the Gospels themselves are anti-Semitic. There’s nothing we can say to convince them otherwise, no matter how hard we try.”[16] And Archbishop John Foley stated, “There’s nothing in the film that doesn’t come from the Gospel accounts. [!] So if they’re critical of the film, they would be critical of the Gospel. It was very faithful to the Gospel.”[17]
Honesty demands the recognition that Christians have used (and abused) the New Testament over the centuries to claim that “the Jews” were cursed for rejecting and crucifying Jesus. As Cardinal Edward Idris Cassidy has put it, “preaching accused the Jews of every age of deicide.”[18] Beginning in the late Middle Ages, the deicide charge was especially disseminated every Holy Week in connection with the proclamation and preaching of the Johannine passion narrative and through performances of passion plays. These dramatic reenactments regularly inspired violence against Jews. In 1539, Pope Paul III banned the annual passion performance in the Coliseum because it had routinely caused the ransacking of the Jewish ghetto, and examples could be multiplied. The history of Christian-Jewish relations in Europe makes it undeniable that the New Testament can be put to antisemitic purposes.
This is a different question from whether the New Testament is intrinsically antisemitic. To affirm the latter, it seems to me, would require making a case that the New Testament authors, many of whom were themselves Jews, had a racist antipathy toward Jews. Given the intramural nature of the polemics used by the biblical authors, such a case would in my opinion be difficult to sustain. But at all events the real issue is the proper interpretation of the New Testament, not whether to apply to it, anachronistically, the term “antisemitic.” Later, when the separate “books” of the New Testament had been assembled into one canon, and were read in very different social contexts by an all-Gentile church, the potential grew for combining and construing them with hostility to Jewish outsiders. To ask, then, whether a particular dramatization of the New Testament passion narratives might promote hostility to Jews does not imply any judgment on the alleged antisemitism of the New Testament itself. Rather, to repeat, it is to ask how the passion narratives are being interpreted — a question morally demanded by past antisemitic interpretations.
For Gibson’s fans to polemicize that the film cannot be critiqued without rejecting the New Testament is to ignore history and to trivialize decades of official Catholic teaching on biblical interpretation. In some ways the movie is a direct challenge to that teaching. It also rejects the Holy Father’s solemn commitment at the Western Wall in 2000 to do penance for past Christian sins against the Jewish people by “seeking genuine fellowship with the people of the covenant.” Such fellowship cannot possibly rest upon the endorsement of a film that perpetuates hoary anti-Jewish images.
[1] Pontifical Biblical Commission, Instruction on the Bible and Christology (1984), 2.2.2.
[2] Pontifical Biblical Commission, Sancta Mater Ecclesia, Instruction on the Historical Truth of the Gospels (1964), 6.2-10; Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum, The Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (1965), 19.
[3] Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, Notes on the Correct Way to Present Jews and Judaism in Preaching and Teaching in the Roman Catholic Church (1985), 21.
[4] Carl E. Schmőger, The Life and Revelations of Anne Catherine Emmerich (Rockford, IL: Tan Books, 1976), I: 547-548.
[5] Ibid., 549-550.
[6] Anne Catherine Emmerich, The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Chapter VIII, §156. Because there have been various published editions of this book, all citations will provide chapter and section numbers as found in an .
[7] Emmerich, Dolorous Passion, Ch. IX, §158-160.
[8] Peter J. Boyer, “The Jesus War: Mel Gibson’s Obsession.” The New Yorker (Sept. 15, 2003): 71.
[9] Diane Sawyer, “From Pain to Passion: A Primetime Event,” ( Feb. 16, 2004).
[10] Pontifical Biblical Commission, The Interpretation of the Bible in the Roman Catholic Church (1993), IV,A,3.
[11] Martin Hengel, Crucifixion (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982; J.F. Strange, “Crucifixion, Method of,” The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible ( Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1981): V, 199-200.
[12] Josephus, Wars, 2.12.1.
[13] U.S. Bishops, Criteria for the Evaluation of Dramatizations of the Passion (1988), C,1,c.
[14] Carol Eisenberg, “Stirring Passions: Gibson’s film about Jesus raises Jews’ fears,” Newsday, July 22, 2003.
[15] Joseph Farah, WorldNetDaily.com, July 23, 2003.
[16] Deal Hudson, Crisis Magazine e-letter, July 31, 2003.
[17] Christopher Claire, “Vatican Praises Gibson’s film on life of Jesus despite fears of Jewish groups,” The Scotsman, Sept. 14, 2003.
[18] Edward Idris Cardinal Cassidy, “Reflections: The Vatican Statement on the ‘Shoah’,” Origins 28/2 (May 28, 1998): 31.