Monday, September 29, 2003

 
Some random thoughts. For the longer post on Mel Gibson's The Passion, please see below.

Meditation, again. Readers who scroll down to the posts for August will see that I dilated somewhat on the subject of meditation. It has taken some time, but I recall vividly that one day, during the Eucharist at my high school, a wonderful Episcopalian priest named H. Benton Ellis spoke on Christian meditation. A student had asked him if Christians could meditate, and he had answered hastily, "yes." Given time for thought, he realized that the student meant "transcendental meditation," and the priest, though a liberal, wanted to make clear that the answer in that case was "no." He led us on a meditation on a story from the Gospel--I believe it was an account of a healing, though the memory is necessarily vague--to show how Christian meditation differed from TM. This lesson has evidently stuck with me for 30 some odd years. This is why you should discuss these things with kids.

Protrayals of the Passion. Following some leads in the New Yorker article criticized below, I foundone publication by the US Catholic Bishops, and two from the Vatican (found here and here ). There are very short and very worth reading. The one from the US Bishops does indeed contain something like a suggestion that the thieves hanging next to Jesus be transformed into political rebels, but really, only as one aspect of the whole story. The material is very worthwhile, and not too long.

Interesting, too, that Mel Gibson--without referring to the documents--maintains that he indeed has done the kind of things that the documents list. The New Yorker author talks as if they were authoritative and binding (which they are not), and as if Gibson did none of the things the documents contain, (which he did.) What the documents are is fairly wise, and so, apparently, is Mel Gibson, in his own blustering, working class kind of way.

And finally, contained in these documents are at least two references to the following passage to the Catechism written following the Council of Trent, which occurred, as you may remember, from 1545-1563.

"In this guilt (for Jesus's crucifixion) are involved all those who fall frequently into sin; for, as our sins consigned Christ the Lord to the death of the cross, most certainly those who wallow in sin and iniquity crucify to themselves again the Son of God...This guilt seems more enormous in us than in the Jews (at the time of the Crucifixion) since, if they had known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory; while we, on the contrary, professing to know him, yet denying him by our actions, seem in some sort to lay violent hands on him."

Now, a lot of conservatives who loudly claim to support John Paul read something like that and say, "See, this is church teaching, there never was a problem." Well, the Church has also taught that the hierarchy should be known for its humility and service. Just ask the Borgias. Others might recognize that there was some considerable distance from Church teaching and the behavior of her children, but still feel uncomfortable that John Paul has been led to apologize for those sins. Others might grant that he was right to do so, but feel that he has done it for them, so they can return to not worrying about it. What they don't seem to do--at least they don't talk as if they do--is what John Paul has taught us to do: internalize it and make it into their own prayer.

From the 1560's, and really since the New Testament times, Catholic teaching has been quite clear. It is the obligation of Catholics and all Christians to take it into their very souls, to really feel the shame of past actions by their brethren, to consider if they need to alter their own attitudes and actions. While I think I have actually heard the cry of John Paul on this, I realize I need to do more.


posted by A Mind That Suits 5:27 PM

Sunday, September 28, 2003

 
Mel Gibson's The Passion, and the Passions It Inspires

You have no doubt heard at least something about Mel Gibson’s latest film, The Passion. It is perhaps the most unusual major studio project in the history of Hollywood: the story of the Passion of Jesus Christ, strictly as portrayed in the Gospels, with all the people speaking the languages they would have spoken at the time.

A Hollywood movie—in Latin and Aramaic?

Well, not a Hollywood movie, per se, because at this point, no studio has agreed to distribute The Passion, and Mr. Gibson has paid for it all himself. Still, Mr. Gibson is a major force in Hollywood, and there is little doubt that somedody is going to pick it up and distribute it.

In writing this, I am at somewhat of a disadvantage. Spurred on by the controversy, Mr. Gibson has shown the film to a number of groups around the country. By now, perhaps, several thousand people have seen the current rough cut. Mr. Gibson has not finished editing it, which means that the film’s score and the sound are unfinished.

It takes some bravery for Mr. Gibson to show a movie that isn’t finished: most people are completely unaware of all that must be done to make an audience sit still for two hours. When something is missing, they complain, even though they are not sure why.

The viewings have had one powerful effect: they have made his critics work much harder to condemn the film. For a while there, they were operating from a distinct advantage. Weilding a sword that would give them immediate respect—accusations of anti-Semitism—they were able to cavil endlessly at anything Mel Gibson said. Now, they cannot. The verdict has been quite solid: nearly everyone who has seen it, including some Jewish leaders, has been deeply moved by it, though some think it excessively violent.

Still, his critics are unmollified. (A good selection of documents by the critics can be found here.)

My own disadvantage is that I am not in any group that would be invited to see it. I would prefer to see it finished, so this is not a problem. (Though if invited, I would go in a flash.) Still, I have to rely on reports from others. The most thorough review was by prominent Catholc layman and scholar Michael Novak, and appeared some weeks ago in The Weekly Standard. Anyone who reads that, and the back-and-forth in the letters section in the weeks that followed, will, perhaps, have a better understanding of all that is involved than they will from this article. (I should say that I know Prof. Novak slightly in person, and very well from his writings.)

However, Prof. Novak is not the only person who has written about what they have seen. A colleague handed me a copy of a lengthy review of the film and the controversy surrounding it that appeared recently in The New Yorker. The article is in many ways admirable, a throwback to the era (1952-1987) when legendary editor “Mr. Shawn” would allow authors real room to explore an issue.

The author, Peter Boyer, most importantly concludes that the film is not anti-Semitic, merely “Traditionalist Catholic.” He also makes it clear that his own sympathies, in all matters except the charge of anti-Semitism, lie with the critics.

In doing so, he commits a number of avoidable errors that reflect, perhaps, his immersion in a rather closed social and intellectual circle more than any form of dishonesty on his part. However, this Catholic convert must say that he sees some things about Mr. Gibson’s views that cause the old eyebrows to inch up a bit. The movie itself seems to be free of those distortions; I rather expect to be enthralled by it. But the different sets of problems should be discussed.

First, to Mr. Boyer.

Mr. Boyer accuses Mr. Gibson of having a “Manichaean” view of the world, by which he simply means that Mr. Gibson sees “all of human history” as “the product of great warring realms, the unseen powers of absolute good and total evil.”

As Mr. Boyer makes a great deal of academic credentials, it is worth pointing out that “Manichaeism” does not exactly hold that. Manichaeism holds that there are two realms that cannot have any possible contact with each other, the spritual and the material. It is, in short, a form of an ancient heresy known as gnosticism, and Mr. Gibson is very far from a gnostic. Mr. Gibson is a Christian, who believes that the Divine joined with the Material in the Incarnation of God in the Person of Jesus Christ. There is, in the Christian conception, no conflict between the flesh and the spirit if both are oriented toward God. The problem comes when human flesh, and indeed, the human spirit, are oriented toward Evil.

But it is true that Mr. Gibson, in keeping with all orthodox Christians, believes that there is a conflict between good and evil, and that good is absolute. Mr. Boyer makes no mistake there. It is important, however, to note that, up front, he makes a fundamental intellectual mistake,the kind he himself is very worried about.

Mr. Boyer himself is not free from dividing the world into two. Using the terms that appear in the article, those two worlds could be described as “academic” and “lay.” Mr. Boyer clearly sides with the academics, and it is worth noting that he uses the word “lay” for non-academics. That, technically, is a term for people who are not ordained, though it has come to mean “professional” and “non-professional.” Still, it is not too much to say that Mr. Boyer seems to treat professors with a kind of religious awe.

Or at least religious authority.

Everyone on Mr. Gibson’s side is “lay.” Everyone who disagrees with Mr. Gibson is “a scholar.” He even allows to pass uncorrected the sneer of one “scholar” that Gibson "doesn’t even have a Ph.D. on his staff.” The "scholar" was a member of something that calls itself the Ad Hoc Committee of Scholars, and what this committee has been complaining about has been the script—nothing else. Yet the script was translated into the original languages by a priest and professor at Loyola Marymount of Los Angeles. A quick and effortless check of the school's website reveals that the professor who translated that very script, Jesuit Fr. William Fulco, indeed does have a Ph.D.

But, one must ask, what virtue does a Ph.D. possess? Only an ostrich would not know that, in the humanities, Ph.D.’s are a problematic thing. Many traditional subjects such as history and philosophy have been complete subverted by the votaries of philosophies such as “deconstructionism.” These various philosophies--which are very hard to sort out and tend to point in the same direction-- maintain that modern critics may say, pretty much, whatever they want to about any older text or historical event. The texts and any record we have of events are so “soaked in presuppositions” as to be unreliable.

Indeed, every member of the Ad Hoc Scholars Committee, at least among the Christians, belongs to a loose group of scholars that could be described as “the Quest for the Historical Jesus” school. The name comes from a famous book by Swiss medical missionary Albert Schweitzer, who maintained that the record of Jesus’s life contained in the Scriptures could not be relied upon, so modern Christians must embark on their own quest to find Him. (Mr. Boyer dates the beginning of the school a century before Dr. Schweitzer, and in that he may be correct. Certainly the movement proceeds logically from the work of 19th Century textual critics.) The most famous, and radical, manifestation of this movement is “The Jesus Seminar,” one of whose members famously pronounced that Jesus was a “party animal.” The Ad Hoc Scholars Committee appears to be rather more subdued than that, but they plough the same furrow.

Mr. Boyer does not emphasize—as he should—that the whole “Quest for the Historial Jesus” phenomenon has come under withering criticism, and from some very surprising corners. He does say that they are given over to “hermeneutical acrobatics,” and that they disagree vigorously among themselves, but the point is dropped. Except in that paragraph, Gibson’s critics are merely “the scholars.”

But the point is an important one: no scholar who seeks to establish the truth of historical events wants to grant that you can change historical documents such as the Gospels into whatever form suits your fancy. Accept or reject them as you are led to do, but do not change them.

Then there are those who maintain that it is impossible to force the Gospels into that corral anyway. Most notable among those is the world’s most prominent Talmudic Scholar, Rabbi Jacob Neusner, who has said that even if you strip down what Jesus said to the most peaceable sounding passages--the kind that Thomas Jefferson liked to quote--you end up with a man claiming to be God. (For a very clear presentation of Prof. Neusner’s views, see his book A Rabbi Talks with Jesus . In the interests of honesty, this writer must admit that he had several extremely enjoyable meals with Prof. Neusner in the 1980s, when the good Rabbi served on a prominent commission with a family member.) It is an important point: Prof. Neusner does not recognize Jesus as God, but he recognizes that Jesus referred to Himself as divine.

On the whole, Mr. Boyer grants to the Ad Hoc Scholars Committe the legitimacy that they arrogated to themselves. It was formed by a Catholic professor who is affiliated somehow with the Department of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). He approached friends at the Anti-Defamation League and other like minded “scholars.” They formed a group which began issuing statements based on a script that was sent to them anonymously.

The only problem was that the group’s founder used USCCB letterhead, but never bothered to get authorization from the people for whom he technically works, the US Bishops themselves. The USCCB released a statement pointing this out, and saying it would not comment on the film until it was submitted to the Department for review. The committee responded, in a letter that I can no longer find on the web, that, well, you see, several of us have worked with the Department and one of our members actually works for the Department, implying that the Department itself was impolite for issuing any form of demurral.

Mr. Boyer says that the Bishops’ response “put (the) panel of scholars in an awkward position.” The Bishops, apparently, are just supposed to suck it in and accept it when employees speak in their name. In a corporation, the responsible people would be fired. Academia is different.

Further, Mr. Boyer simply includes, without any criticism, the position of the “scholars” that the other two people crucified along with Jesus should be referred to as rebels, not as thieves. He points out that no ancient version so refers to them that way, but seems to say that the “scholars” are on to something helpful. (He is in fact citing a document issued by the US Bishops, though the quote comes in the context of what "scholars" believe. I frankly think he misreads what the Bishops said. See link in the post above. The quote is at the top of the very last page of text.)

This modern “reading” (i.e., revision) is very easy on the reader. See, these guys were rebels against oppressive society. You can either be a rebel with Jesus, or on your own. But all three of the people crucified that day had the same view of things. One of the guys next to Jesus just realized that there was a better way to do it than the other did.

That is rather different than the view expressed in every ancient text, and by the Church through the ages, that the important point of that scene is exactly that we are united with those thieves in our sinfulness. The scholars interpretation lets nearly everyone off the hook. The only sin would be to align yourself with society. Jesus taught that his followers must exceed the Pharisees in holiness, so it is hard to understand how He just automatically sided with any rebel who came along. “Rebelliousness” has not been traditionally considered a Christian virtue in and of itself.

“The Church through the Ages.” Now here is where we must turn from Mr. Boyer to Mr. Gibson.

For Mr. Gibson believes exactly that he is aligning himself with “the Church through the ages,” and that Church takes a particular form.

For those of you unfamiliar with the story—and I admit I only knew the vaguest details until reading Mr. Boyer’s very well-written account--Mr. Gibson was raised as a Roman Catholic. His father was extremely traditional, and was horrified by the changes brought by the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, known to the world simply as Vatican II. On his winnings at Jeopardy, the elder Mr. Gibson moved his family, including 12-year-old Mel, to Australia. That is why the younger Mr. Gibson can switch between Aussie and Yankee accents at will.

(I happen to know an Australian who moved to this country at about the same age (13, as I recall), and he speaks without the tiniest trace of an Aussie accent. I asked him how he accomplished that, since he moved past the age when accents can be easily picked up. He replied that the choice was either lose his native accent or get beaten up, and I suspect Mr. Gibson had roughly the same experience in the opposite direction.)

Mr. Gibson fell into acting as a teenager, and has enjoyed, of course, remarkable success in movies. It is worth pointing out that, among major stars, Mr. Gibson has perhaps the widest range of any actor working today, from Mad Max to Hamlet to The Man Without A Face. Although an autodidact, he is also very well read, and a fine director.

But, as anyone who watches VH-1’s Behind the Music with any regularity can tell you, success and fame rarely bring happiness. At the very height of his popularity, in the last ‘80’s and early ‘90’s, he found himself wracked by the most agonizing kind of despair. For those who have wondered, as I had, how the frequent appearance of Mr. Gibson’s posterior squared with his religious faith, it is simply that he was not a particularly observant Christian at that time. Through some struggles about which we know relatively little (and which we should not demand to know more about,) he found his way back, to the Roman Church.

Of his father.

Which means that Mr. Gibson is what is called a “Traditionalist.” He does not recognize the validity of Vatican II or the Rite of the Mass that was initiated shortly after it concluded. He attends Mass only in Latin and only in what is known as its Tridentine form. He even built a very large church near his California home so he wouldn't have to commute so far on Sunday mornings.

The Tridentine Mass was the form settled on pursuant to the teachings of the Council of Trent (1545-1563) Now, I subscribe to a publication called The Latin Mass, which is very informative and well-written. It is also slave to a very difficult position to hold intellectually, to whit, the only really meritorious form of the Mass is the Tridentine one, accompanied by Gregorian Chant.

The problem, just to begin with, is that the Council of Trent essentially abandoned Gregorian Chant, and assigned the most famous composer of his day, Palestrina, to come up with a new way of doing music for the Mass. But such considerations figure very little in the material published in The Latin Mass. There is just this one thing that the Roman Church should be, and that is Tridentine cum Gregorian. (Unlike Mr. Gibson, most Latin Mass writers concede the technical validity of the new Mass, but often just barely.)

The far bigger problem is that, even in 1545, the Church recognized a number of rites, both Latin ones and Eastern (Byzantine) ones in the local vernacular. The Archdiocese of Milan has its own pre-Tredentine Latin rite, and such ancient churches as the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church have a Byzantine-based Greek Rite, even though they are loyal to the Pope.

The post-Vatican II rite is called the Novus Ordo, or "New Order" Its implementation did mark a change from previous Church practice that was unfortunate, as discussed by the Church’s current chief doctrinal officer, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. That a new Mass followed a Council was itself unremarkable: the Council of Trent had done the very same thing. What was different—and Cardinal Ratzinger clearly thinks it was wrong—was the the old Tridentine rite was surpressed. It was the first time, the good cardinal maintains, that such a break had ever been decreed, and it left people confused.

Now, this Pope is very happy with the changes, so happy that it took him some time to discover just how bad the translations into English were. (A liberal Catholic colleague recalls that when the English translation of the Mass was introduced, an Episcopalian Church hung out a sign that said, “Come hear in the Mass in good English.”) However, this Pope also takes the word “catholic” (i.e., “universal”) very seriously. So he has tried very hard to accomodate Traditionalists who are willing to submit to the authority of the Pope.

But he is not one of them. The Traditionalists return the compliment. Though they make a great deal of Papal authority, they do not make a great deal of this Pope. That, alas, includes Mr. Gibson.

All of which means that, just as most Americans liberals have done, most American conservatives and traditionalists have simply not been paying attention for the last 25 years.

At one point in the New Yorker article, Mr. Gibson says of one doctrine that “it’s just not fair...But that is a pronouncement from the chair (of St. Peter.) I go with it.”

(The following paragraph, it turns out, is wrong. Please see this Blog for Oct 29.)
While that is admirable obedience, it may not be so well informed. The doctrine he cites—“There is no salvation outside the Church”—was, so far as this writer knows, never infallibly defined, and it conflicts with two other doctrines that have been very clearly pronouned upon. One is that, as long as baptism is carried out “in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit”—that is, using a Trinitarian formula—it is valid. At that point a person’s Christian life commences. It’s called “baptismal regeneration,” and it was emphatically taught at the Council of Trent. The other doctrine—established even longer ago than that—is that we have no idea how God disposes of any particular soul once they have departed this life. St. Augustine said that he knew for a certainty that there were souls in hell. St. Augustine is the most revered of all "Doctors of the Church," but that "sentence," (i.e., proposition) of his was condemned.

Moreover, the obedience would ring a little more resoundingly if he extended it to the current Pope, and here is where his private theological concerns might interfere with the movie.

Take Mr. Gibson’s comments about Frank Rich, the deeply regrettable columnist for the New York Times. My own opinion is that a theatre critic should not be hired to comment on politics; he will think it is a show, and facts do not matter. Mr. Rich’s columns—or at least what I have read of them—tend toward the hyperbolic, ill-informed, and overheated. I suspect that, at base, Mr. Gibson and I agree about Mr. Rich. However, I demur when it comes to Mr. Gibson’s reaction to some very provocative—not to mention hyperbolic, ill-informed, and overheated--comments by the columnist.

Said Mr. Gibson: “I want to kill him...I want his intestines on a stick...I want to kill his dog.”

Now, it is popular these days to ask, “What Would Jesus Do?” and even “What Would Jesus Drive?” Myself, I think the important question is, ‘What did Jesus Do?” However, even the wackiest Jesus Seminar votary would agree that Jesus certainly never never said, nor would He say, that he wanted someone’s intestines on a stick.

Mr. Gibson’s publicist intervened at this point to tell Mr. Boyer that “the thing you have to understand is that the distance between Mel’s heart and his mouth is greater than the distance between his imagination and his mouth.” It is indeed a striking visual image--the intestines and stick thing, I mean.

But here is where I most disagree with Traditionalists of Mr. Gibson’s stripe. In the last three issues of Latin Mass, there have appeared references, oblique and not so oblique, to violence on behalf of the Church. It is as if they have not noticed any of the verses where Jesus preached exactly against that kind of thing, or noticed how much trouble any Church—Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox—has gotten in if it aligns itself with worldly power.

Here is where their blindness to the current occupant of the Chair of St. Peter is most glaring. Karol Wojtyla has exactly taught that many Christians have erred in understanding the Kingly role of Jesus. For many Traditionalists, the Papal Monarchy and Christendom were great things, nevermind the grotesquely sinful Popes and the endless murder of innocents in military campaigns conducted by Popes or in their names. Jacques Maritain, the great Catholic philosopher, referred to it as “the great evil, the great temptation of the Middle Ages,” and this Pope, evidently, agrees. And, of course, John Paul II, as actor, student, priest, bishop, cardinal, and Pope, has been a model of effective, non-violent reaction to political oppression.

But virtually no one in this country above the age of 30--right, left, or center-- has been paying attention. That's their loss, but I do find myself wishing they would listen up.

Now Michael Novak, the professor whose review I referred to at the beginning, makes no mention that that particular aspect of Traditionalist thinking intrudes on the Passion. Mr. Novak is in many ways one of the premier interpreters of John Paull II in this country, and so you would think he would notice if it were there. Mr. Boyer indicates that it sneaks in a little at the end, and refers to The Passion as "a war movie."

I hope not. I really, really hope not, because everything else I have read about it indicates that it is indeed what Mr. Gibson set out to make: an accurate accounting of the most momentous weekend in human history, and a deeply moving film.


posted by A Mind That Suits 9:39 PM