Deliver Us from Evil

Whether Mel Gibson’s new movie is anti-Semitic or not, there is another problem: it may well be anti-Catholic.

“The Passion of the Christ” is undoubtedly the most visually powerful “passion play” ever produced. Passion plays—stage dramas depicting the arrest, trial, and execution of Jesus—came into fashion in Germany in the 15th century; the fad waned in the 16^th century, as many productions deteriorated into religious satire and farce to suit popular tastes. The Passion Play of Oberammergau remained the chief survivor, along with the popular devotion to the Stations of the Cross. Mel Gibson has revived this fashion, projecting it onto the big screen in a classic big-budget Hollywood production. The craftsmanship behind this production is stunning—and that is precisely the problem.

At a staged play, the audience views the drama from a distance of several feet—the equivalent of a movie long-shot. This movie, by contrast, pulls viewers into the action with huge close-ups. This Passion is full of “in your face” images of faces (Jesus, Mary, Pilate, the Devil) and objects (crown of thorns, nails, garden) and bodies (chiefly the tortured bloody body of Jesus). These images, unfortunately, offer intensity without insight. We gain no great understanding of the characters’ emotions or motives beyond the stock characterizations of the typical passion play (Jesus=suffering, sacrificial hero; Mary=anguished faithful mother; Pilate=torn, skeptical coward; high priests=bent on destroying their enemy; Judas=wracked by guilt). Movie close-ups are supposed to bring us into the characters’ hearts and minds, but here the close-ups stop at the surface of their skins, to rub our noses in their blood, sweat, and tears. The resulting intensity owes nothing to insight and everything to makeup and special effects. The result is a “you are there” quality that many viewers find moving—which is why this film is both powerful and dangerous. Why dangerous? Because it falsifies Catholic faith in several ways.

First, it tempts viewers to confuse the movie’s realism with historical accuracy. That would be a mistake—this is not how it happened, as far as we know. Like all passion plays, this movie distorts the gospels by blending their four varied, sometimes contradictory accounts into a single, harmonious narrative. Moreover, even the gospels don’t pretend historical accuracy. Example: the private dialog between Pilate and Jesus was just that—private, unwitnessed and unrecorded. No one knows what (if anything) they said. Biblical scholars dispute the accuracy of much in the passion narratives, and Catholics should remember that the gospels were not written as either history or biography—they were written to show how important Jesus was to his followers.

Second, Gibson has deliberately falsified the narrative. The movie’s longest single scene—the scourging—converts a tiny gospel fragment (a single word in two gospels, a short phrase in two others) into 15 minutes of the most graphic, sadistic violence in movie history—1/8 of the entire movie! This goes well beyond what is typical of passion plays. Moreover, Gibson shows Jesus, already scourged, struggling defiantly to his feet, then virtually taunting his torturers to begin again, which they do. This is totally out of character with the Jesus we find in the gospels.

Why this false drama? Unless this scene is gratuitous Hollywood violence (one critic called it “devotional cinematic obscenity”), Gibson is grinding his own axe, pushing his point of view on the suffering and death of Jesus. Gibson wants us to believe, with him, that (1) Jesus was a unique victim who suffered like no one else, and that (2) this unique physical agony was necessary to save us. He is wrong on both counts.

(1) There is no evidence that Jesus’ physical suffering was unique or even unusual (except perhaps the crown of thorns). Scourging was absolutely routine for any criminal condemned to crucifixion—yet Gibson presents the two men condemned alongside Jesus with unblemished bodies, as if they’d never been scourged. And crucifixion itself was, of course, the standard way the Romans executed all condemned Jews. Jesus was not a special target of Roman sadism; he was merely one of thousands of condemned men executed under Rome’s occupation—one of the millions of death penalty victims in human history.

(2) Catholic faith does not claim that, to save us, Jesus had to undergo extreme physical agony. Many Catholics have already told me how much this movie moved them. “It reminded me,” many said, “how much Jesus suffered for us.” Yes, Jesus suffered—but our belief in the passion is not about the amount of Jesus’ suffering. Jesus would have suffered even if the Roman form of execution were as “humane” as lethal injection! In fact, Jesus was bound to suffer by the mere fact of being born! Like every human, Jesus was dying from his first day to his last. And since we believe in Christ’s divine nature, we must ask, “why would God suffer like us?” The answer does not lie in Good Friday, but in Easter Sunday.

Early Christians believed the Resurrection proved that Jesus’ death was not the defeat it appeared to be—it was, rather, the final scene of a drama in which a loving God chose to save the human race by joining himself to it, by sharing its suffering and pain. The point of Jesus’ passion is not that “Jesus suffered like no one else.” It is just the opposite: “For us, God suffered like all of us.” As one wise priest said, the human race was redeemed when the first piece of straw scratched the bottom of the baby Jesus in the manger.

Remember, “sacrifice” does not mean suffer—it means “make holy.” God made a sinful humanity holy by the very act of taking human form. The God Catholics worship is no sadist who demands blood and guts as payment for sin. He is the infinite lover described by Paul in a passage written much closer to Jesus’ passion and death than any gospel:

Christ Jesus

Who, though he was in the form of God,

Did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,

But emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,

Being born in the likeness of men.

And being found in the human form

He humbled himself and become obedient unto death,

Even death on a cross.

No blood and guts here, just the rock solid core of Catholic faith: God’s self-humbling act of saving love. Does Mel Gibson really need images of sadistic torture to move his faith? Do we? Maybe so—but if so, this false perversion of Catholic faith is a disturbing emotional need, not a spiritual one.

“The Passion of the Christ” is the gospel according to Mel Gibson. It is propaganda for a version of Christianity that is closer to fundamentalism than to Catholicism. His passion play hearkens back to an obsolete phase of catholic piety, a time when Jew-hating was acceptable social behavior, when a morbid obsession with Christ’s agony infected Catholic devotions, and when respect for the authentic Gospel message and authentic Catholic teaching were perverted by popular superstition.

Perhaps that time, however obsolete, is not yet extinct. Perhaps many Catholics are tempted by nostalgia for that time. If so, Lent is the perfect time for them to examine their consciences.

Send Your Comments and Questions to bfswain@juno.com