- So suggests Abraham Foxman, national director of the
Anti-Defamation League, following a series of published and oral comments
made by the award-winning Hollywood actor and director concerning his controversial
upcoming movie about the death of Jesus of Nazareth.
-
- "Recent statements by Mel Gibson paint the portrait
of an anti-Semite," Foxman told The Jewish Week Tuesday.
-
- While the debate has been raging for months over 'The
Passion' and its negative portrayal of Jews, no mainstream Christian or
Jewish community leader has until now made such a direct charge against
Gibson, who is directing and financing his $30 million labor of love.
-
- Interfaith critics instead have focused on the bloody
movie, saying that by promoting the 2,000-year-old charge of Christ killers
against Jews, the film would fuel anti-Semitism around the world.
-
- It would come, they say, from people who were never taught
that the Vatican officially repudiated the deicide charge against Jews
nearly 40 years ago at the Vatican II conference called Nostra Aetate.
-
- But Foxman says it is clear now that the 47-year-old
Gibson, an ultra-conservative Catholic who does not accept the Vatican
reforms, is spouting "classic anti-Semitism."
-
- Foxman adds that it is clear the actor doesn't fall far
from the tree. Gibson's 85-year-old father, Hutton, has been quoted as
saying far fewer Jews died in the Holocaust than 6 million, and is a conspiracist
who says Jews are behind recent Vatican reforms.
-
- "There's no longer a debate where [Mel Gibson] is
coming from," Foxman said Tuesday. "He is a true believer that
the true story of the suffering [of Jesus] is that the Jews made him suffer."
-
- Foxman cited Gibson's statements at an interfaith screening
of 'The Passion' in Houston last month, and in the Sept. 15 issue of The
New Yorker magazine. In the latter, the Oscar-winning director of 'Braveheart'
portrays himself as being persecuted like Jesus for making the film, and
as a victim of a murderous cabal who forced him to make changes in the
film that could end his career.
-
- Foxman notes that in the magazine, Gibson regrets excising
a scene in which the high priest recites the curse from the Gospel of Matthew
proclaiming that the blood of Jesus is upon him and his children.
-
- Said Gibson: "But, man, if I included that in there,
they'd be coming after me at my house, they'd come kill me," referring
to the ADL and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, among other critics, correspondent
Peter J. Boyer writes.
-
- Later, Boyer reports that Gibson accuses "modern
secular Judaism" of blaming "the Holocaust on the Catholic Church.
And it's a lie. And it's revisionism. And they've been working on that
one for a while."
-
- "When you put those things together," said
Foxman, "that is a portrait of an anti-Semite. To me this is classic
anti-Semitism."
-
- Gibson's spokesman Alan Nierob said this is the first
time he's heard a charge of anti-Semitism directed at Gibson.
-
- "It's an irresponsible statement," Nierob said.
"I won't even dignify it with a response."
-
- Foxman's declaration comes on the heels of several significant
developments about the movie, slated for release next spring. Two senior
Vatican officials publicly endorsed the film and made ominous statements
about its critics.
-
- The praise sheds new light on a major theological battle
within the Catholic Church between progressives and conservatives over
Church doctrine during the waning reign of Pope John Paul II.
-
- Progressive Catholic scholars are criticizing the film
for violating Vatican teachings about how to accurately and responsibly
tell the story of Jesus' death, known as the Passion, and the Jewish role
in it.
-
-
- But last week Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, the top
Vatican official in charge of the Congregation for the Clergy, a Vatican
subcommittee charged with implementing religious decrees, hailed the movie
as a "triumph of art and faith" after seeing it in Rome.
-
- "I would like all our Catholic priests throughout
the world to see this film," he told an Italian television reporter.
"I hope all Christians will be able to see it and all people everywhere."
He disputed the notion that the film is in any way anti-Semitic.
-
- Further, Archbishop John Foley, an American serving in
the Vatican communications office, told the Associated Press he thought
the film was excellent based on trailers he saw. (Trailers can be accessed
on the Internet). He doubted the validity of criticism.
-
- "I don't think they would be well-founded criticisms
because all the material in the film comes directly from the Gospel accounts.
So if they're critical of the film, they would be critical of the Gospel,"
Archbishop Foley said.
-
- But Rev. John Pawlikowki, director of the Catholic-Jewish
Studies Program at Chicago's Catholic Theological Union, who criticized
the script as being anti-Jewish and violating Church teachings last April
with an ad hoc group of Catholic and Jewish scholars, said the Church officials
are ignoring the real issue.
-
- "I regret that none of the Catholic leaders Ö
have addressed the substance of our critique," he told The Jewish
Week Monday. "That substance is that the main story line puts the
primary responsibility for the death of Jesus on the Jewish cabal led by
Caiphas [the Jewish high priest]. This is contrary to the recent Catholic
documents and modern biblical scholarship. Until they show in a concrete
way how the script squares with these documents and with modern biblical
scholarship their endorsements ring hollow."
-
- Rev. Pawlikowski noted that neither Cardinal Hoyos nor
Archbishop Foley are Vatican spokesmen on Catholic-Jewish relations. He
called on Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Vatican's commission
on Religious Relations with Jews, to address the issue.
-
- Foxman also called on Cardinal William Keeler of Baltimore,
the Church's top liaison in America to Jews , to speak out in light of
the praise from the two Vatican clerics.
-
- Foxman and ADL interfaith director Rabbi Eugene Korn
met privately with Cardinal Keeler last month, when the cleric declined
to publicly enter the fray over the movie.
-
- (Catholic scholars including Sister Mary Boys of Manhattan's
Union Theological Seminary and Dr. Philip Cunningham of Boston College's
Center for Christian Jewish Learning met with Cardinal Keeler last week,
sources told The Jewish Week.)
-
- Foxman sent a letter Tuesday asking Cardinal Keeler to
speak out now because if the public only hears the voices of Church officials
supporting the movie, "people will assume the Church in fact is endorsing
this film."
-
- A spokesman for Cardinal Keeler told The Jewish Week
Tuesday that he has not seen the movie nor read the script and would not
comment.
-
- However, Rabbi Korn said that Keeler privately has agreed
"in principle to begin a broad educational campaign for the Catholic
community to teach the correct Catholic teaching" about the Crucifixion
and Judaism.
-
-
- "Many people are unaware of this, and some are either
knowingly or unknowingly are reverting back to old pre-Vatican II understandings.
-
- "We have ridden into the middle of ideological war
between conservative Catholics and Vatican II progressive Catholics,"
Rabbi Korn said. "The Catholic Church in America has to speak out
very clearly about the issues this movie raises."
-
- "One of the problems is people are going to see
this film and are going to conclude that's the way it is because they don't
know anything different, it's part of the religious illiteracy in our country,"
Sister Boys said. "We really have to find ways to educate them about
interpreting Scripture more thoughtfully."
-
- http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=8445
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-
-
- Comment
- From Cindy
- 9-19-3
-
- It seems to me that Mr. Foxman must have an issue with
job security. He must spout and make accusations of anti-Semitism to keep
it alive to justify a need for the ADL.
-
- And since when do people have to be told "how to
interpret the scriptures" as Sister Boys claims? And what is "modern
biblical scholarship"? The word of God does not change. I think
the Catholic church has done enough "interpreting" and brainwashing
throughout the centuries already.
-
- The scripture says what it says regarding the "events"
leading to the Crucifixion of Jesus. What needs to be understood is how
the Old Testament prophesied His coming and sacrifice for the sins of mankind.
The New Testament tells us how Jesus did indeed fulfill that. Let's not
forget...Jesus knew his purpose on this earth. Let's not forget...Jesus
went to the cross because of His love for us.
-
- Bottom line.....WE put Jesus on that cross.
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