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Reflections on
The Passion of the Christ
David Allen White, Ph.D.
GUEST COLUMNIST,
Virginia
Reprinted from The Remnant
21170
Reviews offer
evaluations of movies; this is not a review because Mel Gibson’s film The Passion
of the Christ is not a “movie”; it is a great work of Catholic art and a
turning point in human history.
Who would have
guessed back in the year 2000 as one millennium passed into another that in a
few brief years the highest grossing five day opening in cinema history would
be for a film that chronicles in excruciating detail the passion and death of
Our Lord Jesus Christ? In a world gone secular and filled with lies, ruled by
demonic hatred of the Truth, especially the Truth of God; in a world awash in
sin and rife with unrestrained and prideful human desires, governed by hatred
of the Good, especially the Goodness of God; in a world defaced by ugliness and
reveling in deformity, governed by the hatred of Beauty, especially the
Beauties of God’s Creation; in such a world who could have imagined the box
office triumph and the heart-felt response to a true work of art, a good work
of art, a beautiful work of art, especially one that demands so much of the
viewer?
The extreme
reactions evoked by the film provide a straightforward spiritual litmus test.
Will you see the film or not? Will you
believe the film or not? Will you obey His Commandments or not? Has there ever
been a work of art so miraculously designed to separate the sheep from the
goats, or to see if the sheep will follow the shepherd or stray off on their
own? The film must be divinely inspired.
Mr. Gibson has
said that the real maker of the work is the Holy Spirit. He has been mocked for
saying so. In a historical sense, he has said nothing unusual. All artists and
poets and musicians from the dawn of time have known that they are dependent on
an outward force that works through them to produce the end product. Some
arrogant artists have assumed they were themselves the source of their genius,
but for the most part such men are aberrations. The majority of great artists
have appealed to the “muses” or to “divine inspiration” or to God Himself for
assistance. Following their creative act, they have thanked the source, such as
Bach writing “S.D.G.” at the conclusion of his compositions – “Soli Deo Gloria”, “To God Alone
the Glory.” The director of The Passion merely places himself in
line with these great artists.
The howling
voices in the press would deny Mr. Gibson the status of artist. A real artist,
according to their perverse judgment, mocks our Lord, as do many in the film
who jeer as Our Lord passes along the Via Dolorosa. You may place a crucifix in
a beaker of urine or create a “portrait” of the Blessed Virgin with elephant
dung, you may suggest Our Lord had unruly passions directed toward Mary
Magdalene or unnatural relations with His Disciples – this is real spirituality
and profound insight say the twisted, liberal, academic, worldly commentators.
Yes, the spirituality of the demonic, the profundity of the abyss. To show the
truth of Our Lord’s sorrow and suffering and sacrifice drives them into a
violent frenzy, just as when a vampire is confronted with a crucifix. The elite
“intellectuals” in
These same voices
who sang hosannas and built shrines before the bloody carnage and gory excesses
of Peckinpah and Spielberg and Tarantino now hold
their noses in the air and sniff at the “violence” in Mel Gibson’s masterpiece.
This is a self-evident red herring. There have indeed been times when violence
was considered unsuitable for human viewing. The Greeks of the fifth century
B.C. allowed violence on the stage with only rare exceptions. They considered
it “obscene”, which in Greek means “away from the scene” or “off stage”. These
actions, not being proper for civilized men to witness, were to occur
off-stage. Thus Oedipus blinds himself off-stage and Medea
slays her own children off-stage. The Greeks were also so sensitive to
religious piety that when Aeschylus put the female goddesses of revenge, the
Furies, on stage in a scene set at the
Such is not our
time. We are more like the Romans, a society centered on politics and law and
engineering, legitimate pursuits that too easily descend into manipulation and
legalisms and pride. Like the Romans, we have a thirst for blood. For decades
our cinema screens have been awash with blood. We have had no qualms about
allowing our young to grow up watching (via movies and television and video
games) thousands and thousands of simulated horrors. We called this artistic
freedom. Such freedom stops, however, when it comes to Our Lord. His Passion
should not be shown. Why not?
The simple fact,
of course, though the raucous voices of hate would never admit it, is that they
know quite well what His Blood represents, as opposed to all the rest of the
blood shed for years on many of those same screens. And the director makes this
fact very clear. This is His Precious Blood, made Precious
because it is the Blood sacrificed to the Father in atonement, as the
reparation for the sins of the world. His precious Blood had to be shed, among
thousands of other causes, because parents in our time would love their own
children so little as to allow them to be killed in the womb or, if they
survive, to grow up watching bloody horrors and other obscenities that will
scar their young souls for eternity. The Preciousness of the Blood of the
Christ is underlined in the magnificent scene where Pilate’s wife brings the
white cloths to the two Marys. Unable to bind Our
Lord’s wounds as He has already been taken away, they kneel in the courtyard
and wipe up that Blood, letting it be absorbed into the large swaths. They are
not cleaning the ground; they are preserving His Precious Blood, the Precious
Blood shed for the critics and the academics and the self-appointed
“intelligentsia.” They know this and it drives them mad.
It should also
madden the novus ordo
establishment. God in His infinite wisdom has allowed the greatest work of
Catholic art, and thus the greatest work of art, of the age to be created by a
Traditional Catholic. In a post-Vatican II Church that has turned its eyes away
from the Passion of Our Lord, Mel Gibson has shoved this hard Truth before the
eyes of the world. He has done more apostolic work in the last week than the
entire Church hierarchy has in the last forty years. In their pristine,
sentimental new order temples of felt banners and eagles wings and liturgical
dancers and altar girls and resurrecifixes and kisses
of peace and lay ministers and Father Bobs and Father Mikes and social justice,
where has the Precious Blood been located? Not on the supper table and maybe
not even in the chalice at the consecration, given the arrogant sentimentality
of these reformers which allowed them to change Our Lord’s very words to be
spoken at the moment of the consecration of the wine into His Precious Blood.
The Great Sacrifice is back, but not in the novus
ordo temples; no, it is on the screen, placed
there with devotion and faith and love by a great artist to be witnessed by
millions of viewers who have forgotten this great gift or have never been aware
of it before.
That Mel Gibson
in his subtitling gets the words of Our Lord correct in his translation of
“pro multis” as “for many” shows what a simple
task such precision is. You do not have to be a scholar or a linguist or a
genius to get the translation right. You simply have to love Our Lord more than
you love the praise of the world. The faulty translation of “for all” in the novus ordo mass
shows that the
There are
wonderful touches throughout the film to catch the eyes and to delight the
hearts, not to mention to comfort the souls, of Traditional Catholics. The
Latin language and the correct translation of “for many” at the Last Supper are
only the beginning. How about the glorious moment when, as the cross is raised
up and falls with a tremendous jolt into place, thus beginning the Great
Sacrifice, Mary Magdalene covers her head with a veil? How about all those who
love Our Lord kneeling before the Great Sacrifice? How about the Blessed Mother
on that first Good Friday coming forward to kiss the feet of Our Lord as He
hangs on the cross, an action re-enacted by millions of Catholics over the centuries
on every Good Friday? And just what is the curious piece of brown cloth on
straps that hangs over the shoulders of the Good Thief on his cross as he asks
Our Lord to remember him when He comes into His Kingdom?
I have no doubt
there are countless other sublime touches from this man devoted to the
Traditional Catholic Faith. I have only seen the film twice. On a second
viewing, the film offered a very different experience. Not as shell-shocked
with the visceral impact of Our Lord’s profound suffering, I saw new things and
experienced different emotions. I had not seen at my first viewing the dove
flying over our Lord’s head when, with His eye badly bruised, He comes before
Pilate for the first time, a clear parallel to that other bird and that other eye
that appear late in the film, bringing something other than consolation to the
unrepentant thief. This is a work of art and will demand multiple viewings
which, being a great work of art, it will repay with new insights and new
sublimities. (The art historians must get to work. The number of reminiscences
of great paintings of the past from Grunewald to
Caravaggio to Raphael and so on is astonishing.)
As to the
non-Catholics who have seen the film or spoken against it, we have obligations
in charity. This is a perfect occasion to explain to the poor Protestants the
connection between the Crucifixion and the Real Presence. Through his brilliant
cross-cutting, Mr. Gibson has given us all the material we need to bring the
point home. We must also explain the central role of the Blessed Mother in
salvation history. Again, this good Catholic man, this great artist, has done
the work for us. We have an obligation to make clear that the film is obviously
not anti-Semitic. At the same time, we need to understand the central role of
the Jews in God’s providential plan. Just as they unwittingly did God’s work
two thousand years ago, they have played a central role in turning this film
into a worldwide phenomenon that will be seen by millions of people. Once
again, God is using these people; from their fulmination and their hatred and
their rage, He has brought forth great good. We must try to convert them to the
Truth, to accept finally the Messiah who died for them.
And the novus ordo Catholic
Church that with the exception of some good devout priests has stood silently
by and given no support or encouragement at any point in the production or
dissemination of this great work of Catholic art? I could not help but be
struck in both my viewings by the pompous arrogance of the High Priests who
stood by unmoved, unrepentant, with, in fact, a slight hint of smug
self-satisfaction, as Our Lord was tortured and abused. Could there be a more
obvious parallel to the attitude of our own hierarchy who has delivered up the
Mystical Body of Our Lord Jesus Christ and stood silently by with a measure of
pompous self-assurance as His Mystical Body has been abused and humiliated,
spat upon and vilified, tortured and crucified? Surely Solange
Hertz is correct when she states that in our age we are witnessing the Passion
of the Church.
To believing
Catholics, the disdain and indifference shown by Church officials toward this
film is heartbreaking. From the silence of the American bishops (with the
exception of Bishop McGrath of
Near the
beginning of the film, the director shows Peter denying Our Lord three times.
After the suffering but loving countenance of our Lord is turned toward Peter
and Peter looks into the face of his Master and Savior, he is overcome with
guilt and sorrow. His immediate response is to go to the Blessed Mother and,
falling at her feet, say, weeping, “I have denied him, Mother.” May one day
another Keeper of the Keys be granted such a moment of revelation and follow in
the footsteps of that first pontiff, for only through such an admission of
guilt and only at the feet of Mary can we hope for the denial of Our Lord to
end. The triumph of Her Immaculate Heart and a period of peace for the world
will follow the full restoration of the One, Holy, Catholic,
On behalf of all
Traditional Catholics, I thank you Mel Gibson for assisting in the possibility
of such a restoration and giving to our souls much needed hope in this time of
weariness and sorrow and trial. You have reminded us of what we too can expect
from the world. “If they have hated Me,” our Lord says
to His disciples in the film, “they will hate you.” Thank you for making our
Lent richer in its true meaning and in the days to come for helping to make our
cross a bit lighter. We carry it in good Catholic company, in genuine
fellowship with you and with the Suffering Christ.