Scholars are objecting to this section and saying it distorts the fact that the Romans were the occupying power.

If people want to read something sensible about this whole thing, Raymond E. Brown -- he died about a year ago -- was a great, great Catholic scripture scholar. He wrote a mega-work called "The Death of the Messiah" in 1994 -- two volumes, 1,600 pages. But then he digested [it] down and did a little tiny popular work, a $5 paperback, 71 pages, called "A Crucified Christ in Holy Week." I think that would be the sanest possible book anyone could ever read.

This film had some extra details that came from the visions of whoever, which I've never studied...

She was a 19th century mystic, Sister Anne Catherine Emmerich. Gibson was quoted as saying his script drew from diaries she kept of her visions -- scholars got bent out of shape that he threw in some extra-biblical details derived from her writing.

There are a lot of tormented people who really concentrated on sin and suffering. Even in the Old Testament, in the Psalms, there was an evolution from bloody sacrifice to "a sacrifice of praise," a sacrifice of praise and thanks.

I don't see the point of magnifying the violence of his arrest, torture and death. I find it perverse and strange and really vulgar. As Ray Brown says, the Gospels are pretty straightforward. They arrive at Golgotha, and then it says, "Then they crucified him." They just say it in a little short sentence. They don't say, "They yanked one of Jesus' shoulders out of the socket and they bounced the cross around face down after he was nailed to it." I think some of that came from that wacko woman's vision. People who are psychologically disturbed push that into their religious imagination. Religious imagination is very fertile, and it feeds on human need, so you have to be really careful.

So Mel's vision is morbidly preoccupied with sin and retribution?

Oh, absolutely. And he said so in the interview afterward: "To forgive human sin, there had to be a blood sacrifice." The idea that God is so pissed off that God needs blood to satisfy him -- that is such a primitive notion.

Throw the virgin in the volcano.

The whole idea of Jesus as a life giver, or someone who can transform hearts, or who comes to give abundant life, or the Jesus of John's Gospel, who comes to say, "I come to give living water that will bubble up within you," you know, an almost Gnostic notion -- it so goes against this thing, the Doctrine of the Atonement, which Evangelical Christians and Protestants have read back into the Gospels more heavily than is really there.

How was the preoccupation with sin illustrated in the film?

The "devil" was a kind of androgynous creature, but most people read it as a woman, and called her "The Temptress" -- she was whispering to Jesus on the night before his Passion, saying "Nobody. Nobody can take on the sin of the whole human race. It's too great. Nobody can. You can't do it." And Jesus does!

He paints his face blue, puts on his kilt, and he goes for it!

And when the devil isn't shown as an androgynous or female figure, the devil is shown as a taunting child, which really freaked me out. Really horrible.

Damien in "The Omen II."

Exactly. The parts that are kind of overlooked are Jesus saying, "Love your enemies"; "Those who live by the sword will die by the sword" -- those lines are in there, but...

Kind of glossed over in favor of the heavy blood and guts?

Yeah.

So, Mel was reverting back to Book of Jeremiah, burn-in-a-lake-of-fire, angry God of Abraham stuff?

Oh, yeah. If you believe in monotheism, there is only one God. There's not an Old Testament God and a New Testament God. And there's not a Muslim God and a Christian God. To Mel Gibson's credit, afterward in the interview -- the auditorium got pretty quiet; I almost got up and cheered -- he said, "I believe that through the merits of Jesus' sacrifice, even the people of the Old Testament were all saved." So David is a saint, and Elijah is a saint. And even people who don't know Jesus are able to be saved, but through him. I know that sounds condescending, but it's still a fairly generous remark and that's really the best of Catholic tradition.

Still, the God Mel described then sounds like a God that is a lot more friendly than the one portrayed in the film.

I think ["The Passion"] was meant to be a shocker and a moneymaker. And I don't think it's going to make money, and I think that's why they've had to suck people in. At this showing, there was no room to not like the film. We were supposed to all like it. We were supposed to all be weeping into our Kleenexes. We were supposed to all see this as the greatest opportunity of all time, and then Lee Strobel, "former atheist," who wrote "The Case for Christ" and "The Case for Faith," said ["The Passion"] was "An anointed piece of art." That God "selected" Mel to do this.

That's spooky. Frank Rich made an interesting point in his New York Times column: that the audiences that have been selected to see this film before the release are all very conservative Christians like the Senate Republican Conference, the White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives, and Rush Limbaugh -- but it hasn't been shown to critics or Bible scholars or Jewish groups. Do you think Mel knows he has something to worry about, here?

I just don't think it's very well done. I think if someone wants to get into some interesting cinematic treatments, they should go see "The Gospel According to St. Matthew" by Pasolini. Or even the old Hollywood blockbusters. ["The Passion"] reflects a very morbid kind of theology. If the idea is to just provoke, it may do that. I thought it was a lot of dull, unless you like watching protracted torture scenes.

So you didn't feel like it was going to be a tool of great conversion or anything.

No, not at all. It's 100 percent Hollywood trash. There's so many stories that can illumine the meaning of suffering and redemption and forgiveness, and renewal of life, and they're not all in the Bible.

What would be your advice for would-be moviegoers?

I'd say don't bother. I think it's a big bore.

I think a 5-year-old who has to get cancer surgery and radiation and chemotherapy suffers more than Jesus suffered; I think that a kid in the Gaza Strip who steps on a land mine and loses two limbs suffers more; I think a battered wife with no resources suffers more; I think people without medical care dying of AIDS in Africa suffer more than Jesus did that day. I mean, I don't want to take away from that, but this preoccupation with the intensity of the suffering, I think, has no theological or spiritual value.

Recent Stories