something about this stinks

[sisyphusshrugged]

from the Salt Lake Tribune:

An independent group of scholars who warned that an upcoming Mel Gibson film contains anti-Semitic overtones has withdrawn its criticisms and agreed not to judge the film until its release next year.

Gibson, whose controversial film on the death of Jesus is in the editing stage, threatened to sue after a draft script for "The Passion" was leaked to the group of five Catholic and four Jewish scholars.

Gibson's $25 million film has already raised eyebrows for its violent depiction of the Crucifixion and because most of the dialogue is in Aramaic, without subtitles. The film is based on the New Testament Gospels and the writings of two mystic nuns.

The scholars warned that parts of the film would leave the "impression that the bloodthirsty, vengeful and money-hungry Jews simply had an implacable hatred of Jesus," according to a copy of the group's report that was obtained by The Jewish Week newspaper.

Jewish and Catholic leaders were concerned the film would revive old theologies that blamed Jews for the death of Jesus. The Catholic Church has spent the past 35 years trying to distance itself from teachings that fueled centuries of anti-Semitism.

Gibson, a devout Catholic, denounced the group's report. "To be certain, neither I nor my film are anti-Semitic," he said in a statement Friday. "Nor do I hate anybody -- certainly not the Jews."

As part of the settlement, the nine scholars agreed to return their copies of the script. Gibson's Icon production company also received an apology from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which distanced itself from the scholars.

um. OK. but what about this, from the undoubtedly conflicted NYPost?

Gibson, who does not act in the film, responded to the criticism with the threat of a lawsuit.

Gibson claimed in a letter last month to the Conference of Bishops - the Vatican's arm in this country - that the script was stolen.

Yesterday, after weeks of negotiation, a conference spokesman told me, his group had settled with Gibson.

Monsignor Francis Maniscalco released a statement in which the Catholic body distanced itself from its scholars - saying they had acted without the authorization of the Catholic Conference.

Gibson's spokesman, Alan Nierob, told me only, "There is no lawsuit," and did not comment further.

Well, gosh.

And while we're on the subject of non-denial denials (no, jackass, we know there's no lawsuit, they settled it. That was by way of being the subject of the question), there's this from the Hindustan Times:

"If the intense scrutiny during my 25 years in public life revealed I had ever persecuted or discriminated against anyone based on race or creed, I would be all too willing to make amends. But there is no such record," the actor's statement read. "Nor do I hate anybody - certainly not the Jews.

"They are my friends and associates, both in my work and social life," Gibson continued.

q. Are you a racist?

a. If you can't get anyone to go on the record, I must not be, keeping in mind that I have a ton of money and I like to sue people for saying true things that make me look bad.

also from the Hindustan Times piece:

Although Gibson and his production company hope to release the film next spring it has not yet found a distributor. Controversy over "The Passion" erupted in March after a profile of Gibson's father, Hutton Gibson, appeared in The New York Times Magazine. The profile said the actor's father had controversial traditionalist beliefs not condoned by the Roman Catholic Church and quoted the elder Gibson as denying the Holocaust took place. Some feared Gibson's film would reflect such beliefs.

Of his father:

Gibson's passionate defence of his film comes in the wake of a firestorm caused by his father, Hutton Gibson. In an interview with The New York Times, the 84-year-old said he did not believe the Holocaust ever took place.

Gibson senior - a former quiz show winner, Sydney radio broadcaster and resident of a small Victorian dairy town who now lives in Texas - believes the Holocaust was a fabrication because there were more Jews in Germany "after the war than before".

"Go ask an undertaker or the guy who operates the crematorium what it takes to get rid of a dead body," he said. "It takes one litre of petrol and 20 minutes. Now, six million?"

Joye Gibson, an American whom Hutton recently married, said: "There weren't even that many Jews in all of Europe."

In the interview, which was published in March, Hutton Gibson also rejected the notion that Osama bin Laden's terrorists perpetrated the September 11 attacks.

And he contended that Jews had conspired with Masons to reform the Catholic Church in the famous Vatican II of the 1960s, which ended Latin Masses and the notion of Jewish guilt in the crucifixion.

It is possible that they were caused to believe that Gibson's beliefs were similar to his father's since he's paid tens of millions of dollars to build a private church for the same deranged sect of pre-vatican two lunatics he and his father belong to in Malibu.

Membership is by invitation only.

At the Holy Family Church on a property north-west of Los Angeles, Gibson, his wife of 23 years, Robyn, and their children lead the congregation in a Latin Mass, which includes a sermon preaching the "evil" of "the modern church".

Gibson, who practises the traditional Catholic mores of no artificial contraception and no meat on Fridays, has described Pope John Paul II as "a wolf in sheep's clothing".

Fortunately, Gibson has the nuclear weapon of rhetorical denial on hand (no, not an expensive lawyer, sillyface) again from the Hindustan Times:

"[Jews] are my friends and associates, both in my work and social life," Gibson continued.

"Thankfully, treasured friendships forged over decades are not easily shaken by nasty innuendo.

Hey, give him credit for continence. He didn't say they were some of his best friends.

Comments

I'm waiting for the movie...

[arisbe.livejournal.com]

For one thing I grew up Catholic in the 1950s, and the whole idea of the Church censoring movies, even if to placate the leaders of another religion, ticks me off. (I felt the same way when Cardinal O'Connor told Catholics not to read The Satanic Verses. David Klinghoffer had an enlightened and enlightening Jewish point of view on the Gibson controversy in the Forward here (http://www.forward.com/issues/2003/03.05.02/oped3.html).

Re: I'm waiting for the movie...

[jmhm.livejournal.com]

I don't see in the any of the articles where the church was telling anyone not to see the movie. What I did see was a number of catholic scholars looking at the work of someone who, although he himself is a self-proclaimed apostate from catholicism, is purporting to represent it.

The 'church' that Gibson belongs to is, proudly, opposed to the basic principles of the Catholic Church. He's decided to create God's Kingdom in Malibu, and he and his followers (even if he did breed almost all of them) should not be identifying themselves as catholics. They aren't. It's their founding principle. The bishops should distance themselves from him and them, or acknowledge the distance that already exists, at least.

You know, historically catholicism has a lot of things to reproach themselves for. Vatican II was the rare instance that they did something as an organizaton to make themselves better. Mel decided to twinkle his pretty blue eyes and leave the church for the bittersweet memory of the spanish inquisition (yes, there does appear to be at least this group of people who expect it).

I think it's a damn good thing that the bishops expressed reservations about it, and I'm really sorry they backed off.

Oh, and this really annoys me - Mel Gibson is not from freaking Australia. He was born and raised in Verplanck, NY. If any of you are among the three people who saw that hideous Bette Midler movie where she got killed because she was a bad wife and mother (a comedy, nonetheless) it was set where Mel Gibson used to live. It's a middle-class bedroom community in the Hudson Valley section of Westchester. Fleischmann's yeast and gin was up the road. Indian Point is there now.

Honestly, as much time and effort and money as this bozo has put into being an all-Amurkin boy over the last 20 years, you'd think he'd be willing to fess up to actually being one.

Apostates

[arisbe.livejournal.com]

I have a good number of friends who call themselves Catholic, but are not in communion with the Pope of Rome. Some of them are Anglican, some of them Orthodox. (The latter, of course, in communion with the Pope of Alexandria. One of the Popes of Alexandria.) I don't happen to know any Roman Catholic Traditionalists, but I do respect them. For one thing, unlike the Modernists, they stood with the Church against the Iraq war. I particularly respect their breaking off communion in acknowledgment of serious religious disagreement. Something the Modernists lack the decency to do. Modernists who reject the Biblical evidence as offensive to Jews even when it is corroborated by Jewish tradition are such. There is no doubt that the ancient Jewish leadership condemned Jesus because there is no doubt that from the point of view of what is now known as normative Judaism, Jesus deserved it.

So much for religious matters, which I used to teach. I defer to your knowledge of Mr. Gibson, as I don't think I have ever seen a film of his. If I had I might understand why you dislike him so. Hell, I might even dislike him myself -- I am told that my people, the Irish, don't look any too good in Braveheart!

Personally, I am not a Holocaust denier. But if I couldn't take in the idea that such a thing could happen, I might be a better person than I am. Though there are no doubt other and worse reasons motivating many.

It is good that many Christians have dropped their blood libels against the Jews. It will be good when the blood libels against Catholics are similarly forgotten.

Re: Apostates

[jmhm.livejournal.com]

Can one actually perpetrate a blood libel against oneself?

If you perhaps mean that I'm suggesting that the pre-vatican 2 church bears a great deal of moral responsibility for the holocoast, you should have asked. I'll say it right out loud. They did.

I think that your perspective as a non-catholic who knows catholics that you need to protect my church from me is a little bit tactless, to say the least, and that your stated assumption that I overreact to Mr. Gibson and his church because I didn't like one of his movies is quite insulting.

I'm surprised you didn't notice.

Sorry

[arisbe.livejournal.com]

To take the last point first, I was speculating that you found the message in his movies morally objectionable, as I believe many do.

While many Catholics, some of them heirarchs, have done beastly things, there is no more point in attributing guilt to the Church itself than there is in attributing guilt to the Jews as such.

As for me, I am a Catholic. I prefer to call myself Orthodox, but my Orthodox friends in communion with Constantinople call me Catholic because I am in communion with Rome. I am no longer a Roman Catholic; I requested and received a transfer out, which is, I admit, somewhat unusual. But it saddens me when fellow Catholics join the world in denouncing the Church, particularly for the crimes of militant neo-Pagans. I can appreciate the chivalrous spirit behind that, but I still must protest against it.

I hope I have not been too offensive in making my protest.

Re: Sorry

[jmhm.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth (and I don't really see what it has to do with this) his movies are, for the genre they belong to, at the less-objectionable end of a spectrum I'm not terribly interested in.

I am completely comfortable with the concept of the cafeteria catholic, being one. What I'm not comfortable with is someone who makes an announcement at the beginning of the meal that the cafeteria isn't good enough for them, takes a big mac out of their briefcase to eat for lunch and then goes around to the other tables afterwards swiping tips like they owned the place.

I'm thrilled that these people have chosen to go schismatic, as I think they were a dreadful influence on modern roman catholicism, and I'm quite sure they'll be an ornament and a stimulant to whatever reactionary church they choose to form or join, but they're ex-communicate from the Roman Catholic church, which has as its price of admission the acceptance of the pope's power to make decisions you don't like.

You don't get to decide if you like the pope before you have to listen to him, either. Harsh.

I know that when I fall short of what the church expects me to do, it makes me, doctrinally, a flawed roman catholic. I don't presume to tell them that they should change the basic structure of the church because some decrepit ancient shock jock with a famous kid doesn't like the idea of letting the jews off the hook for whatever happened back then 2,000 years after Jesus did.

Re: I'm waiting for the movie...

[jmhm.livejournal.com]

Cardinal O'Connor, by the way, shook hands like a warm dead mackerel.

Re: I'm waiting for the movie...

[arisbe.livejournal.com]

At least it was a warm one.

No comment on the content.

[(Anonymous)]

I just can't get past "Gibson senior - a former quiz show winner, Sydney radio broadcaster and resident of a small Victorian dairy town who now lives in Texas ...."

I didn't know there were any small Victorian dairy towns living in Texas.

:-)

Frank

[(Anonymous)]

Mel could be turning into a lonely figure in Hollywood since this broke. Sure, I won't count out box-office draw. But people notice.
I have absolutely no evidence that this is happening. But they aren't quoting Hollywood Jews defending him. Or anyone from Hollywood, even. Spielberg, where are you? Far, far away.
I can't say I'll weep. Mel could try distancing himself from his dad and new mother-in-law.

[carpeicthus.livejournal.com]

Is it worse than the Gospel of John? Or other entertainment which has drawn from it, such as Jesus Christ Superstar?

John has some amazing turns of phrase, at least in the translation, but boy oh boy was he playing to his audience.

[fantome14.livejournal.com]

All I know is that someone who is so Catholic they won't use birth control (which is commonly known about he and his wife) is pretty damn Catholic.

Not all uber-Catholics are anti-Semites, I am sure, but his fathers remarks are pretty damning, whether or not they can also be attributed to Mel. At the very least, they were ill-advised, considering the industry his son works in. In fact, at all publicly denying the deaths of millions of people is just plain ill-advised, no matter who you are. I see why he moved to TX, though, where his ill-advised comments are run-of-the-mill when compared to the words and deeds of Bush and Company. :-P