DIALOG.......................
Gibson's Jesus film concerns Wiesenthal Center
10.3.2003 0:01:01 Jerusalem Post
By TOM TUGEND
LOS ANGELES Concerns that a new film, directed and financed by actor Mel Gibson, may revive the "scurrilous charges" that the Jews are collectively responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus have been raised by Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
Gibson's film The Passion, now nearing completion, will graphically depict Christ's suffering on the cross, "perhaps as no film has done before," according to an article in the current issue of The New York Times Magazine.
The article describes Gibson as the "star practitioner" of Catholic traditionalism, a movement which rejects all changes and reforms in Roman Catholic liturgy and attitudes since the 16th century.
An estimated 100,000 traditionalists in the US specifically reject the 1960s pronouncements of the Second Vatican Council, which collectively absolved the Jewish people, past and present, of deicide, and ruled that the Mass could be celebrated in languages other than Latin.
Citing a close friend of Gibson, the article reported that "most important, the film will lay the blame for the death of Christ where it belongs which some traditionalists believe means the Jewish authorities who presided over his trial and delivered him to the Romans to be crucified."
In Gibson's only public comment on the film, Fox newscaster Bill O'Reilly asked him last January whether it might particularly upset Jews.
Gibson responded: "It may. It's not meant to. I think it's meant to tell the truth. But when you look at the reasons why Christ came, why he was crucified he died for all mankind and he suffered for all mankind. So that, really, anyone who transgresses has to look at their own part or look at their own culpability."
Hier said that he has "no problem with Mel Gibson's right to believe as he sees fit or make any movie he want to."
However, if the film seeks to undo the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, it will give new life "to the notion that the Jews killed Christ, which has fanned the flames of anti-Semitism for the last 2,000 years and paved the way for the wanton slaughter of Jews."
Gibson, whose 1995 epic Braveheart won Oscars for best director and best picture, is personally financing the $25 million Passion, which is now shooting in the Rome area. Its dialogue will be entirely in Aramaic and Latin, without subtitles.
The article also reported that Gibson is footing the bill for a new $2.8 million traditional church, called Holy Family, going up in the mountains northwest of Los Angeles, near Malibu.
Also featured is a lengthy interview with the actor's father, Hutton Gibson, described as "a well-known author and activist, who has railed against the Vatican for more than 30 years."
In his quarterly newsletter, the elder Gibson called the present pope "Garrulous Karolus, the Koran Kisser."
During the interview in suburban Houston, Hutton Gibson asserted that the Second Vatican Council was "a Masonic plot backed by the Jews," that al-Qaida hijackers had nothing to do with September 11, and that there were more Jews in Europe after World II than before.
While Mel Gibson apparently shares his father's theological views, "he doesn't go along with a lot of what his dad says," a friend said.
Referring to the elder Gibson's observation, Hier said that "to bigots and haters, no amount of evidence or scientific proof is ever enough."