Mr. Gibson has been in many movies I've seen and enjoyed. But I think this latest project of his has anti-semitic elements, and he is the man primarilly responsible.

He was brought up by his father into a, for want of a better word, break-away movement of the Roman Catholic Church, the point of departure being the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) presided over by Pope John XXIII. One of the results of the Council was for prayer in the vernacular rather than a full Latin Mass; more germane to this thread was a reversal of over a thousand years of Catholic teaching, that the Jews killed Christ. If you went to Catholic school before Vatican II, the words 'perfidious Jews' were likely in your textbooks.

Pope John XXIII and like minded Catholic leaders initiated a top-down change that encompassed Roman Catholic scholastics and liturgy. Traditionalist Catholics reject these changes, which means that they subscribe to the theory that the Jews killed Christ.

Many Jews have the feeling that they are once again, to put it blungly, in the cross hairs as Christ-killers, a long time historical burden of huge proportions which you run into again and again throughout history. When Mr. Gibson has been interviewed by Diane Sawyer, and last night on Leno, he makes no move to allay those fears. He speaks in circumlocutions, such as alluding to various over-reactions, and lack of support, without naming names or enumerating why certain people might have very good reasons for not being in support of him.

The movie itself has done nothing to contradict Mr. Gibson's background and Traditionalist Catholic beliefs (which are in contradiction of current Roman Catholic beliefs). Pilate is among the more sympathetic characters, and the Jews are mostly distinct from Jesus, who I don't recall as being hardly presented as a Jew. The spoken line (from one of the gospels) where the Jews take responsibility for the execution and also for their descendants, is included in the movie and simply left out of the subtitles.

I am NOT disturbed at the movie's release in the US. Mr. Gibson has every right to have his movie shown wherever he can get it out there. He also has to take the criticism as a free and open society. I am more concerned with the life of this project in subsequent incarnations as a recording which can go anywhere, where it will get much less of a critical response. In short, Mel Gibson, with knowledge aforethought, has released into the world a product which has a high likelihood of hurting people I care about.

Also, considering his participation in a movement counter to the established Roman Catholic Church, I'm thinking that there will be other disputes out there which have nothing to do with the Jews.


P.S. I don't know that much about Vatican II, so if I got something wrong up there, please correct me. I've been raised believing it was one of the most important religious events of the last century.