Mel Gibson's "The Passion"

From www.upcomingmovies..com:

The Passion (2004)
Director: Mel Gibson
Language: Latin and Aramaic with no subtitles.
Premise: This film tells the story of the last 12 hours in the life of Jesus (Caviezel), on the day of his crucifixion in Jerusalem.

From http://www.cathnews.com/news/303/80.php:

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.'

From http://entertainment.excite.com/celebgossip/pgsix/id/03_06_2003_1.html:

In a story in this Sunday's Times Magazine, Noxon writes that Gibson embraces an ultra-traditional 'strain of Catholicism rooted in the dictates of a 16th-century papal council and nurtured by a splinter group of conspiracy-minded Catholics, mystics, monarchists and disaffected conservatives.'

The traditionalists disdain the Second Vatican Council of 1962-1965, say Mass in Latin, and fast on Fridays. Women wear hats in church.

Noxon got onto the story because his father lives near the Holy Family church Gibson financed on 16 acres near Malibu.

Gibson refused to be interviewed, but Noxon located the star's father, Hutton Gibson, in a Houston suburb. The elder Gibson has railed against the Vatican for more than 30 years, having written such books as 'Is the Pope Catholic?' and published a quarterly newsletter, 'The War Is Now.'

Hutton told Noxon that Vatican II was 'a Masonic plot backed by the Jews,' called Pope John Paul II 'Garrulous Karolus, the Koran kisser,' and denied that the Holocaust ever happened. '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 liter of petrol and 20 minutes. Now, six million?'

Mel Gibson has never expressed such views. But the Times article suggests that 'The Passion' - the movie he's directing about the last 12 hours in Christ's life - could revive the medieval charge that it was the Jews who killed Christ.

[Note: In response to the above, Mel Gibson seemed furious that these reporters went digging into his private life and interviewed his octegenarian father, but Mel Gibson never denied agreeing with these ultra-traditional views.]

From www.adl.org/PresRele/Mise_00/4275_00.asp

In light of the numerous media accounts of Mel Gibson's upcoming film, "The Passion," the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) joined with the Secretariat of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in April, 2003 to assemble Jewish and Catholic scholars to evaluate an early version of the movie's screenplay... ADL thanks the scholars for their work and ADL fully stands behind their report. The committee unanimously agreed that the screenplay reviewed was replete with objectionable elements that would promote anti-Semitism.

Based upon the scholars' analysis of the screenplay, ADL has serious concerns regarding the Mr. Gibson's "The Passion" and asks:

Will the final version of The Passion continue to portray Jews as blood-thirsty, sadistic and money-hungry enemies of Jesus?

Will it correct the unambiguous depiction of Jews as the ones responsible for the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus? Will it show the power of the rule of imperial Rome-including its frequent use of crucifixion-in first-century Palestine?

Will the film reject exploiting New Testament passages selectively to weave a narrative that does injustice to the gospels, that oversimplifies history, and that is hostile to Jews and Judaism?

Will it live up to its promise "to tell the truth?" To do so, the final product must rid itself of fictitious non-scriptural elements (e.g. the high priest's control of Pontius Pilate, the cross built in the Temple at the direction of Jewish religious officials, excessive violence, Jews physically abusing Jesus before the crucifixion, Jews paying "blood money" for the crucifixion), all of which form an inescapably negative picture of Jewish society and leadership.

Will it portray Jews and the Temple as the locus of evil?

My conclusion: The entire Gibson family is crazy.

Your thoughts?