Joseph Sobran’s
Washington Watch

The Witness of the Howling Mob

(Reprinted from the issue of March 4, 2004)

The Passion of the Christ has finally reached the theaters, and the reviews are pouring out: “the most virulently anti-Semitic movie since World War II” (New York’s Daily News), “sadistic” (Newsweek), “the product of a distinctly perverted sensibility ... pornographic” (the New York Post), et cetera.

All this indignation and sheer bile over a mere movie? A filmed version of a story the reviewers profess not to believe in? Obviously there is more here than meets the eye. These reviewers aren’t people who usually object to sadism and pornography on the screen, which they habitually praise for “candor.” How has this film struck the limits of their otherwise boundless tolerance? Why can’t they bear “candor” about the crucifixion?

And notice their personal wrath at Gibson. They aren’t reviewing the film so much as reviewing the director’s psyche. Amateur psychoanalysis — the ad hominem attack disguised as diagnosis — is the mark of the slovenly critic. It’s also a version of the “intentional fallacy,” the notion that you can understand a work of art by divining the motives of the artist.

But the film is so powerful that it breaks down the reviewers’ own psychic defenses. They take it personally, as in a sense they should; but instead of acknowledging that the story of Christ’s Passion gets under their skin, they try to avenge themselves by attacking Gibson.

Only one review I’ve seen so far, that of Richard Corliss of Time, has discerned that Gibson has essentially filmed the stations of the cross and the five sorrowful mysteries. Apart from Corliss, nobody seems to notice the importance of the Blessed Virgin in the film; only her heart-rending pity for Jesus relieves the unbroken agony of the spectacle. Gibson obviously wouldn’t feature her this way if he thought anyone could be taking pleasure in seeing Christ’s torment.

The hostile reviewers aren’t complaining that the film is unfaithful to the Gospels; on the contrary, they are complaining of its fidelity to its sources, the only sources we have, the very core of the faith. Do they really think the actual crucifixion would have been any easier to watch than this version? Of course not. Yet one of their complaints is that the film’s violence is “excessive.” The truth is — and Gibson had the inspiration to realize this — that film is the first art form to allow an approximate sense of how the Passion might have appeared to eyewitnesses.

It’s Gibson’s adherence to history that makes the film so shattering to watch. True, the Gospel accounts are brief and they differ from each other, as critics have vociferously insisted. But those accounts are mutually consistent (apart from some small details, which only confirm their general agreement).

The frenzied cavils are one measure of Gibson’s achievement: He has made a film so powerful that it strips off the modern mask of suave agnosticism. It would seem that the “unbelievers” aren’t quite so immune to belief as they affect to be. Mere images of Christ’s suffering drive them to fury.

Christ didn’t tell the Apostles to study apologetics and debating tactics. He told them to preach the Word. Their auditors would recognize its truth by its inherent power; or they would reject it, and there was no use arguing with them. In the latter case, the Apostles were simply to shake the dust from their feet and move on. (Refined apologetics would have their place later in salvation history.)

He also warned them to expect the world’s hatred. Two thousand years later, the world is still showing its true colors in its film reviews. To me this is a kind of perverse witness; the world has long since forgiven and forgotten the bloodiest tyrants of antiquity, but it still can’t forgive its gentle Savior.

Modern psychology, being materialistic, has no room for the soul. But if the doctrine of Original Sin means anything, it means that one of the deepest and most stubborn human motives is the hatred of the divine. And the perennial hatred of Christ is one sign of His divinity. He and those who love Him have never fit comfortably into this world, and they never will. His enemies will predominate in this world until He returns in glory.

This deep antagonism to God and His Son should be recognized as a basic and deep-seated spring of human action, one that Freud overlooked, mistaking it for a mere “projection” of resentment of fathers. Earlier generations understood that fallen man is naturally in rebellion against God, the very source of his own being, and that this rebellion is in the end self-destructive.

The Passion of the Christ says to every viewer: This means you. And in every interview Gibson has replied to the charge of anti-Semitism by repeating what should be too obvious to need saying: We are all sinners, we all killed Christ, yet He died for all of us.

The movie tries to tell us how it may have looked to those who saw the events at Calvary.

And the reaction is telling us what the howling mob at Calvary must have sounded like.
 
Mock-Marriage and the Constitution

“I believe marriage is between a man and a woman, but for 200 years this has been a state issue.” Such was John Kerry’s reply to President Bush’s endorsement of the proposed constitutional amendment denying legal status to same-sex mock-marriage. And he had a point. John Edwards agreed.

But it’s weird, isn’t it? Imagine the Democrats falling back on the Tenth Amendment! How on earth did they get wind of it? They don’t read the Constitution. Have they found some 98-year-old segregationist in a Mississippi nursing home who’s still babbling about states’ rights?

Seems like old times. Before they abandoned federalism for socialism a century ago, the Democrats were the champions of leaving things to the states. It used to be the Republicans, starting with Lincoln himself, who asserted the sovereignty of the federal government.

After the New Deal, the two parties seemed for a while to be swapping roles, with Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan adopting the Jeffersonian view of limited government. But George W. Bush has been expanding federal power like nobody’s business, and changing the Constitution to ban “gay marriage” is totally in character.

I agree that homosexual “marriage” is nonsense, but that’s exactly why amending the Constitution is unnecessary. Homosexuals are a tiny part of the population, and few of them would march down the aisle even if they could. Stable unions don’t suit their “lifestyle,” and this fad will soon fade. A congressional resolution condemning it and encouraging the states to reject it would be more than enough.

Guided by polls, Bush thinks he has a winning issue here, which is no doubt why he’s willing to take a firmer stand against mock marriages than against real abortions.

For those revolted by both parties’ contempt for the Constitution, there’s a real conservative in the presidential race: Michael Peroutka of the Constitution Party. Ralph Nader, who merely wants a more left-wing style of big government (with legal abortion and mock-marriage), isn’t the only alternative to the “duopoly.”


In a soon-to-come issue of SOBRAN’S. I’ll have more to say about Gibson’s film and the fury it stirs. If you have not seen my newsletter yet, give my office a call at 800-513-5053 and request a free sample, or better yet, subscribe for two years for just $85. New subscribers get two gifts with their subscription. More details can be found at the Subscription page of my website.

Already a subscriber? Consider a gift subscription for a priest, friend, or relative.

Joseph Sobran