The Black Madonna

On Gibson and anti-Semitism

Just to prove to our friends on the Left that TBR and TBM are not simply an organ of right-wing-never-does wrong propaganda (as The Ugly American jokes), and to rebut the inevitable anti-Catholic rhetoric (thanks heaps Dahvid), I must take note of a disgraceful episode Thursday night regarding Mel Gibson. Apparently, the actor/director got blinding drunk, got caught DUI, and during the arrest repeatedly spouted anti-Semitic remarks. I'll let others get more detailed, and for my part simply and completely repudiate all Gibson's insane nonsense.

rasta skin xp

Unfortunately, those of us - especially we Catholics - who defended Gibson in the past will be hurt by association here, regardless of what we say. His tirade makes it appear that all the evil designs that he denied while making The Passion of the Christ were actually true. He brings scandal to the Church, and our cries that Catholics aren't really secret anti-Semites - despite some terrible things we've been associated with in the past - will fall on even more deafened ears.

We can only repeat that this is not the case, renounce Gibson's drunken antics, and beg the forgiveness of the Jewish people for any real or perceived insults of the past.

Rant as art

Over at relapsed catholic, Kathy is ranting about movies again. (I'd linked to her earlier post Tuesday.) And her rant is as artful as her message is about art.

UPDATE: I'd almost missed a previous post, also about movies - but with more of a quoted snark and less of a personal rant. The last line she reads from libertas is some pretty good (and conservative!) art in its own right.

At least it doesn't start: "Two monks walk into a bar..."

Religious humor found at the pages of Snopes.com:

A monastery in the English countryside has fallen on hard times, and the monks decide to open a fish-and-chips restaurant.

A visitor comes across two monks working in the monastery kitchen in preparation for the restaurant's grand opening. The first monk fries the fish, the second one peels, slices, and fries the potatoes.

"What are you guys doing?" asks the visitor.

"Well," says the monk frying the fish, "I am the friar, and he is the chip monk."

"And you thought I was the 'Grand Inquistor' before..."

Editorial cartoonists Cox & Forkum have been drawing caricatures of the famous and influential of late to add to their blog. When I saw the latest entry in that series, I imagined that my title for this post was the unspoken caption of the cartoon.

I suspect some Catholics may be offended that the artist is making an insinuation in the way he drew that grin, especially since I was disturbed by my initial reaction to it myself. But that's the beauty in this art form - when done well, it doesn't really say anything itself, and causes you to reflect on what preconceptions you yourself bring to bear when looking at it. For all we know, Pope Benedict is wearing that mischievous grin because he snuck his cat into the papal apartments for the afternoon. Or the grin might not indicate mischievousness at all.

In an odd sort of way, I like the image. It reminds us that our Holy Father is human, and that he - and we - must occasionally laugh at ourselves as the silly people we are. So much of our faith can lead us to sin and guilt, we sometimes forget not to take some things too seriously - like the caricature of a new pope we're all still trying to figure out.

UPDATE: Well, it just goes to show what perspective does to an image. Apparently, John Cox merely exaggerated an existing photograph when he drew his caricature.

And where did Cox find that photo? At the Vatican website, of course.

No Zoo Review

Fellow Garden State native Michelle Malkin needs to get a breath of Morning Air. Yes, it's overtly Catholic, but what of it? I won't listen to anything else before Laura.

Just wild about Harry

I can't recall how I stumbled on this article at LifeSite, but wherever it was I'm certain it was a link that said either "Pope" or "Ratzinger" - and readers should know that what gets posted here is anything that excites my interest in anything Catholic that my eyes find.

Somewhere, the people from LifeSite obtained copies of letters sent by our new pope when Cardinal Ratzinger was still Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In the letters, he congratulates a German author for a pamphlet she wrote decrying the evils of Harry Potter.

Ho boy. This opens up more cans of worms than an angler's tournament.

As one can find on the bottom of the page, LifeSite has an entire catalogue of Harry Potter-inspired warnings. I, like LifeSite, especially appreciate the various arguments posed by Michael O'Brien, but also those from John Andrew Murray, each of whom compare the Potter novels to other classical magic tales from Tolkien and Lewis respectively. O'Brien writes:

I have read The Lord of the Rings aloud to my children five times over the years, and I hope to read it to my grandchildren some day. A few of my children have gone so far as to purchase copies of the trilogy for themselves, and to read extensively in Tolkien's other writings. While it is true that there are ambiguous elements in his vast and splendid sub-creation, these are minimal, and indeed at times have prompted fascinating discussions in our family. But we do not read Potter here. This is neither parental paranoia nor the ghettoization of the imagination. We know full well that there is no work of fiction that does not in some way fall short of a complete vision of reality. However, there is a great deal of difference between a flawed detail and a flaw in the fundamental vision. A house with a weak window frame is not the same thing as a house built on sand. No matter how beautiful the decor of the latter may be, it is a place I would rather not live. More importantly, it is place where I will not take my children to live.

That all said, this all sounds a bit to me like every other argument ever posed about cheap literature and music. Yes, bad things can happen. Yes, there are some terrible lessons that can be inferred from them, even if the intent is wholly innocent (as I believe Rowling's is). But there is value in gleaning the good from an objectively bad thing, just as there is hope in seeing something beautiful come from someone living in the depths of sin a depravity. Plenty of people who decry Playboy magazine (rightly so) also have nudes from the Renaissance masters hanging on their walls. One can possibly see the beauty in Playboy without lust, but one might also find a classical nude too alluring for their sensibilities. Context matters, as does our own predisposition to sin.

Those of us living in the world can try to hide from evil or we can stare it down. I don't recommend the latter for the faint of heart, but when I can, I personally find it distasteful to turn away from it simply because others cannot.

Rowling sits on my bookshelf - but Michelangelo doesn't hang on my wall.

Site makeover: The Black Madonna

Some time ago, I decided that my religious ravings at my other blog, The Black Republican, were getting a little too Catholic for my own taste. On that site, I may talk about anything at any particular time, but TBR always returns to issues of politics and culture as they are tinged by prejudice and racism. While there's nothing inconsistent in this day and age about being both Republican and Catholic, when I talk about the Faith there it feels like I'm trying to do too much in too small a space. The Catholic "angle" is overload, and detracts somewhat from the intended topic.

So I eventually decided to start another blog, and Ex Parte Fide was born. Naturally - as nothing good is ever easy - new problems arose. Actually, two interconnected problems: other than reflections about my Catholic faith, I wasn't sure what the new blog was about; and as a result, I tended not to post much, when I posted at all.

Several times, I thought of shutting this space down, as it was too underused. Even when I finally found something to say, I would feel compelled to post in both places, so that readers of TBR wouldn't be left wondering what I was thinking about some religion-inspired issue. Of course, that simply defeats the purpose of having a separate blog. Things were definitely spiraling downward.

But Our Lord had other plans. Pope John Paul II was due for a promotion (one day to Saint John Paul the Great, perhaps), and finally succumbed to the strain of his illnesses and an amazing and arduous 26 years on the throne of St. Peter. My interest in posting something to the religious blog increased, but I still wasn't sure what to say. I wanted to comment on my personal favorite to be the new pope, Francis Cardinal Arinze, a strongly orthodox bishop from Nigeria, but that would be unseemly before his election, wouldn't it? Yet, how our Holy Mother Church would be blessed by showing the world that the love of Our Lord knows no color! Besides, I reasoned, it's not like the College will choose someone too well-known and too orthodox, like Joseph Ratzinger....

As pope, I believed Cardinal Arinze would cause quite a stir with the press and the world, as they tried to grasp why Catholicism didn't feel scandalized by the selection. Surely Europe, of all places, can't embrace such an image... right?

The answer to that question is revealed in the faces of the mother and Child now adorning the masthead of this site. While I knew well of the Catholic tradition of veneration of The Black Madonna, and that inspirational thought drove me to look more closely into a new companion site for TBR, I must admit I'd forgotten that the monastery of perhaps the most famous of these Madonnas (Our Lady of Czestochowa) is in Jasna Gora, Poland. This would be the perfect complement to The Black Republican, I thought: a site that honors both our dear departed Holy Father, a new Holy Father from an unexpected place, and last but certainly not least, operating under the gaze one of the oldest and most beloved images of Our Lady.

As everyone knows by now, Our Lord surprised me again. My joy at the election of His Holiness Benedict XVI is almost beyond description, but some of our friends in the media world have apparently decided that Germany is enough of an unexpected place for them, and have generated some rather dark (though sometimes humorous) caricatures of him.

I know the Holy Catholic Church is "ready for a black pope". But I'd forgotten that perhaps the rest of the world might not be - some still aren't ready for any pope at all. This site will be devoted to the task of that preparation, and so we dedicate our work here to Our Lady of Czestochowa, that she might sway the hearts of the unready.

UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN!

This entry originally appeared in The Black Republican.

Stay away from me - I seem to have caught a vicious strain of leprosy that's eating my brain from inside-out. What causes me to think this? I disagree with a conservative, and agree with a Jesuit.

(A)ccording to Louis Giovino, a spokesman for the conservative Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.... South Park made Life of Brian "look like a playground." The animated series, where almost everyone is Catholic, "is very vicious in its satire toward most religions."

Other Catholic observers disagree.

"In the midst of all this gross-out, puerile humor are flashes of insight into the religious condition," says the Rev. James Martin, associate editor and culture critic of America magazine, the national Catholic weekly. The show is subversive, he says, because it uses humor to lead people to a serious consideration of faith and theology.

Anyone got a cure for this?

UPDATE: Forgot the hat tip to Relapsed Catholic.

The Wonderful Lie

This entry originally appeared in The Black Republican.

I've come to a conclusion regarding The Passion: what anti-semitism is there can be a backhanded force for good.

At first, I didn't see any anti-Semitism in it at all. But after reading Krauthammer and now Claudia Rosett, I think Andrew Sullivan may have come closest to defining the film by calling it "pornography" - because like the old Supreme Court ruling-turned-joke, you know the anti-Semitism in the movie when you see it. But just because I don't see it does not mean I can't see where others could.

But that's not just the end of this. Where those who see hate in the film end their commentary (like Rosett, unable to return to the discussion after digressing to Auschwitz), I see yet more to say. Where they see nothing but hate for Jews, I see solidarity with Jews: in the blood-drenched cloth clenched in Mary's fingers, when Satan is passing through the crowds - but mirrored by Mary who is also passing through the same crowds, and the impassive face of Caiphas before the cross turns anguished when the temple is torn asunder.

The same goes for the reviewers. Most of those critical of the film say "anti-Semitism" as if Gibson is laying cement for the ovens at the next Auschwitz. But at a time when so many in the media and politics (and even in the Jewish community) are too ready to accept the idea of Israel giving land for peace, I see an invitation for more death and torment. But just when it becomes most inconvenient for the Palestinians to see Jewish spines stiffen, Mel Gibson produces a movie that allows everyone to discuss the Holocaust anew.

Jewish friends take heart: The Passion causes anti-Semites to go on defense, while giving Christians the opportunity to restate their solidarity with God's Chosen People. How we get the idea from a source that you find offensive will remain a mystery to you - but not to us.

Then again...

This entry originally appeared in The Black Republican.

Charles Krauthammer is a man I greatly respect. So, is it my respect for him or is it his excellent writing skills turning the issue in a slightly different way that creates real self-doubt for the first time since The Passion business all came up?

The Agony and the Agony

This entry originally appeared in The Black Republican.

I saw The Passion of the Christ yesterday afternoon.

Steve had suggested after the movie that I would be posting a response here soon. I simply couldn't bring myself to do it when I got home. The movie left me physically drained and numb, and I ended up going to bed at the terribly early hour of 11:00 pm
(early for me, at least). Even though I'm supposed to be on my way to work right now, I had to sit down and write a few lines, especially since I've been thinking of little else.

I forced myself to read the worst of the reviews linked from the movie's page at Yahoo! The breadth and depth of vapidity I found there was stunning. I've read a few of the better reviews, but there's no point to it - you simply cannot get anything meaningful out of a review of this film, except from those who tell you they can't tell you what to think about this film.

You may think, after all the massive hype, the charges and countercharges, the endless media nattering (mea culpa, by the way), that you already know what's in store for you in Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," which finally opens today.

You don't. This is a movie so singular, so intense, so overwhelming that it simply has to be experienced. And nothing can prepare you for how brutal, how shocking, how awash in blood and pain Gibson has made his version of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

"The Passion" is so radically different from the normal moviegoing experience that people are going to have wildly varying reactions to it (the recent debate over anti-Semitism is just an inkling of the chasms of perception). A devout evangelical Christian, a Jew, an agnostic, a Muslim, a lukewarm believer may react so differently they might just as well have seen different movies.

There are a few things I would like to say, not in review, but in analysis.

First, to Peggy Noonan: Don't fret about having your sources change their story. The pope really did say, "It is as it was." I have no doubt.

Second, the one word that has been rolling through my head is: hideous. Some idiotic mother brought her three pre-teen children to the movie and sat them in front of me. (Thankfully, they were a few feet to one side, so I was not totally distracted throughout the film.) That woman should be arrested for child abuse. This may be something that people must experience, but they must be adults when they do. This message simply cannot be processed by less than a mature adult intellect (as many of the less-than-favorable reviews will attest).

Third: I won't comment on the religious meaning except to say that the reviewers who can't grasp the message don't get the message. Another friend who saw the movie with me said as we stood up, "I didn't think it would end there." My response was: "I doesn't." This movie makes you take the leap of faith, by processing what you've seen and filling in the blanks yourself. It's artistry is displayed by leaving most of the canvass blank for you to paint yourself.

Lastly.... I spent more than a little part of the film thinking of Charles Johnson, of all people. There is one scene in particular that evokes memories of the aftermath of many a bus bombing in Israel, as the two Marys dutifully carry out their responsibilities as good Jews. You can see anti-Semitism in this movie. I didn't. I won't.

So he said to them, "Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God."
���- Luke 20, 25

We must forgive. But we must not forget.

UPDATE: My hopefulness for good feelings at LGF seems to have been misplaced. Meanwhile, the best of all commentaries about the film so far comes from: a Mormon.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Someone has said what I've been waiting to see someone dare say:

If, having seen and endured the film, Christians are able in a fresh way to wonder at the vault of the Sistine Chapel, if they can humbly return to their churches to participate in the spoken and sacramentally enacted Word, then Gibson's Passion will have proven to be something even better than what it certainly is: the best movie ever made about Jesus Christ.

As for the charges of anti-Semitism, the columnists at First Things provide a "why" to the confusing mass-contradiction of the various critical reviews:

But all of this makes Gibson's Passion nearly the opposite of the arcane and politically fraught tradition of the passion play. Such performances were often staged to incite the audience to choose sides, to 'save' the integrity and honor of Christ by constituting a kind of party against Judas, the Jews, and the mob in Pilate's courtyard. Had Gibson used the power of film to give this twisted but all-too-human political stereotype a new lease on life, concerns about the film stirring up anti-Judaism or hostility against nonbelievers would be justified. To his credit, however, Gibson denies the audience any shred of political or religious triumph, or, for that matter, defeat. Even a viewer who already knows and religiously believes in the final outcome of the story must struggle to keep watching, which is humiliating in its own right. There might be reason for scholars and religious authorities to raise questions about Gibson's synthesizing of distinct scriptural accounts of the passion, or about his use of extra-biblical iconography. But it is hard to imagine anyone coming out of Gibson's movie with an appetite for a religiously politicized passion. If anything, this is the definitive post-passion-play passion.