The one new film I wanted not to see this season is The Passion of the Christ. Its absurdly inflated hype, starting over a year ago, and Mel Gibson’s stated purpose in making it (to show the death of Jesus “as it really was”) were enough to put me off. Also I felt revulsion at the violence, widely reported to be extreme.

Now, however, I have gone against my resolution and have sat through the film. I did so in order to have enough credibility to discuss in this column the reasons why it has become so controversial.

Is the film anti-Semitic? To answer this question I take my cue largely from those Jewish people who have either found many parts of “The Passion” offensive or feel it likely to support the new wave of anti-Semitism that has sprung up in Europe and elsewhere.

You can make a case for its being no more anti-Semitic than the Gospels. However, the Gospels have been used through most of the last 2000 years to justify Christians persecuting the Jewish people.  

I can judge Mel Gibson sincere when he disavows any intention to blame Jews for what happened to Jesus. But you have to ask what value there is in making a film that he must have foreseen would offend and might even harm present-day Jews.

Its effect is to set back the progress made in the last few decades in mutual understanding between the Jewish and Christian communities. At the very least, it fails to reflect the spirit that inspired the Second Vatican Council in its strong rejection of anti-Semitism.

My central problem with the film, however, is what it says about Christianity. The very virtues of Gibson’s filmmaking distort the Christian faith. His cinematography is impressive: the characters are vivid, the scenery often striking, the images memorable. I will not soon forget the shots of Jesus and the two thieves outlined against the sky on a hill over Jerusalem

Filmgoers will not see things “as they really were.” That is impossible because the sources of our knowledge are the Gospels. These writings, as biblical scholars of the last two centuries have taught us, are not basically eyewitness reporting but rather documents that witness to the faith of a people. Of course, they often take as starting point real-life events, but they shape their accounts of these events so as to fit the needs of the faith community.

The writers of the Gospels were neither journalists nor academic historians. Sometimes their writings contradict each other. Nowhere in Scripture can we find what claims to be a simple, definitive version of events. In preserving four Gospels in the New Testament, the Christian church seems to reject the idea of a single such version.

My most serious quarrel with Gibson is the way he has distorted Christianity to make it seem a religion of death. By playing out in such agonizing and bloody detail the suffering and dying of Jesus, the director exalts the Passion beyond its proper place.

Of course, the sufferings of Jesus will always remain vital to the Christian faith. In a world where so many people die horribly, the example of the Lord retains its value for those facing indignity and loss.

But Easter is even more important in the life of Christians than is Good Friday. That Jesus rose from the dead must loom larger than his dying, important though the latter remains. Christianity is a faith that celebrates life rather than death. Yet Gibson gives scant notice to Christ’s resurrection.

The violence depicted in Gibson’s film is so horrific as to cause viewers of any sensitivity considerable pain and suffering. Though I am not especially sensitive to images, I felt much discomfort while watching it. I would advise parents not to allow children to see it; doing so could be seen as a form of child abuse, however unwitting. And, given the power of images over them, children may well believe that everything shown here is really happening as they watch..

The scourging of Jesus inflicted by Roman soldiers with whips and chains is agonizing to see. The victim is almost completely covered with blood. Yet all four Gospels devote only a single phrase to this action that in the film goes on and on.

Similarly with the nailing to the cross, we see what is done to Jesus in such agonizing detail as could make us sick. Is that the faith of Christians or does not the emphasis upon these physical details distort that faith?

Richard Griffin