The Harvard condemnation

The Harvard University Gazette for March 25 contains an article with photographs of a public symposium held on March 18 by the professors of the Harvard Divinity School, attended by a large crowd, to discuss Mel Gibson’s film on The Passion of the Christ. The eminent professors were unanimous in their condemnation of the film and of Mel Gibson himself. The professors vied with one another as to which of them could express his or her indignation more vehemently.

They spared no adjectives in condemning the film. "Deeply sadistic", said one. "Pornographic", said one lady professor. "Overwhelmingly bad news," said a third. "A celebration of apocalyptic violence", said a fourth. One professor condemned the film as a revival of the "violence of the Crusades". And so on.

Surprisingly among professors of a Divinity School intended for the training of Protestant ministers of the Gospel (and whom one would have expected to be models of Christian charity, or at least of tolerance) there was violent hatred expressed for Mel Gibson himself, who was characterized as anti-semitic, a son of a man who denied the Holocaust, etc.

It is possible, as Dr. Benito Legarda Jr. suggests (to whom I am grateful for sending me the page from the Harvard Gazette) that this violent reaction of the Harvard professors to the "violence" of Mel Gibson’s film may be cultural. That is my own impression. Brought up as they are in an antiseptic culture with a great horror for germs and with stringent hygienic requirements, Americans have a revulsion for the sight of blood and torn flesh. We Filipinos in general are less squeamish. Those of us old enough to have lived through the Japanese Occupation had to get used to the brutal killings by the Japanese and the sight of rotting corpses lying in the streets and front lawns of Manila.

Yet even among Filipinos, there are some who have been revolted by the sight of so much violence in the film on the Passion of Christ.

The reason lies in the very nature of the film as a visual medium. Nobody turns a hair when they read in the Gospel that "Jesus was scourged". But when they see on the screen what being scourged means – the lash repeatedly striking th lacerated and bleeding back of a man – many of us cannot endure the sight. We do not really understand what is meant when we read that "Jesus was crucified." But when we see on the screen the nail being hammered into the hand and the blood spurting out – that is a sight few of us can look upon without emotion.

Those who condemn Mel Gibson’s film as violent would also condemn ANY vivid representation of the Passion and Death of Christ.

One of my friends, a very good man and a good Catholic, told me he did not like Mel Gibson’s film because it is "brutal".

Of course. The Passion and Death of Jesus WAS indeed brutal.

But instead of condemning Mel Gibson for producing a "brutal" film, why not say instead, "So THAT is what Jesus had to suffer!"

No wonder Jesus had an agony in the Garden of Gethsemani! The very thought of what he was about to suffer caused him to sweat blood.

We might even reflect further: "If THAT is what Jesus had to suffer in order to expiate sin, there must be something unimaginably evil about sin."

A vivid representation of what Jesus had to suffer helps us to understand what Jesus said to Nicodemus: "God so loved the world as to give his own son, that those who believe in him may not perish but may have eternal life."

We might also perhaps begin to understand what St. Paul meant when he said of Jesus, "He loved me and gave himself up for me."