ADL wants a postscript on Gibson’s ‘Passion’

The leader of one of two Jewish organizations that this week condemned Mel Gibson’s forthcoming film, “The Passion of the Christ,” as an incitement to anti-Semitism said Friday that his organization is preparing an 11th-hour appeal for a cinematic postscript to the movie.

Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said in an interview that he has all but given up hope Gibson’s final cut of the film will omit problematic material from the synoptic Gospels. Most mainstream Catholic and other scholars now believe some material, particularly quotations and chronologies drawn from the Gospel attributed to Matthew, is not only inaccurate but also a provocation to hatred of Jews. Gibson was baptized a Catholic, but now belongs to a schismatic congregation that rejects most of the practices and teachings adopted by the church over the past 40 years.

Foxman said he is preparing a letter asking the filmmaker, who self-financed the $25-million “Passion,” to append a personal statement to the version scheduled for release Ash Wednesday (Feb. 25) in which Gibson would condemn any bigoted interpretation of his Passion narrative.

“Mel Gibson, like all of us, has a right to freely express himself,” Foxman said. “As an artist, let him have the film he wants to have. But, given the film he has made, I would like to see him do a postscript. Let him say, ‘I did this film because I believe I was inspired by the Holy Ghost. I believe that Jesus suffered for all mankind. Some people want to put the blame for his death on the Jews. Don’t do that. I’ve said I wanted to make a “Passion” of love. Blaming Jews for Christ’s death would make this a “Passion” of hate.’ ”

Conversations between the ADL and Gibson broke off some time ago over the organization’s early expressions of anxiety over the movie’s content. “But I haven’t given up,” Foxman said. “I’m sending this letter today (Friday).”

A call to Gibson spokesman Alan Nierob seeking comment on the ADL proposal was not returned.

As Lorenza Munoz and Larry B. Stammer reported Friday in The Times, Foxman -- who like other ADL officials has been barred by Gibson from screenings of “The Passion” -- finally managed to see a version by surreptitiously entering a gathering of Protestant ministers in Orlando, Fla., where it was being shown by the filmmaker. What Foxman saw, he said, “was a film that portrayed Jews as blood-thirsty and unambiguously responsible for the death of Christ. I now understand why Mr. Gibson didn’t want us to see it.”

Foxman was joined in his condemnation by David Elcott, director of interreligious affairs for the American Jewish Committee. He, too, noted the film’s revival of anti-Semitic stereotypes and drew particular attention to Gibson’s decision to include Matthew 27:25, in which the group of Jews present when the Roman governor Pontius Pilate condemned Jesus to death is supposed to have said, “His blood be upon us and upon our children.”

According to sources involved in Catholic-Jewish dialogue in the United States, Gibson’s inclusion of such material in what is essentially a contemporary Passion play has become a growing concern among some American prelates. They have begun informal conversations about the advisability of taking some sort of action in advance of this film’s theatrical release, the sources say.

One possible step would be to draw Catholics’ attention to the fact that their church has a formal set of “Criteria for the Evaluation of Dramatizations of the Passion.” Those guidelines were adopted by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in 1988 and specifically warn against inclusion of several points Gibson has incorporated into versions of his movie now being screened.

For example, in the matter of that verse from Matthew -- which appears in none of the other Gospels -- the bishops’ guidelines warn that it can be used in a manner “clearly implying a ‘blood guilt’ on all Jews in all times in violation of [the Second Vatican Council’s] dictum that “what happened in his Passion cannot be blamed on all the Jews then living without distinction nor upon Jews today.’ Hence, if the Matthean phrase is to be used (not here recommended), great care could have to be taken throughout the presentation to ensure such an interpretation does not prevail.”

Similarly, the bishops’ guidelines caution that traditional accounts of Jesus’ trial before the Jewish authorities are historically suspect. The Catholic Study Bible officially approved by the U.S. church has a similar cautionary note and footnotes the passage from Matthew: “Guilt for Jesus’ death is not attributable to all the Jews of his time or to any Jews of later times.”

Gibson’s “Passion” has received the support of the conservative Catholic League (which is not affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church) whose president, William Donohue, issued a statement Friday condemning the “unseemly campaign to discredit” the film. “The guilty include journalists, Catholic and Jewish theologians and Jewish activists,” the statement read. “Their goal all along has been to portray Mel Gibson as [an] ... anti-Semite, and to upend his film with charges of violence in the streets. But their relentless campaign is ultimately futile: At the end of the day, the people will judge the movie.”

Since his youth, Foxman has enjoyed an unusually close relationship with the Catholic Church. As a Jewish child in wartime Poland, he was separated from his parents and saved by his nanny, who had him baptized and raised him as a Catholic. After the war, he was reunited with his parents and returned to Judaism.

“I have,” he said, “a tremendous love and respect for the church that gave me life again. Forty years ago, we in the ADL helped the bishops to write those guidelines that permit artists to be honest about their faith without being hateful in their work. What Mel Gibson is doing is as much an attack on the Catholic Church and the Second Vatican Council as it is anything else.”

Why should that matter?

“Because it’s now likely that more people will see his Passion in two months,” Foxman said, “than saw all the Passion plays ever staged in the previous 2,000 years.”