The debate over Mel Gibson's movie about the Passion of Christ has come to St. Petersburg with all the passion voiced nationally.
By WAVENEY ANN MOORE
Published February 8, 2004
ST. PETERSBURG - Phyllis Fielder, a parishioner at Holy Cross Catholic Church, sat in the second row at Temple Beth-El, hoping to understand "the fear of the Jewish people" about Mel Gibson's soon-to-be-released movie on the crucifixion.
"I never thought of how they feel. We have the Passion every year in our church and we have to participate as a congregation," she said. "We are the Jewish people yelling out, "Crucify him. Crucify him.' And I never thought of the implications of it. It gave me a new awareness."
She was one of 325 Christians, Jews and others who attended a town meeting organized locally last week to try to forestall controversy about Passion plays in general, and Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, in particular.
Addressing the crowd that filled Temple Beth-El's sanctuary Wednesday evening, Father Len Piotrowski of St. Paul's Roman Catholic Church in Tampa talked about the criteria U.S Catholic bishops have established for evaluating dramatizations of the Passion.
Passion plays are an art form, he said, and as such should be viewed critically. The priest compared negative portrayals of American Indians in John Wayne movies and stereotypes of blacks to how Jews have been viewed in Passion plays. The Catholic church does not condone such treatment, he said.
In the past, Piotrowski said, many Christians believed, as do some fundamentalist Christians today, that Christ was killed by the Jews. And "because they killed Christ, the son of God, many Christians believed they are cursed by God and that everything bad that happened to them was understandable," he said.
"Only Rome had the authority to execute people," said Piotrowski, a former college and seminary professor.
"You and I can't change anything in history," he told the interfaith crowd.
"But we can change the future."
That was the goal of the town hall meeting and for upcoming interfaith sessions. Last week's almost 2-hour gathering was organized by the Center for Catholic-Jewish Studies at Saint Leo University and the National Conference for Community and Justice.
"I think the good will was very evident. It wasn't rancorous at all," Jim Barrens, executive director of the Center for Catholic-Jewish Studies, said the following day.
"I knew that there was an enormous amount of interest out there. I think that one of the main things we wanted to accomplish was to make sure we got good information into people's hands. I think the exponential effect of good information like that is extremely good for our community."
People were particularly interested in Gibson's Passion and asked such questions as whether Christian and Jewish youth groups should see it together.
Rabbi A. James Rudin, senior interreligious adviser for the American Jewish Committee, responded by saying that the movie is filled with anti-Jewish imagery and is "gratuitously violent."
"It's a very, very problematic film," said Rudin, who has seen two versions, one as recently as two weeks ago.
Any interfaith viewing should be followed by a cooling-off period before discussions, said the rabbi, who also is senior religious adviser at the Center for Catholic-Jewish Studies.
Rudin, who gave a 15-minute talk on the history of Passion plays, also said that he is worried that the movie had the potential to validate or trigger latent anti-Jewish feelings and memories.
At the national level, William Donohue, president of the Catholic League, called that pish posh. He says self-righteous Christians and Jews critical of his friend Mel Gibson's movie are bent on rewriting the New Testament.
Donohue, whose Catholic League is a national organization with the mission of safeguarding the rights of Catholics, has twice seen The Passion of the Christ. The first was a private screening in his office after Gibson personally delivered a copy of the movie that is to open on Ash Wednesday, Feb. 25.
Donohue, who recently defended both Gibson and the movie on CNN, has written a multipage "open letter" to Jewish leaders praising the film as "the most moving dramatization of the death of Jesus Christ ever made."
"It's all the political correctness come to religion," he said by telephone from his Long Island home.
"It's going to lead to better relationships between Christians and Jews. Jews are not portrayed invidiously in this movie nor is there any collective guilt attributed to Jews. I would be the first to condemn it," he said.
"This is sheer demagoguery," he said of the criticism.
Barrens said he was surprised by Donohue's blanket condemnation of those who have committed their lives to interfaith relations in the second half of the 20th century.
"So many who have been encouraging this as a teachable moment, people like Rabbi Rudin and many other national leaders, both Christian and Jewish, have been working in this area for decades," he said.
Christians, the Catholic League's Donohue claimed, "have been intimidated from speaking out honestly about their concerns about some of the inflammatory rethoric."
In his presentation Wednesday in St. Petersburg, Rudin, who has had an advisory role with the famous Oberammergau Passion play in Germany, as well as other dramatizations of the Passion, said it is possible to create an authentic Christian production without anti-Jewish elements.
"It can be done," he said.
If you go
An Interreligious Dialogue on The Passion of the Christ, led by local clergy, 7 p.m. March 3, Higgins Hall, St. Lawrence Catholic Church, 5221 N Himes Ave., Tampa. Free and open to the public. The event is sponsored by the Center for Catholic-Jewish Studies at Saint Leo University and the National Conference for Community and Justice. Call 352 588-8597 or www.cjstudies.org
