NewsMax's James Hirsen reports that high-ranking officials from the Vatican Secretariat of State, the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) gave their unanimous approval and expressed admiration for Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ” in Rome over the weekend at a private screening..
The CDF is the group that oversees Catholic doctrinal questions.
We also note that Zenit, a Vatican online news agency, conducted an interview with Dominican Father Augustine Di Noia, an undersecretary of the doctrinal congregation who works for the head of the CDF, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
Father Di Noia called the film "an intensely religious experience.” He said that Gibson’s rendering is "a production of exquisite artistic and religious sensitivity.”
Father Di Noia also categorically countered criticisms of the film, saying that Gibson's film "incorporates elements from the Passion narratives of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but remains faithful to the fundamental structure common to all four accounts” and is "entirely faithful to the New Testament.”
He added that the actor who portrays Christ conveys the notion "entirely convincingly and effectively, that Christ is enduring his passion and death willingly, in obedience to his Father, in order to satisfy for the disobedience of sin.”
As to the question of whether the movie is anti-Semitic, Father Di Noia responds, "No one person and group of persons acting independently of the others is to blame: They all are.”
He brought up the point that "their sins and our sins bring Christ to the cross, and he bears them willingly.”
Di Noia punctuated his response with "there is absolutely nothing anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish about Mel Gibson's film.”
In commenting on "The Passion of the Christ,” Father Di Noia gave this summation: "Your heart would have to be made of stone for it to remain unmoved by this extraordinary film and by the unfathomable depth of divine love it endeavors to bring to life on the screen.”
Editor's note:
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Mel Gibson's "Passion"
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