Fr Bascio misquotes me

THE EDITOR: I have read, with raised eyebrows, Father Pat Bascio’s comments (Newsday April 11) on my column: “The Passion of the Christ: Mel Gibson’s message.” Approximately 25 percent of Pat Bascio’s comments are directed to two phrases which he attributes to me and suggests that I should modify. May I ask Fr Bascio to re-read my article carefully. I do not describe Christ’s person as “love carried to its perfection,” etc. I quote that from the Statement of the Episcopal Conference of France and say so clearly in my column.

It would be impertinent of me to modify the official Statement of French Bishops and intellectually dishonest of me to do so. I can agree, disagree, debate — I cannot modify. The second phrase for which Pat Bascio proceeds to divine what he imagines, and to pronounce that “it so disturbs her,” my beliefs is again not mine. The phrase “the sadistic interpretation of the Passion which deforms the reality,” is a statement of the Cardinal Archb-ishop of Paris Jean-Marie Lustiger. I am certain that he would be impressed by Fr Bascio’s Biblical knowledge and his theology as with Fr Bascio’s supposition that Cardinal Lustiger does not know what the Church has ‘‘traditionally and theologically portrayed.’’

Fr Bascio supposes that I have not given a ‘‘pause for reflection’’ at the remarkable coalition of religious groups: some Catholic in my text — modified without my permission by Fr Bascio by omitting the some — had Pentecostals, Muslims and Evangelicals who praise the film. The some was deliberately written if only to take into account those countries where the principal group of Catholics promoting the film are the anti-Vatican II integrists of which I believe Mel Gibson is associated and certainly in France Le Pen’s neo-Fascists. It doesn’t take much of a pause to come to the conclusion that when Kuwaitis and Tunisians forbid conversion by law, where the Koran reveals that it is not Jesus who was crucified but a substitution, and where a simple jewelry cross can run you into trouble in the same Tunisia, praise has nothing to do with religion. It has to do with the presentation of the Jewish authorities in Mel Gibson’s Passion and the possible political use of this in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

For Evangelicals and Pent-ecostals and yes, some Catholics, haemoglobin is more acceptable than Our Lord’s peccadillo of Mathew 25. I note that in Fr Bascio’s theology it is members which decide on truth. I was of the impression that while this applied in the political arena (democracy), it does not and cannot apply either in the field of ideas or in the religious sphere — I grant that I may be wrong, I am only a simple lay-woman but in my own field of study I associate the majority, numbers etc to religious populism and nothing else. Fr Bascio sees Mel Gibson as engaged in a “serious attempt to portray the reality of the crucifixion’’ and my ‘‘convictions’’ that he sees himself as an ‘‘instrument of God’’ ‘‘gratuitous to a fault.’’ Here I must take some blame in not linking the sentence with the paragraph before. I has to do with Mel Gibson’s interview on EWTN.

What I do in my article is to compare Mel Gibson’s ‘‘reality of the crucifixion’’ with the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, as well for the mechanics of crucifixion documents of the time. For the Gospels my sources are, I think, orthodox: The Jerusalem Bible with full notes, and the Tradition Oecumemque de Bible with full notes. Where incidents in Mel Gibson are absent in the Gospels, or where there is a pattern in selection, I can hardly add ‘‘caveats’’ of ‘‘perhaps’’ or ‘‘in my opinion’’ as you suggest. Opinion and facts are two differing categories. That Mel Gibson fabricates is a fact.

Father Bascio’s takes me up on guilt and repentance. Well only 12 years ago an Irish villager who did not go to Mass on a Sunday was extremely rare, marked with guilt and with confession. Today where the power of the priest and the pressure of the village has changed, there is a growing number of villagers who miss Mass without the least compunction. The guilt of missing Mass was socially defined. Change social values and guilt disappears. Repentance is defined by God and is not affected by social pressures. Finally Fr Bascio supposes that I do not know where to find ‘‘angelic choirs’’ on an Easter Sunday morning. I do. They exist at my mother’s Methodist churches at which, in addition, I can hear the old Catholic hymns of the 16th and 17th century. I prefer however the prayerful joy of the Vigil Mass.

Finally I note that Fr Bascio has not replied to the kernel of my argument, ie that Mel Gibson has deliberately selected from  the Gospels and fabricated incidents in order to frame ‘‘his’’ version of the crucifixion reality. Rather Fr Bascio diverts the argument into an attack on quotes that are not my own. I would in charity prefer to believe that Fr Bascio hurriedly skimmed my column. The alternative would be that he deliberately misquotes and misattributes quotes since it is more acceptable and easier in a Trini church streaked with Jansenism and where devotions take priority over the revealed word of God, to ‘‘correct’’ — or attack — a lay person and a woman, than Bishops, Cardinals and the Jerusalem Bible.

MARION O’CALLAGHAN
Woodbrook