“The Passion of the Christ” and Jewish Pain
by Deacon Lucien Miller
(Reprinted from the March 7, 2004 issue of “Communitas," the Catholic Newman Center Community Bulletin, by permission of the author.)
Why is it that numbers of our Jewish brothers and sisters are deeply troubled by Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ”? Why are they afraid that the film may give rise to anti-Semitism?
The answer is: history. For over seventeen hundred years, since the time of the Emperor Constantine in the third to fourth centuries, certain passages have been taken from the Passion narratives in the Gospels to persecute Jews. Jews have been falsely charged with “deicide”--killing God--and the all too frequent result has been Catholic leaders and laity promoting anti-Jewish legislation, pogroms, yellow stars, and segregation in the ghettos.
Today, when we Catholics see a phrase like “the Jews” in the Passion narratives, we know it refers largely to Jewish authorities, not to all Jews. We know that the answer to the question, "Who killed Christ?" is threefold: the Romans killed Christ—only they had the legal authority to carry out capital punishment. We also know that it is we who killed Christ—he died for our sins. And we know that God the Father so loved the world that he gave his only Son.
Jews fear that Gibson’s film, like the Gospels, may be used against them. As Catholics today, pained by the awareness of the pain we have caused Jews in the past, we say: “never again.” We look with Jewish sisters and brothers at Marc Chagall’s painting, “White Crucifixion.” We see a Jewish Jesus wrapped in a Jewish prayer-shawl (tallit), a Jewish candelabra (menorah) at his feet, epitomizing the suffering of all Jews, and we repeat, “never again.”
This column originally appeared in the 3/7/04 issue of “Communitas”—the Community Bulletin of the Catholic Newman Center at UMass Amherst. It is reprinted with the permission of the author.
Related article:
An Open Letter to Mel Gibson
