Mel Gibson in Sydney?

Another “Ad Hoc” Moment

According to The Age (Aug. 24, 2005), news that Mel Gibson has been asked to organize a live interpretation of the Stations of the Cross for the 2008 World Youth Day in Sydney, Australia has been met with resistance by the International Council of Christians and Jews (ICCJ). Supported by Sydney’s Catholic Archbishop George Pell, the idea of having Mel Gibson recreate the crucifixion of Jesus Christ in the streets of Sydney was included in the city’s bid to host Catholicism’s World Youth Day event in 2008.

According to bid documents obtained by The Sydney Morning Herald and reported on by The Associated Press (Aug. 27, 2005), Gibson’s staging of the Stations of the Cross would begin with a sunset staging of the Last Supper, presented at Sydney’s landmark Opera House, and conclude with a depiction of Christ’s crucifixion at St. Mary’s Cathedral.

However, the International Council of Christians and Jews has announced that it would drop plans to hold its annual conference in Sydney in 2007 if Gibson’s parade goes ahead. ICCJ President Professor John Pawlikowski, professor of social ethics at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, says that the invitation to Mr. Gibson is a serious issue both for Christian-Jewish relations and “the ever escalating crisis regarding Vatican II within contemporary Catholicism.” In an e-mail published on the independent website, Online Catholics, Professor Pawlikowski claims that Cardinal Pell will be giving “affirmation as a Catholic hero before a global audience” to a person who “totally dissents” from the teaching of Vatican II.

The secretary of the Australian Council of Christians and Jews, Sister of Sion Dr. Marianne Dacy, told Online Catholics that there were “deep anxieties” in the local interfaith dialogue community over the possibility of Mel Gibson’s participation in the 2008 World Youth Day. “Mel Gibson cannot be allowed to be part of this Sydney event,” she said. “It will be a severe body blow to the progress that has slowly been made in Christian-Jewish relations.”

Comment: A threatened rupture in “Jewish-Christian relations” was the “threat du jour” for the entire year prior to the release of Mel Gibson’s masterpiece, The Passion of The Christ. And, now, just when you thought it was safe to say the words “Mel Gibson” in public without attendant displays of effeminate wailing and hand-wringing, along comes the International Council of Christians and Jews, threatening to take their ball and go home should the likes of a Mr. Gibson set foot in Sydney during World Youth Day, 2008.

One need only look at the mouthpieces for this latest assault on Our Lord’s Passion to see which way the wind blows. Fr. John Pawlikowski was one of the Catholic members of the “Ad Hoc Scholars Group,” a bunch of interreligious malcontents who used a stolen copy of the Passion script to launch not only a preemptive strike against the film, but a relentless and mean-spirited attack against Church history, the intelligence of Roman Catholics and the very Gospels themselves.

Dr. Marianne Dacy (NDS), secretary of the Australian Council of Christians and Jews, runs the Archive of Australian Judaica at the University of Sydney. Archive of Australian Judaica? Hey, you can hardly expect her to devote such energy to, say, a Marian Library, can you? Dacy is also a signer of a 2004 “Statement by Concerned Christians” titled “The Passion of the Christ,” Jewish Pain, and Christian Responsibility, which contains more of the same blather spouted by the Ad Hocs.

The title, “Australian Council of Christians and Jews,” assumes a certain reciprocity which, in fact, appears to be nonexistent. In their own biographical sketch, the ACCJ states that their “energy continues to be focused on Holocaust education,” including a yearly Christian commemorative service for the Holocaust held in the crypt of  St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Cathedral, an annual seminar for Christian teachers and clergy on the subject of the Shoah, an annual commemoration of the Night of Broken Glass, an annual Passover demonstration directed to non-Jewish audiences, panel discussions, seminars on current topics of relevance and evenings of multi-denominational poetry and music.

What is missing here? How about the image of an Infant shivering in the night, as the Queen of Heaven wraps Him in swaddling clothes? How about the image of a God Who so desperately (if such a word can be used of God) loves humanity, that He walked the bloody road to Calvary to free us from sin and eternal damnation? Such considerations matter little in the Dialogue Game.

Fr. Pawlikowski makes a reference to “the ever escalating crisis regarding Vatican II within contemporary Catholicism.” He is afraid, apparently, that Vatican II hasn’t made enough of an impact on the Church! And, for such people as Pawlikowski and Dacy, it hasn’t, because there are still people out there – Mel Gibson for one – who revere the Sacred Scriptures, who love the Catholic Church, and who believe that it is Jesus Christ, and only Jesus Christ, Who matters in the end.

Putting aside for a moment the fact that the World Youth Days are fiascos which are detrimental to the faith of young Catholics and should be discontinued immediately, one could still wish that the Australian episcopate would summon the testosterone to tell the International Council of Christians and Jews just what they can do with their 2007 Annual Conference.

Italian Jewish Leader Calls For Outlawing Of Crucifixes

According to the European Jewish Press (Aug. 23, 2005),  Amos Luzzatto, Chairman of the Italian Union of Jewish Communities (UCEI), has called for the removal of crucifixes from public schools in Italy, because they are “irreflective of all members of society.”

“We do respect the Christian people,” wrote Luzzatto in a statement, “but a symbol of divine presence in a public school should be recognizable by the citizens of all faiths and it should address them all in an equal manner .... Now, since every school hosts citizens with different beliefs or no belief at all, we should rather avoid displaying any symbol”.

This latest assault on the display of the crucifix in Italy’s public sector occurred directly on the heels of a homily delivered by Pope Benedict XVI’s for the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (August 15th). Speaking from his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, a village on a hill close to Rome, the Pope said that it is important to continuously display the divine presence “through the cross symbol in privates homes as well as in public buildings.”

Rome’s Chief Rabbi, Riccardo Di Segni, responded to the situation by saying that he believes “there’s absolutely no new official position of the Church on the issue.” He went on to state that it was “important that the Pope underlined the religious aspect of the symbol .... in the previous controversies the defence that the crucifix is a cultural symbol is clearly not the case and we must take note of this clarification.”

Comment: In its repudiation of a distinctly Catholic identity, Italy, like many formerly Catholic nations, is asking for attacks such as Luzzatto’s. The Lateran Pacts of 1929, which established Vatican City as an independent state and dealt with the Church’s ecclesiastical relations with the Italian state, originally declared that “Italy recognizes and reaffirms the principle established in the first Article of the Italian Constitution dated March 4, 1848, according to which the Catholic Apostolic Roman religion is the only State religion.”

However, in an amended Lateran Concordat of 1984, the Holy See and the Italian Republic jointly declared that “the principle of the Catholic religion as the sole religion of the Italian State, originally referred to by the Lateran Pacts [of 1929], shall be considered to be no longer in force.” This change was enacted because of “the process of political and social change that has occurred in Italy over the last decades” and “the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council’s declarations on religious freedom and on the relations between the Church and the polity, as well as the new codification of canon law.” This officially sanctioned secularization paved the way for such litigation as the 2000 Court of Cassation ruling in favor of a schoolteacher who asserted that crucifixes should not be present at voting sites, as well as a 2003 court judgment in favor of Muslim activist Adel Smith (subsequently overturned by a higher court) ordering all crucifixes removed from his child’s primary school in Ofena, central Italy.

Going hand-in-hand with this newly formulated Italian secularist state is a plethora of “accords,” by means of which the Italian government offers financial and legal support to any number of religions.

According to the U.S. Department of State, such accords have been made with the Adventists and Assembly of God (1988), Jews (1989), Baptists and Lutherans (1995), Mormons (1998), the Orthodox Church of the Constantinople Patriarchate (1998), Buddhist Union and Jehovah’s Witnesses (2000), the Apostolic Church (2000),  Hindus and Japanese Buddhist Soka Gakkai (2001).

None of this is enough for the likes of Jewish activist Amos Luzzatto, a reputable surgeon, author and “expert in Jewish culture.” And this is because he has a problem: how to adequately punish the Catholic Church for its alleged “crimes” against the Jewish people. Commenting on Pope John Paul’s 1986 visit to the Rome Synagogue, Luzzatto remarked that the Pope’s apologies for the Church’s alleged crimes against the Jews were “not enough,” because the Pope “spoke of the Christians’ responsibility, not the Church’s responsibility.” When it is directed against the Roman Catholic Church, the concept of “collective guilt” suddenly begins to look pretty good to many Jewish activists.

A  biographical sketch posted by the 2005 First World Conference on the Future of Science relates of participant Amos Luzzatto, “He insists above all on modern Jewish identity, which, according to him, has increased the value and has brought to the affirmation of the category of national identity, together with the ‘religious’ one.” This is the same man who would deny the Italian people the ultimate expression of their unique Catholic identity, an identity which has defined not only Italy’s history, but also its social, spiritual and artistic impact upon humanity – namely, “Christ crucified, unto the Jews indeed a stumbling block, and unto the Gentiles foolishness; but unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

Pope Benedict Visits Cologne Synagogue

On August 19, 2005, Pope Benedict XVI became the second Pope to visit a synagogue when, during his trip to Germany for the 2005 World Youth Day, he visited the Roonstrasse Synagogue in Cologne which had been destroyed by the Nazis during the 1938 Kristallnacht attacks, and rebuilt in 1959. The temple, which contains a “holocaust” memorial, is home to the oldest Jewish community in Germany.

A shofar, or ram’s horn, sounded as Benedict sat at the front of the synagogue. During the visit, the Pope also listened intently to the singing of the cantor, and declared that “Today, too, I wish to reaffirm that I intend to continue on the path toward improved relations and friendship with the Jewish People, following the decisive lead given by Pope John Paul II.” He also described the “holocaust” as “the darkest period of German and European history,” during which “an insane racist ideology, born of neo-paganism, gave rise to the attempt, planned and systematically carried out by the regime, to exterminate European Jewry.”

In his address to the synagogue, Pope Benedict praised the Second Vatican Council’s declaration, Nostre Aetate:

Both Jews and Christians recognize in Abraham their father in faith and they look to the teachings of Moses and the prophets. Jewish spirituality, like its Christian counterpart, draws nourishment from the psalms. With Saint Paul, Christians are convinced that “the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.” In considering the Jewish roots of Christianity, my venerable Predecessor, quoting a statement by the German Bishops, affirmed that: “whoever meets Jesus Christ meets Judaism.”

The Pope also stated that “The Catholic Church is committed – I reaffirm this again today – to tolerance, respect, friendship and peace between all peoples, cultures and religions.” Rabbi Alan Plancey of the UK’s Chief Rabbinate welcomed the visit as “an important symbolic moment” in relations between Catholics and Jews. “It is imperative that we continue to talk to each other, and learn from the past to improve our shared future,” he said.

Comment: On August 10, 2005, Mark Shea of Catholic Exchange wrote a piece titled, “The Pope as Flag.” In this unconvincing chastisement of those conservative-minded Catholics who expect a Vicar of Christ to exhibit the traits of a warrior – i.e., a defender of the Catholic Faith – Shea writes:

His [Pope Benedict XVI’s] conservative critics (so recently shouting “Hosanna” at his election) don’t seem to be interested in what the pope teaches. They appear to long instead for him to finally fulfill the pre-Christian Messianic dream of a Davidic Warrior King who will establish righteousness by force. They are impatient for Benedict to kick out the Bad People and create a Pure Church. They roll their eyes when he lives out wimpy drivel like charity,        gentleness, and respect for non-Catholics (a.k.a. “excessive ecumenism”). Warrior Kings don’t dialogue! They conquer and rule!

Now, that’s odd. No less a personage than Our Lady of Fatima used the phrase reign to describe a Pope’s tenure: “The war is going to end; but if people do not cease offending God, a worse war will break out during the reign of Pius XI.” If Our Lady is infected with the “Warrior King” mentality, then we bloodthirsty, non-gentle Trads are in pretty good company. Yes, a Pope should rule, and rule with conviction!

In the homily for his inaugural Mass (April 24, 2005), Pope Benedict XVI said: “The Church as a whole and all her Pastors, like Christ, must set out to lead people out of the desert, towards the place of life, towards friendship with the Son of God, towards the One who gives us life, and life in abundance.”

On August 22, 2005, a mere three days after his visit to the Cologne synagogue, Pope Benedict met with members of the group, Communion and Liberation (and therein lies a whole other story). During this meeting, the Holy Father said that God wants us to be free and that genuine freedom is “the fruit of a personal encounter with Jesus.”

Yet, the words “Jesus Christ” were spoken only once by the Holy Father in his address at the Cologne synagogue: “Whoever meets Jesus Christ meets Judaism.” Wouldn’t it have been more accurate to say “Whoever meets Jesus Christ meets the fulfillment of Judaism?”

The most important question ever asked on this earth by Jesus Christ was a simple one: “But who do you say I am?” Is asking a Pope – any Pope – to preach Jesus Christ such an unreasonable thing? The more conservative or traditional minded Catholics who breathed a tentative sigh of relief at the election of Pope Benedict XVI did not suddenly forget Cardinal Ratzinger’s modernist tendencies, his post-conciliar ecclesial theology or his betrayal of the Fatima message. But, although it comes at a dear premium these days, we are still allowed to hope. Knowing we will be betrayed, we are still allowed to hope. Hope is something we do in the very face of hopelessness, simply because we are human.

If we didn’t hope, we wouldn’t pray for the Holy Father, would we? And if we didn’t care, we wouldn’t ask why he does the things he does, would we? The thing that disheartens serious Catholics in the post-conciliar age is not the human frailty of its Popes, but the strange and continuous “disconnect” between their profession of faith in Jesus Christ and a definite reluctance to speak about Him in “mixed company.” Above all, we fear leaders who would fulfill Our Lord’s own warning:

The scribes and the Pharisees have sitten on the chair of Moses. All things therefore whatsoever they shall say to you, observe and do: but according to their works do ye not. For they say, and do not.

When a Vicar of Christ admonishes us (and rightly so) to evangelize the world and announce the freedom and joy possible in Christ, we have every right to say, with all due respect:  “After you, Holy Father.”

They Helped Build Rome

The discovery of two furnaces found in Mugnano in Teverina, a tiny village some 50 miles north of Rome, has revealed the names of two brothers who made bricks for some of ancient Rome’s greatest monuments.

According to Discovery News (Aug. 23, 2005), Italian archaeologists found an inscription on the road leading to the ancient brickfield which reads “iter privatum duorum Domitiorum” (private road of the two Domitii). The men in question were brothers Tullus and Lucanus of the Domitii, a noble and well-connected family throughout the first and early second centuries. One of its members, Domitia Lucilla Minor, was the mother of the future emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Settled around the first half of the 1st century AD, the furnaces remained the property of the Domitii family for more than a century. They were then inherited by emperor Marcus Aurelius and remained the Emperor’s property until brick production ended in the 4th and 5th centuries AD.

Mugnano was an ideal spot for furnaces. It was rich with some of the best clay, had an abundance of water and wood, and was close to the river Tiber. The furnaces of the Domitii provided bricks for such grandiose buildings as the Coliseum, the Pantheon, the Market of Trajan, and the Diocletian and Caracalla Baths, said archaeologist Tiziano Gasperoni, who discovered the furnaces. “The bricks used to erect these buildings all bear the same maker’s marks. At the Domitii furnaces we found more than 100 of these marks, so there is no doubt that the site at Mugnano provided bricks to build Rome’s most important monuments,” Gasperoni told Discovery News.

Marks were a peculiar feature of kilns. Each Roman brick maker had his own — circular, rectangular or moon-shaped. The mark contained his own name, often with the name of the place or the owner of the brickfield. Half-moon-shaped, the Domitii brothers mark featured the name of the worker responsible for the kiln — Titus Greius Ianuarius — the name of the brickfield, and the names of Tullus and Lucanus.

Besides bricks and tiles, the Domitii furnaces also specialized in the production of doli, big containers in terracotta which were buried up to their necks to preserve wine and olive oil, and mortars to grind seeds, herbs and nuts into meal. “Mortars and doli with the Domitii mark can be found throughout the Mediterranean, mainly in France, Spain and North Africa,” said Tiziano Gasperoni. “Bricks and terracotta containers were loaded on large boats and carried to Rome through the Tiber. International trade was also possible because of the Ostia harbor.”