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GIBSON-USCCB
Jul-22-2003 (640 words) With photos.
xxxn
Actor-director Mel Gibson visits U.S.
bishops' building
By Mark
Pattison
Catholic News
Service
WASHINGTON (CNS) --
Actor-director Mel Gibson paid a quick visit to the U.S.
bishops' headquarters building in Washington July 21, a
month after the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and
Gibson's Icon Productions were involved in a spat over
Gibson's new movie, "The Passion."
Gibson met
with Msgr. William P. Fay, USCCB general secretary. "It
was a surprise visit," said Msgr. Fay, who had been
notified of Gibson's arrival about an hour before it
happened.
Msgr. Fay added there was no bad blood
between the USCCB and Gibson. "He wanted the visit to
make clear that there was not" any animosity, he said of
Gibson.
The dispute centered on the use of what
Icon Productions said were unauthorized copies of a
draft script used by a group of Catholic and Jewish
scholars to critique the screenplay.
After the
meeting was over, Gibson signed autographs for employees
outside USCCB headquarters before stepping inside a
waiting taxi. With Gibson was Paul Lauer, hired to do
publicity and promotion for "The Passion."
"I
thought I was having a private meeting," Msgr. Fay
exclaimed when he saw 20 employees, most of them female,
huddling around the 47-year-old Gibson for an
autograph.
When signing an autograph for Janet
Kistler, who works in the bishops' Secretariat for
Pro-Life Activities, Gibson said, "You're from Pro-Life?
I've done my bit." Gibson, a Catholic, is the father of
seven children.
Gibson was in Washington to
oversee a screening of "The Passion," which Gibson
financed with his own money. The film, whose dialogue is
entirely in Latin and Aramaic with no subtitles, has yet
to find a distributor.
Among those attending the
invitation-only screening, according to The Washington
Post, were political commentators Peggy Noonan, Cal
Thomas, Kate O'Beirne, Michael Novak and Linda Chavez;
film director William Peter Blatty; Jack Valenti, head
of the Motion Picture Association of America; David Kuo,
deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based
and Community Initiatives; former Republican congressman
Mark Siljander of Michigan; and Mark Rodgers, staff
director of the Senate Republican Conference.
The
same day as Gibson's visit, William Donohue of the
Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights blasted
an essay written by Paula Fredriksen in the July 28
issue of The New Republic magazine over the controversy
surrounding "The Passion."
"The script, when we
got it, shocked us," wrote Fredriksen, one of the
scholars enlisted to critique the script. She is a
professor of Scripture at Boston University and the
author of "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews," a
historical study of the last 12 hours of Jesus'
life.
"Nothing of Gibson's published remarks (in
a New York Times Magazine article) or of (Jesuit Father
William) Fulco's and Gibson's private assurances, had
prepared us for what we saw," Fredriksen said. Father
Fulco translated the English script.
"We
pinpointed its historical errors and -- again, since
Gibson has so trumpeted his own Catholicism -- its
deviations from magisterial principles of biblical
interpretation. We concluded with general
recommendations for certain changes in the script," she
said.
Fredriksen said Gibson was fully aware of
the script's distribution to the scholars and their
intent to produce a critique of the script.
"Why
would he be so concerned with our evaluation if he knew
that what we were evaluating bore so little resemblance
to his actual film?" she asked. "I shudder to think how
'The Passion' will play once its subtitles shift from
English to Polish, or Spanish, or French, or Russian.
When violence breaks out, Mel Gibson will have a much
higher authority than professors and bishops to answer
to."
Calling Fredriksen "a demagogue," Donohue
said in a statement, "Working with an unauthorized
script of 'The Passion,' Paula Fredriksen has declared
the movie to be anti-Semitic. ... She has libeled Mel
Gibson."
END
Copyright (c) 2003 Catholic News Service/U.S.
Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CNS news report may
not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise
distributed, including but not limited to such means as
framing or any other digital copying or distribution
method, in whole or in part without the prior written
authority of Catholic News Service. | | | |
