The Vatican pronounced what it hoped was the last word Thursday on whether Pope John Paul II ever endorsed Mel Gibson’s biblical epic “The Passion of the Christ,” declaring that the pontiff “does not make public judgments on artistic works.”
The Vatican stated that the Pope IS keeping his endorsement deals with Bugle Boy, Sega-Genesis and Ikea, however.*
As if the historical errors, the casting of a woman as Satan (against all Scriptural basis), the allegations of anti-Semitism, the depiction of the historically straight and licentious Herod Antipas as a homo (as detailed elsewhere in SDMB:CS, but I can’t get the search feature to work- btw, would this make Herod a Passion Fruit ?) and Gibson’s Christian sentiments about his critic Frank Rich weren’t enough reason to be just a tad wary of the movie, they’ve added lying (although, in fairness, it wasn’t Gibson who made the claim of the Papal thumbs up). OTOH, I know I plan to see the movie in the theaters, so the positive and negative and false publicity is all working.
The delay in the retraction really makes me suspicious. My theory- the Pope did say it & now Vatican bureaucrats are trying to downplay it- maybe to kiss up to the US hierarchy who has been criticising Mel & also perhaps to chastise Mel for belonging to a Catholic sect, rather than the official RCC.
Btw, on (Don) Imus in the Morning this week, Don related the controversy and concluded “Yep, the Pope said about The Passion, ‘It is as it was’. Of course, he also said that about Lord of the Rings.” G
The most suprising part of that article, to me, is the fact that the Pope lives in an apartment. Not a palace or castle?? Or at least a “home”? He lives in an apartment??
Well, he did take a vow of poverty. Until the mid-80s the official residence of the Pope was Laughing Leonardo’s Motor Court & Diner off a busy highway outside Rome, but the truckdrivers kept him awake at night and made him late for mass, so he took a part-time job at a laundromat to rent a studio apartment near the Vatican. The apartment is only temporary as he’s getting a specially outfitted Winnebago for his new MTV roadshow, but they’re not finished painting the ceiling yet.
If Satan can appear in the form of a serpent (Genesis), why can’t “he” appear as a woman? Personally, I like the female symmetry. The Virgin Mary has long been symbolized in Catholicism as the anti-Satan; in numerous statues, she is seen crushing a serpent with her bare foot.
The Bible never identifies the serpent in the GoE as Satan. Traditionally he is said to be Shammael (alternate spellings: Sammael, Shammiel, Shamayel, Ethel Mertz, Shaimmael), another fallen angel (and, in some myths, the true father of Cain).
While the character and significance of Satan changes many times in scripture (from an adversarial “buddy” of God’s to the personification of all evil and all points in between), he is consistently referred to in a masculine tense. Since Gibson is extremely conservative in his beliefs, this seems a huge liberty to take.
