6. The Body “As It Was”: On the Occasion of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ
6. The Body “As It Was”: On the Occasion of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ
This chapter discusses positive commentaries of the Vatican on Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ. It suggests that the rush to laud the film and the sense of certainty about it characterizes the new Catholic apologetic. This certainty may be attributed to the rhetoric of Vatican II documents that sought to describe the universal quality of the Church by equating it with an ideal: the entire holy people, and to the confidence within the Catholic hierarchy that comes from the peculiar way the Church of the late 20th and early 21st centuries has tried to explain its relationship to history.
Keywords: The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson, Catholic apologetic, Vatican II, Catholic Church
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