Sunday, February 22, 2004

Cardinal Lustiger

There’s a chance that I will meet Cardinal Lustiger and 12 Fresh bishops tomorrow. Naturally, the one thing on every Jew’s mind when faced with high-ranking Church officials is about the movie the Passion. But, when I reflected as to what the interaction will be like tomorrow – and I ask that question – I recognized that I don’t think the movie’s target is the Jews. Oh, sure, if a few Jews get killed it’ll be just gravy, but the real target is the current Catholic leadership.

Ya see, Gibson’s a wacko. He’s part of a fringe group of reactionary Catholics who think that the current Church are a bunch of “bloody Protestants” (to quote an Opus Dei cleric who insulted my roommate in college). As such, Gibson (and his loony-tune father) want to force the Catholic Hierarchy to make a choice: either accept the movie as faithful and thus anger the rest of the world and upset years of amity; or to deny the film and anger the Catholic base who naturally think that the movie is accurate, albeit over-the-top.

I compare it to Kach (Meir Kahane’s group) who bawl out how the Talmud and tradition has nasty things to say about non-Jews. Either I can accept what they say and ruin my rapprochement with the Secular world or I can deny what they say and show myself to be a religious hypocrite.

The Catholics can try to maneuver out of it in the way I would maneuver, but that’s immaterial. Kach and Gibson engage in fractious thuggery and the civilized majority often find themselves at their mercy.

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