IS FREDRIKSEN ANTI-CATHOLIC?

A reader pens a long evisceration of Paula Fredriksen’s evisceration of Mel Gibson’s new movie about the death of Jesus. Worth a read. Money quote:

The bane of political correctness has always been its unconscious predilection to zealously overreach, eventually attempting to replace pesky facts with more helpful, albeit fabricated, ones and simultaneously condemning all who refuse to succumb to this indoctrination as bigots or racists, just as guilty of nefarious intent as those who are actively racist or misogynistic or religiously intolerant. Thus, if I agree with the evangelists and with Mel Gibson’s and my own intellectual interpretation of the scriptures, I am, in Fredriksen’s world, an anti-Semite (a revelation that would certainly startle my Jewish wife). The fact that Mr. Gibson has employed lawyers to protect his right to portray the truth as he (and many other Catholics) perceives it is not, as she would have us believe, some sort of admission of wrongdoing on his part. On the contrary, it is a perfectly intelligent and justified measure by which to resist the extortion of secular pietists. Thus, Fredriksen’s melodramatic comment, “Lawyers were in the saddle; reason was dying” (aside from delivering the second part of the 1-2 insult to this Catholic lawyer) demonstrates yet again her unwillingness to make her peace with reality: reason never lived in her efforts at extortion… The reason Catholics and other Christians like me are so anxious to see this film is for precisely the reason that she cannot grasp: because it is not being made to pander to the mood of the day or to any special interests. It is intended to be a depiction of the excruciating agony suffered by a loving God who did not need to do this, but, out of love for His miserable and undeserving creation, suffered so that we might recognize Him. What Mr. Gibson intends with this film is to demonstrate that love, and one who truly recognizes that love is incapable of the horrible acts of anti-Semitic violence that Fredriksen so fears.

Nicely put.