Our People

The Passion of the Christ and Vocations

Address at the Opening of Carnivale Christi, St Mary’s Cathedral

By Most Rev. Anthony Fisher OP
Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney
29 April 2005

For my first year as a bishop I had a monthly column called The Moral Maze in the Sun Herald. I got the impression that some at least of the editorial staff were not enthusiastic about having a Catholic bishop as a regular writer, especially a Catholic bishop who said some of the things he did. The Fairfax press is not especially famous for its pro-Catholicism. I think the straw that broke the camel’s back was an article I submitted about Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. Twice it failed to appear in my spot. Twice I resubmitted. Grudgingly it was eventually published. But soon after my tenure as a writer for the Moral Maze came to an end, without so much as the editor informing me so: another writer, who could be relied upon to be less absolutist, simply appeared in my place.

I thought I might remind you of what I said that was so nasty. I told the readers that I had recently seen The Passion of the Christ with several hundred university students. It was at Regina Apostolorum University in Rome, in fact. You could hear a pin drop. A new generation were hearing a story long denied them in our culture. Some talked for hours afterwards; others sat in stunned silence.

Though top of the box-office the film was panned by many critics here in Australia and elsewhere. Too violent, they said, or  too gratuitously so, without vindication. Yet, I said, the film itself critiques the spiral of violence and the culture of death. It reports Jesus’ own answers: Put away your sword… love your enemies… pray for your persecutors… lay down your life… love as I loved. Even from the cross he forgives. No pay back. An altogether new response to evil. One we might have missed were the reality of the violence to which he was responding not been not portrayed so candidly.

But hope springs up again. Still bearing the wounds of our sin and suffering, Jesus rises from the dead. So there is a kind of gratuitousness and a kind of vindication: the vindication of gratuitous love – what Christians call ‘grace’ – over hatred, cruelty, violence, vengeance. The critics missed the point.

The other charge that was in the air at the time was that the film was anti-Semitic. Jews are rightly hyper-sensitive to this: too often memories of Christ’s death have been used to fuel or excuse racial hatred. But this film is not in that genre.
As the story unfolds we meet good and bad among Romans and Jews. The heroes are almost all Jewish: Jesus, Mary, John, Peter, the Magdalene, Veronica, Simon Cyrene. Fair-minded Jewish leaders protest the sham trial and storm out or are thrown out. The sadists are Roman soldiers and their anti-Semitic taunts are against Jesus and his companions.

So who is to blame? Gibson does not appear in this movie, but his hands do. It is his hands that drive the nails through Jesus’ flesh. Gibson’s own sinfulness, and that of us all, was responsible for the crucifixion. We are all complicit.

I suspect what really annoyed the critics was not anti-Semitism but anti-secularism. The film tells Jesus’ story with conviction. The director and at least some of the actors really meant what the story they were telling through the medium of fine art. Their real targets, if any, were not ancient Romans or modern Jews, but those who are uncomfortable with any high octane religion.

The Passion challenges any new age rendering of Jesus as a nice guy who pats us a lot but makes no demands. The unsanitised Christ contends with sin, the flesh and the Devil. That’s very unfashionable in a culture that has translated sin into a psychological problem or political incorrectness. That sees the flesh as something to be indulged or exploited, rather than reverenced and sacrificed. That denies the existence of evil and only demonises foreign leaders. A culture that would empty the cross of its power, and substitute something altogether more comfortable.

The Jesus who declares that I have come to bear witness to the truth disturbs a society more in synch with Pilate’s Truth, what’s that? Though only the truth ultimately satisfies, it is profoundly unsettling. It exposes unjust structures and policies, long-ingrained and firmly-held prejudices, self-centredness and inhumane behaviour.

Truth is confronting. So much so, we want to flee it – or else flay it alive.

I told the Sun Herald’s readers that I thought there was something in The Passion of the Christ for everyone: the Caravaggioesque Pietà tableau, for instance, is burnt permanently into my imagination. All of us might have done some things differently.  We might have toned it down in places and up in others. This is not the definitive biography or theology. It is a work of art and worship. Were it less successful as either, it would have been less threatening to the critics. But as my student companions taught me and whether the critics like it or not, this film moves hearts. And breaks them. And changes them.

So it was from this film that the Archdiocese of Sydney Vocations Office took its images for its vocations promotions last year and early this year. We were convinced that a film that had yielded increased Mass attendance amongst its fruits might also contribute to priestly vocations. We were right. Last year we had the largest number of inquirers and eventually of entrants into the seminary for many years.

I hope and pray that the same will be true of this year. For we have witnessed another Passion these months past, once again more or less in rhythm with the real Passion story of Holy Week. This was the Passion of John Paul the Great which was so publicly and humbly offered to world as his last teaching and self-sacrifice. Of his life there are still many fruits to come. One of those fruits, I predict, will be vocations to the priesthood and religious life, as a new generation of John Paul’s men and women flower under the fatherly care of his successor Benedict.

The Archdiocese of Sydney is, as His Eminence declared earlier this evening, delighted to be hosting Carnivale Christi here at the Cathedral in 2005. The Vocations Office which I direct is likewise very proud to be a principal sponsor. We are grateful to all those who have made this weekend happen. And we welcome with enthusiasm our speakers…