Happy Mardi Gras and Happy Lent. Wednesday night we will see The Passion of the Christ along with hundreds of thousands of other Christians. This is a profound way to start Lent this year, seeing Mel Gibson’s uncanny film.
The Passion of The Christ Opens Wednesday
One of the best secular reviews we’ve read is by Sun-Times film critics Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper in Sunday’s issue. They give it two thumbs up. Not only do both call it a great film, but Ebert saying it’s one of only two religious movie he ‘s seen that really deals with what actually happened to Christ.
Roeper says The Passion is the most powerful, important and by far the most graphic interpretation of Christ’s final hours ever put on film. He calls it the work of Mel Gibson’s lifetime.
Neither thinks it’s anti-Semitic, but Ebert says it focuses relentlessly on the price Christ paid for redemption and emphasizes that Jesus wanted this to happen. “His death,” Ebert writes, ” was the instrument of his propose, and we should be grateful to him instead of critical of those who were the instruments of his will.” Roeper calls Gibson’s film ” powerful and effective.”
Ads for The Passion are now running in major newspapers Chicago papers list at least forty theatres in the area where it is being shown. It will be a blockbuster. And for once we agree with Fr. Michael Pfleger that almost everyone should see this film except the very young. Surely from junior high on.
Daley Embraces Gay “Marriage”
We’ve read just about all we can stand on gay marriage and homosexuals rights, and we’re not surprised to hear that Chicago Mayor Richard Daley supports so-called gay marriage. We gave up on Daley years ago when he supported abortion at Cook County Hospital and rode in the gay pride parade. His Mom and Dad must be spinning in their graves.
A Sun-Times editorial calls Daley “a devout Catholic” — who is publicly negating the Vatican’s directive to politicians to oppose efforts to legalize gay marriage. Daley’s reasoning is that gays love each other just as much as anyone else does, so why not let them tie the knot?
Daley’s advice to those of us who object to sanctioning sodomy is: “People should look at their own life and in their own mirror.” Wonder if Ritchie has done that recently?
The Education of Steve Neal
Steve Neal apparently was another “devout Catholic” who happened to be pro-abortion. We recall writing next to one of his pro-abortion columns, “He’s always wrong.” Yet Neal has been praised to the skies by almost all the local and national media pundits. True, he knew a lot about politics and sports and whatever, and had a talent for writing, but he was dead wrong on abortion and we wish he could write a column for tomorrow’s paper based on his newly acquired knowledge of God’s view of abortion.
He knows now that abortion is murder, not a woman’s option. But then we’ve all got a shocked in store when we cross over to the other shore. Maybe we’ll wish we had been more loving toward devout Catholics who support abortion.
News from Wichita
Operation West’s Troy Newman is facing a possible six months in jail and a $1,000 fine for driving his Truth Truck into Bel Aire, KS. This up-scale suburb of Wichita has a building code that bans portable signs on public streets. Troy’s group plans to file a suit in Federal Court against this unconstitutional ordinance.
And while we’re discussing Wichita, only a day after George Tiller announced that he would do abortions free for anyone on the 31st anniversary of Roe. v. Wade, he botched an abortion so badly that his patient was rushed to the hospital with life-threatening injuries. So much for safe, legal abortion.
Face the Truth Expanding
Two new cities planning Face the Truth tours: Tucson, AZ and St. Louis, MO — and the list of cities grows.
