Volume 51, Number 6 · April 8, 2004
God in the Hands of Angry Sinners
By Garry Wills
The Passion of the Christ
a film directed by Mel Gibson
Vows of Silence: The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II
by Jason Berry and Gerald Renner
Free Press, 353 pp., $26.00
If you relish the sight of a healthy male body being systematically demolished, beyond the farthest reach of plausible endurance, The Passion of the Christ is your movie. It is not simply the scourging scene that is at issue, though that deals out an unspecified number of stripes—more than sixty and still counting, half of them inflicted by whips that have been made into multiple-hook tearing instruments. Even earlier, at the arrest of Jesus, he is chained, beaten over and over, thrown off a bridge to crash below. He arrives at his first legal hearing already mauled and with one eye closed behind swollen bruises. From then on, he is never moved or stopped without spontaneous blows and kicks and shoves from all kinds of bystanders wanting to get in on the fun. On the way to execution, he is whipped while fainting under the cross. A soldier says to lay off or he'll never make it. But the crowd just keeps whipping and beating him all the rest of the way.
Review, 7684 words
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