The Passion Prompts Murderer To Confess

After all the warnings that Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ would cause violence and have a harmful effect on people’s . . . well, morals, presumably, if it was going to cause violence . . . comes this amazing story of a murderer being driven to repentance and confessing his crime after seeing the film.

What this man did is horrendous, but the story shows the power of the story of God’s Son, even via the medium of film, to touch the most hardened hearts.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

9 thoughts on “The Passion Prompts Murderer To Confess”

  1. Actually, Jimmy, this isn’t a new story. The guy confessed several months ago… unfortunately, he’s since changed his plea to not guilty.
    This isn’t the only “Passion”-inspired confession, though. Others include a European neo-Nazi who confessed to a pair of bombings in Oslo, Norway, an Arizona man who turned himsel in and confessed to a string of break-ins, and a Florida bank robber who surrendered to police after seeing the film.
    Story here:
    http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=37818

  3. Thanks, Vincent. I guess he just reversed his plea again. However, this is the same case mentioned in the March 31 story I linked to, so the “Passion”-inspired confession itself is a few months ago. (Stands to reason — the film isn’t in theaters now pretty much anywhere, and hasn’t yet been released on DVD.)

  4. Something just occurred to me…. How are we going to know whether it is Jimmy or Steven blogging unless they comment on each others’ posts? You need bylines, guys! 🙂

  5. My one criticism of “Passion” is that, while it certainly dealt with the physical suffering of Christ, it is my belief that His physical suffering was NOTHING compared to the suffering of (a) bearing our sins, and (b) being separated from His Father because of this. However, I don’t know how these could be represented cinematically.

  6. I don’t have a basis within Catholic tradition for saying that Jesus was separated from his Father in any literal sense when suffering on the Cross. This is a common theme in Protestant theology, but Catholic theology has been at pains to point out that Jesus continued to enjoy the beatific vision even during the Passion.
    I’d tread a little carefully in that area. There may be some Catholics (e.g., devotional writers) who use such language, but it has to be understood in an extremely nuanced sense to avoid falsifying the form of redemption Christ wrought and the delicate Christological balance the Church has recognized.

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