The Law of Abstinence

The Fridays of Lent are days of abstinence in the Latin rite of the Catholic Church, and so every Lent gives rise to questions about what the law of abstinence involves. The Code of Canon Law establishes that "those who have completed their fourteenth year of age" (i.e., those who have passed their fourteenth birthday) are obliged to abstain (CIC 1251), but the Code does not give an explanation of abstinence itself. This explanation is found instead in a 1966 apostolic constitution from Paul VI called Paenitemini (in case you’re wondering, that’s pronounced PEN-ih-TEM-ih-nee in English). Here is an English translation of the relevant norm:

The law of abstinence forbids the use of meat, but not of eggs, the products of milk or condiments made of animal fat [III:1].

The trouble is that this explanation–at least in its English translation–is not as clear as one would like. It does not, for example, mention the exception of fish and other seafood from the law of abstinence, and this is universally acknowledged as an exception. The reason the exception is not mentioned is that it is implicit in the original Latin of the text, which reads:

Abstinentiae lex vetat carne vesei, non autem ovis, lacticiniis et quibuslibet condimentis etiam ex adipe animalium [III:1].

The word for "meat" in the original is carnis (here inflected in the ablative as carne), which does not correspond exactly in meaning to the English word "meat." In contemporary English, "meat" tends to mean the flesh of any animal, whether it is a mammal, a bird, a fish, or what have you. But as used here, carnis refers only to the flesh of mammals and birds. It does not include the flesh of fish (or, for that matter, of reptiles, amphibians, or insects).

Another possible exception to the rule may be found by comparing the norm in Paenitemini to the original regulation in the 1917 Code of Canon Law, which held:

The law of abstinence prohibits meat and soups made from meat but not of eggs, milks, and also whatever condiments are derived from animal fat [CIC(1917) 1250].

Since the 1917 law included an exclusion of soups using meat but the 1966 norm does not, in the common opinion of canonists today appears to be that soups using meat no longer violate the law of abstinence. (A few Lents ago, I did an extensive check on this.) Notice that the rest of the sequence (meat, eggs, milk products, condiments) is entirely undisturbed, suggesting that soup was intentionally dropped.

Personally, I’m intrigued by the fact that amphibian flesh is not excluded. If I knew where to get frogs legs here in Southern California, I’d go out and order them. I haven’t had frogs legs since I was a boy, when I’d go frog gigging in the piney woods of East Texas with the menfolk of my family on warm summer nights.

"It Is As It Was"–Was It?

There are still questions circulating about what, if anything, the Pope said after viewing  The Passion of the Christ. Here’s my take on what happened. First, the established facts:

  • Last December Peggy Noonan and Rod Dreher both reported that the Pope had privately viewed a screener copy of the movie and afterwards said "It is as it was," which would appear to be a remark indicating that the pope was very moved by the film, and that he approved of it.
  • Shortly thereafter, papal spokesman Joachim Navarro-Valls and others began denying that the pope had said this. One claimed even claimed that the pope does not make comments on art.
  • But as Peggy Noonan revealed, before she originally published her story she had gotten e-mail from Navarro-Valls confirming the quote. Rod Dreher also had confirming e-mail from Navarro-Valls.
  • After a further inquiry from Dreher, Navarro-Valls stated "Regarding your request on the email text attributed to me I can categorically deny its authenticity," which would appear to mean that it was a fake.

What is one to make of all this? Both Dreher and Noonan had e-mail coming from Navarro-Valls’ usual account, so either someone was using his account without his knowledge or some kind of deliberate misdirection was involved. My guess is this: The pope really did make the comment (and he certain does comment on art–frequently in fact) but then Vatican officials got uncomfortable with it and started issuing denial stories using mental reservations.

A mental reservation is a fact or qualification that a person "reserves" (doesn’t state). For example, if a child is accused of eating a cookie before dinner last night he might say "No I didn’t" and reserve the fact that he did eat one immediately after school but not "(just) before dinner." Mental reservations can be morally licit in certain circumstances, but not in all. In some circumstances they amount to lying.

In this case, my guess is that the basic denial that the Holy Father said "It is as it was" is a mental reservation, to be construed along the lines of "He didn’t say it (as a public comment)." Though I hate to accuse Navarro-Valls of using a mental reservation, his statement is also susceptible of one. He may mean "authenticity" in the technical sense of "authoritativeness" rather than the colloquial sense of "genuineness." If that reservation is in play then Navarro-Valls would be saying that the e-mail that came from his account is not authoritative, not that it is a fake.

Now that the film is out, perhaps the Holy Father will choose to publicly clarify his thoughts on the film. Whatever the case may be, there is some kind of skullduggery going on. Either,

  1. Noonan and Dreher are forging e-mail in Navarro-Valls’ name (which I don’t believe for a minute), or
  2. Someone at the Vatican is forging e-mails from the papal spokesman (in which case the person needs to be identified, disciplined, and possibly prosecuted–and the public needs to be informed of the fact that the Vatican has taken corrective measures to prevent this from happening so that reporters can have confidence that they really are receiving e-mail from Navarro-Valls), or
  3. Navarro-Valls and others are unjustly using mental reservations and hanging commentators like Noonan and Dreher out to dry (in which case the truth needs to be stated frankly and without reservation, for the commentators repeated what they said in good faith, and they have a right to enjoy their good names).

If either of the latter two are the case then the credibility of the Vatican press office is diminished.

Criticisms of The Passion

Thus far I haven’t commented much in public on the controversy around The Passion. Having finally seen it, though, I’m now in a position to address some of the criticisms that have been made of the film:

1) Brutality. Many parts of the film are brutal. Some in the audience will have a hard time enduring some of these (particularly the second phase of the scourging of Jesus and the Crucifixion). That being said, the film is not an exercise in sadism. The focus is not on the violence for its own sake but on what Jesus as a Person is undergoing.

2) "Ad Gibson" attacks. After seeing the film, I have no patience for people who have tried to psychoanalyze Mel Gibson and interpret the film as a manifestation of a brutality fetish on his part. I can’t know what happens in another man’s heart, but if Gibson had wanted the film to simply roll around in gore, it would have been much more brutal than it was (the movie is certainly not the bloodiest or most sadistic that Hollywood has produced). From what this film brings to the screen, it appears to be simply what it is: An attempt to be realistic about what happened during the Passion. That attempt requires us to look at things that are brutal.

The charge that the movie reflects sadism on Gibson’s part is simply an ad hominem–an attack directed “to the man,” and it tells us more about the person making it (i.e., that he wants to attack Gibson) than it tells us about the movie. Even more despicable are attempts to attack Gibson based on his father (who is a kook). To attack a man based on his relations is unseemly in the extreme and deserves to be dismissed out of hand. I have no patience for individuals who are vile enough to try to ad hominem a man based on his parentage.

Neither, for purposes of evaluating the movie, am I concerned about charges that Gibson himself may be a radical traditionalist. Lots of Hollywood actors and directors have all kinds of views that I don’t agree with or approve of, but as long as they don’t intrude these views into their films, they are not relevant to film criticism.

3) Anti-Semitism. I also have no patience for those who want to level charges of anti-Semitism at the movie. There is simply no basis for that. There are both good and bad Jews and good and bad Romans in the movie (including Jews and Romans who are not identified as Christians). Neither Jew nor Gentile is portrayed as worse than the other. In fact, by far the most brutal characters in the film are certain Roman soldiers, not the Jewish leaders.

What the movie does portray—and it is explicit about this—is that God loves man, that he is willing to extreme lengths forgive him, that Jesus loves and prays for his persecutors, that they did not take his life from him, and that they did not understand what they were doing. In fact, the moments when Jesus explains that his persecutors do not know what they are doing are among the most moving in the film.

I will concede that Gibson missed an opportunity in how the film deals with the conflict between Jews and Romans. In one scene the Roman governor Pontius Pilate tells his wife that he feels trapped. He has spent eleven years putting down rebellions while having the rotten station assignment of Judea, and now he fears a new rebellion will break out over Jesus: Either the high priest Caiaphas will start an uprising if Jesus is freed or Jesus’ followers will start an uprising if he is not. This paints Pilate as a complex and torn character, which is what the Gospels depict him to be.

Caiaphas himself is not torn in this movie. He simply wants Jesus dead. Why? Because he perceives Jesus as a blasphemer (which is what he would be if he weren’t in actuality the Son of God). Some will not like this, thinking that the film’s Caiaphas is some kind of bloodthirsty zealot. I think, however, that people who take offense at the high priest’s determination to see Jesus dead do not really understand just what blasphemy is or how grave an offense against God it is. Having forgotten the gravity of this sin (or even that it is a sin), they are incapable of understanding why the high priest would act as he does. This says more about them than it does about the film’s portrayal of Caiaphas.

Yet Caiaphas is not as single minded in the Gospels as he is in the movie, and here is where Gibson missed an opportunity. In John 11:45-53, Caiaphas reveals that one of his main motives in wanting Jesus dead is the fact that he fears that Jesus will start a revolt which will cause the Romans to invade and wipe out the Jewish nation. If Gibson had brought that fact into the film it would have made Caiaphas more two-dimensional and have created a sublime parallel to Pilate’s fears: Both men are afraid of a disastrous revolt, and their mutual fear and misunderstanding creates the perfect storm around Jesus that sends him to the Cross.

If Gibson had done this it would have further deflected charges of anti-Semitism and created a moment of great art, but the film is already great art and already goes out of its way to avoid even the appearance of anti-Semitism (for example, the final cut of the film omits the line from Matthew 27:25, “His blood be on us and on our children”).

For a year the Jewish Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has been attacking this film baselessly, arguing that it could inflame anti-Semitism and drive a wedge between Jews and Christians. For some time I have felt that it was the ADL itself that was driving a wedge between Jews and Christians, and seeing the final film only confirmed this. Forgive me if I am blunt about this, but the activists who have been charging the film with anti-Semitism without even seeing it are hypocrites, pure and simple. They are knee-jerk reactionaries seeking to exploit the situation for their own ends.

What are those ends? For some it may be as simple as trying to make a living. They are activists, and activists need something to oppose. Since accusing others of anti-Semitism has worked for them in the past, they may have seen this film as another likely target with which to energize their supporters and make hay.

I can’t help wondering, though, if there isn’t something else in their motives: The Jewish people have a long history of suffering at the hands of anti-Semites, and Christian anti-Semites (who are far from the only kind; Muslim anti-Semites being another obvious type) often have initiated pogroms and other persecutions after being whipped up about their faith. It is natural, therefore, for non-Christian Jews to start worrying if they see Christians getting too excited about their faith, and the most realistic portrayal of the central events of the gospel ever filmed could certainly get Christians excited about their faith.

I therefore suspect that some have been opposed to the film because they don’t want Christians to be too excited about their faith. In other words: If there are to be Christians then these individuals want them to be lackadaisical, anemic, “ecumenical” Christians, the kind who never under any circumstances criticize things in Judaism, who never persecute Jews, and who certainly never evangelize them. No, the kinds of Christians who are wanted are those who buy into higher critical reinterpretations of the Gospels, who don’t get excited about their faith, and who—above all—leave Jews alone.

I personally have great respect and admiration for Judaism and for individual Jews. That is one reason why I am a student of Hebrew. Yet I also acknowledge that there is room for criticism in every community, the Jewish one included. Here is one criticism: It is unacceptably cynical and manipulative to falsely accuse a work of Christian art of anti-Semitism for the motive of keeping Christians from getting excited about their faith. Christians should be allowed to celebrate their faith without disingenuous manipulation attempts from others.

Of course, not all critics of the film in the Jewish community have this as a motive. Some have simply been scared by the activists in their community into thinking that the film may be anti-Semitic. But my knowledge of human nature and of the relevant history leads me to think that some of the critics are trying to manipulate public opinion regarding the movie for ulterior motives.

The danger, of course, is that once the film comes out (as it now has)–and people actually see it and realize that it is simply a telling of the gospel story and not a piece of Nazi propaganda–that the situation will boomerang on the ADL. People will realize that it was crying wolf and that it had ulterior motives in attacking the film. Some may even connect the dots enough to realize that one of those motives as keeping the goyim from getting worked up about their religion. If so, or even if Christians simply get tired of having a film version of the gospel story cynically smeared in print, this would drive the very wedge between Jews and Christians that the activists professed they were trying to avoid.

As the release date of the film approached, awareness of this reality seemed to sink in on the folks over at the ADL, and a lot of backpedaling started. Abe Foxman, the executive director of the ADL and the lead critic of the film, acknowledged that he didn’t believe that the film itself was anti-Semitic and that Mel Gibson himself is not an anti-Semite, but that he feared that the film would inspire and inflame anti-Semitism in others, particularly in countries less enlightened than America.

This is the language of backpedaling, of admitting that you got too hysterical about something and are now trying to ameliorate the situation. It’s also one reason that I regard Mr. Foxman and his associates, to be blunt, as shortsighted hypocrites who stand to do more damage to Christian-Jewish relations by their actions than would have occurred had they simply let Christians celebrate their faith without trying to rain on their parade.

Criticisms of The Passion

Thus far I haven’t commented much in public on the controversy around The Passion. Having finally seen it, though, I’m now in a position to address some of the criticisms that have been made of the film:

1) Brutality. Many parts of the film are brutal. Some in the audience will have a hard time enduring some of these (particularly the second phase of the scourging of Jesus and the Crucifixion). That being said, the film is not an exercise in sadism. The focus is not on the violence for its own sake but on what Jesus as a Person is undergoing.

2) "Ad Gibson" attacks. After seeing the film, I have no patience for people who have tried to psychoanalyze Mel Gibson and interpret the film as a manifestation of a brutality fetish on his part. I can’t know what happens in another man’s heart, but if Gibson had wanted the film to simply roll around in gore, it would have been much more brutal than it was (the movie is certainly not the bloodiest or most sadistic that Hollywood has produced). From what this film brings to the screen, it appears to be simply what it is: An attempt to be realistic about what happened during the Passion. That attempt requires us to look at things that are brutal.

The charge that the movie reflects sadism on Gibson’s part is simply an ad hominem–an attack directed “to the man,” and it tells us more about the person making it (i.e., that he wants to attack Gibson) than it tells us about the movie. Even more despicable are attempts to attack Gibson based on his father (who is a kook). To attack a man based on his relations is unseemly in the extreme and deserves to be dismissed out of hand. I have no patience for individuals who are vile enough to try to ad hominem a man based on his parentage.

Neither, for purposes of evaluating the movie, am I concerned about charges that Gibson himself may be a radical traditionalist. Lots of Hollywood actors and directors have all kinds of views that I don’t agree with or approve of, but as long as they don’t intrude these views into their films, they are not relevant to film criticism.

3) Anti-Semitism. I also have no patience for those who want to level charges of anti-Semitism at the movie. There is simply no basis for that. There are both good and bad Jews and good and bad Romans in the movie (including Jews and Romans who are not identified as Christians). Neither Jew nor Gentile is portrayed as worse than the other. In fact, by far the most brutal characters in the film are certain Roman soldiers, not the Jewish leaders.

What the movie does portray—and it is explicit about this—is that God loves man, that he is willing to extreme lengths forgive him, that Jesus loves and prays for his persecutors, that they did not take his life from him, and that they did not understand what they were doing. In fact, the moments when Jesus explains that his persecutors do not know what they are doing are among the most moving in the film.

I will concede that Gibson missed an opportunity in how the film deals with the conflict between Jews and Romans. In one scene the Roman governor Pontius Pilate tells his wife that he feels trapped. He has spent eleven years putting down rebellions while having the rotten station assignment of Judea, and now he fears a new rebellion will break out over Jesus: Either the high priest Caiaphas will start an uprising if Jesus is freed or Jesus’ followers will start an uprising if he is not. This paints Pilate as a complex and torn character, which is what the Gospels depict him to be.

Caiaphas himself is not torn in this movie. He simply wants Jesus dead. Why? Because he perceives Jesus as a blasphemer (which is what he would be if he weren’t in actuality the Son of God). Some will not like this, thinking that the film’s Caiaphas is some kind of bloodthirsty zealot. I think, however, that people who take offense at the high priest’s determination to see Jesus dead do not really understand just what blasphemy is or how grave an offense against God it is. Having forgotten the gravity of this sin (or even that it is a sin), they are incapable of understanding why the high priest would act as he does. This says more about them than it does about the film’s portrayal of Caiaphas.

Yet Caiaphas is not as single minded in the Gospels as he is in the movie, and here is where Gibson missed an opportunity. In John 11:45-53, Caiaphas reveals that one of his main motives in wanting Jesus dead is the fact that he fears that Jesus will start a revolt which will cause the Romans to invade and wipe out the Jewish nation. If Gibson had brought that fact into the film it would have made Caiaphas more two-dimensional and have created a sublime parallel to Pilate’s fears: Both men are afraid of a disastrous revolt, and their mutual fear and misunderstanding creates the perfect storm around Jesus that sends him to the Cross.

If Gibson had done this it would have further deflected charges of anti-Semitism and created a moment of great art, but the film is already great art and already goes out of its way to avoid even the appearance of anti-Semitism (for example, the final cut of the film omits the line from Matthew 27:25, “His blood be on us and on our children”).

For a year the Jewish Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has been attacking this film baselessly, arguing that it could inflame anti-Semitism and drive a wedge between Jews and Christians. For some time I have felt that it was the ADL itself that was driving a wedge between Jews and Christians, and seeing the final film only confirmed this. Forgive me if I am blunt about this, but the activists who have been charging the film with anti-Semitism without even seeing it are hypocrites, pure and simple. They are knee-jerk reactionaries seeking to exploit the situation for their own ends.

What are those ends? For some it may be as simple as trying to make a living. They are activists, and activists need something to oppose. Since accusing others of anti-Semitism has worked for them in the past, they may have seen this film as another likely target with which to energize their supporters and make hay.

I can’t help wondering, though, if there isn’t something else in their motives: The Jewish people have a long history of suffering at the hands of anti-Semites, and Christian anti-Semites (who are far from the only kind; Muslim anti-Semites being another obvious type) often have initiated pogroms and other persecutions after being whipped up about their faith. It is natural, therefore, for non-Christian Jews to start worrying if they see Christians getting too excited about their faith, and the most realistic portrayal of the central events of the gospel ever filmed could certainly get Christians excited about their faith.

I therefore suspect that some have been opposed to the film because they don’t want Christians to be too excited about their faith. In other words: If there are to be Christians then these individuals want them to be lackadaisical, anemic, “ecumenical” Christians, the kind who never under any circumstances criticize things in Judaism, who never persecute Jews, and who certainly never evangelize them. No, the kinds of Christians who are wanted are those who buy into higher critical reinterpretations of the Gospels, who don’t get excited about their faith, and who—above all—leave Jews alone.

I personally have great respect and admiration for Judaism and for individual Jews. That is one reason why I am a student of Hebrew. Yet I also acknowledge that there is room for criticism in every community, the Jewish one included. Here is one criticism: It is unacceptably cynical and manipulative to falsely accuse a work of Christian art of anti-Semitism for the motive of keeping Christians from getting excited about their faith. Christians should be allowed to celebrate their faith without disingenuous manipulation attempts from others.

Of course, not all critics of the film in the Jewish community have this as a motive. Some have simply been scared by the activists in their community into thinking that the film may be anti-Semitic. But my knowledge of human nature and of the relevant history leads me to think that some of the critics are trying to manipulate public opinion regarding the movie for ulterior motives.

The danger, of course, is that once the film comes out (as it now has)–and people actually see it and realize that it is simply a telling of the gospel story and not a piece of Nazi propaganda–that the situation will boomerang on the ADL. People will realize that it was crying wolf and that it had ulterior motives in attacking the film. Some may even connect the dots enough to realize that one of those motives as keeping the goyim from getting worked up about their religion. If so, or even if Christians simply get tired of having a film version of the gospel story cynically smeared in print, this would drive the very wedge between Jews and Christians that the activists professed they were trying to avoid.

As the release date of the film approached, awareness of this reality seemed to sink in on the folks over at the ADL, and a lot of backpedaling started. Abe Foxman, the executive director of the ADL and the lead critic of the film, acknowledged that he didn’t believe that the film itself was anti-Semitic and that Mel Gibson himself is not an anti-Semite, but that he feared that the film would inspire and inflame anti-Semitism in others, particularly in countries less enlightened than America.

This is the language of backpedaling, of admitting that you got too hysterical about something and are now trying to ameliorate the situation. It’s also one reason that I regard Mr. Foxman and his associates, to be blunt, as shortsighted hypocrites who stand to do more damage to Christian-Jewish relations by their actions than would have occurred had they simply let Christians celebrate their faith without trying to rain on their parade.

The Passion of the Christ

I have just returned from seeing Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. As I expected, it was an extremely moving film that deserves the support of the Christian community. I did not expect the fact that it would be the best film about Jesus ever made, but that is what it is. By focusing on the final few hours of his life instead of trying to tell the story of his whole ministry and by having an unparalleled commitment to realism, the movie achieves a level of effectiveness and genuine affect that is not found in any other film about Christ.

There are things in the film that one can quibble with. I wouldn’t have made all the dramatic choices that Gibson did, but the ones he made were in the main creative, interesting, and illuminative of the gospel story. The realism of the film also is greater than in any prior film about Jesus. True, the city in the background during the Crucifixion doesn’t look quite like first century Jerusalem, but it’s a good facsimile, and this film more than any other gives you a sense of what it would have been like to actually witness the Passion firsthand.

See it.

I personally can’t wait to get a copy on DVD. I just hope that the DVD has a feature that will let me turn off the subtitles so that I can focus on the languages the film uses (Latin and Aramaic) without the distraction (and help) of subtitles. People may know that I am a student of these two languages, and soon after the film was announced I started getting questions about what it would be like for me to watch the film and understand what was being said. I always told people that I doubted I could follow along in these languages at conversational speed (especially the speed of anxious, fearful people watching the last hours of their Savior’s life).

When I finally saw the film, I found that I could follow more than I expected. Aramaic is the dominant language in the film, but it is a different dialect than I’m used to. That wasn’t too much of a problem, though, as the differences often had to do with pronunciation (in other words, the actors are portraying a different Aramaic accent than I’m used to), but the grammar was what I expected, many words were familiar, and it often only took me a few extra moments to decode what had just been said. I was pleased with how much I could follow, but want the chance to go over the movie several times on DVD as a study aid.

I found the interplay between Latin and Aramaic interesting. You may not notice some of the subtleties that are involved unless you are familiar with one of the languages, but if you are then it becomes clear that real thought was put into which language should be used at any given moment. As you would expect, the Romans speak Latin among themselves but try to speak Aramaic when they are talking to their Jewish subjects. The Jewish leaders try to speak Latin when addressing Pontius Pilate but then quickly and understandably lapse back into Aramaic when they need to say something complicated. This sets us up for a scene in which Pilate begins to address Jesus in Aramaic and then Jesus replies in sustained Latin (at which point a surprised Pilate switches to fulltime Latin, too).

Ferro Lad: The Encyclical

So, the other day I was pondering one of the enduring questions, which as been discussed by many eminent Catholic theologians: If Ferro Lad of the Legion of Super Heroes was a papal encyclical, which one would he be?

I think the answer is clear: Ferro Lad would be Mit Brennender Sorge.

Mit Brennender Sorge was a 1937 encyclical issued by Pope Pius XI as an attack on Naziism.

It was surreptitiously brought into powerful, seemingly-unstoppable Nazi Germany and then unexpectedly read from the pulpits of every Catholic Church, where it would be most effective, and bearing the date of Passion Sunday.

It condemned the inhumanity of the Nazis, including their racism, which eventually led to mass genocide.

The name “Mit Brennender Sorge” means “with burning anxiety,” which expresses the concern that the Holy See felt about the actions of the Nazis.

You can see how this all parallels Fero Lad’s situation.

He had to slug Superboy so that he could save Superboy and everyone else by surreptitiously entering the powerful, seemingly-unstoppable Sun Eater and then unexpectedly detonate the payload he was carrying where it would be most effective, on the date of Ferro Lad’s own death (passion).

Like Mit Brennender Sorge, Ferro Lad stood against the inhumanity of the Sun Eater, including the mass genocide that its continued advance would have led to when it ate Earth’s sun.

Finally, Ferro Lad undertook his actions with burning anxiety for all the people of Earth, who were so threatened by the inhumanity of the Sun Eater.

And fortunately, he succeeded, though at a terrible price.

Here are a few panels from Ferro Lad’s heroic last moments of life . . .