User:Roseannesullivan/sandbox

Controversy
On February 19, 2004, Bishop McGrath published an opinion piece in the San Jose Mercury News prior to the opening of producer and director Mel Gibson's movie The Passion of the Christ. The article was titled, "It's a Movie, not History," with a subtitle that read, "Whatever the 'Passion Message,' the Church Renounces Anti-Semitism." Bishop McGrath may have been reacting to the fact that Jewish groups and others objected to the movie because it portrayed the Jewish leaders as arranging to have Jesus killed, and some feared that the portrayal would lead to increased anti-Jewish sentiments. The response of those responsible for the movie to the general outcry was that the movie was simply based on the Gospel accounts of the events leading up to Christ's death.

Bishop McGrath received a great deal of criticism for this paragraph in the Mercury News opinion piece:


 * While the primary source material of the film is attributed to the four Gospels, these sacred books are not historical accounts of the historical events that they narrate. They are theological reflections upon the events that form the core of Christian faith and belief.

A previous edit of this page claimed that what Bishop McGrath wrote is "fully in union with the Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church as evidenced by Dei Verbum,"--which is the "Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation" that was promulgated by Pope Paul VI during the next to the last session of the Second Vatican Council. This assertion was not backed up by any quotations. What Bishop McGrath wrote does in fact contradict several definitive statements about the historical character of the gospels that are found both in Dei Verbum, and in the Catechism of the Catholic Church(CCC). Nowhere in either of these documents is it written that the Gospels are theological reflections and that they are not historical.

Dei Verbum states the following .....


 * 19. Holy Mother Church has firmly and with absolute constancy held, and continues to hold, that the four Gospels just named, whose historical character the Church unhesitatingly asserts, faithfully hand on what Jesus Christ, while living among men, really did and taught for their eternal salvation until the day He was taken up into heaven (see Acts 1:1).

The bishop's statement would appear to also be contradicting the teachings of the Catholic Church also as expressed in the CCC. From the Catechism of the Catholic Church (Section 126):


 * "The Church holds firmly that the four Gospels, whose historicity she unhesitatingly affirms, faithfully hand on what Jesus, the Son of God, while he lived among men, really did and taught for their eternal salvation, until the day when he was taken up."


 * "For, after the ascension of the Lord, the apostles handed on to their hearers what he had said and done, but with that fuller understanding which they, instructed by the glorious events of Christ and enlightened by the Spirit of truth, now enjoyed."


 * "The sacred authors, in writing the four Gospels, selected certain of the many elements which had been handed on, either orally or already in written form; others they synthesized or explained with an eye to the situation of the churches, while sustaining the form of preaching, but always in such a fashion that they have told us the honest truth about Jesus."

As described in the article "A Very Busy Bishop! Abortion Laws “Protect” Bishop from Rosary Praying Catholics\ the President of the St. Joseph's Men Society, Anthony Gonzales, made several phone calls and wrote letters attempting to make an appointment with the Bishop to discuss this and other issues, with no response from the bishop. For two years after the article was published, the St. Joseph Men's Society and other Catholics staged monthly protests outside the bishop's residence, asking him to retract his comments, also with no reply from the bishop.