Buckley on The Passion
Posted by Peter W. Schramm
William F. Buckley takes exception to those who simply praise Gibson’sThe Passion. Although he admits it shakes and moves the viewer, he thinks it is much too bloody, and unnecessarily so.
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Buckley is wrong. When you see the photographs of the Shroud of Turin, which has been proven conclusively to be genuine, it is clear that Jesus’s beatings, nailings and piercings were extraordinarily brutal. All that cruelty shows the brutality characteristic of imperial regimes and theocracies, not to mention the enormity of the burden which Jesus took on. The violence is not gratuitous, and besides it is interspersed with flasbacks that show Jesus exemplifying and teaching the love and forgiveness He asked for his tormentors when he hung on the cross.