Gibson beliefs draw attention

Friday, March 05, 2004

BY RACHEL ZOLL
Of The Associated Press

They attend Mass in Latin, using a liturgy that Rome abolished 40 years ago. They abstain from meat on Fridays. Women cover their heads in church. For more than three decades, a small group of American Roman Catholics has been quietly worshipping in ways the Vatican told them to abandon.

Now their ultraconservative beliefs are under scrutiny as the man they count as their most famous adherent, actor-director Mel Gibson, has released his movie "The Passion of The Christ."

The movement, known as traditionalist Catholicism, grew from opposition to the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council, a series of meetings held from 1962 to 1965 that dramatically changed the church.

Traditionalists have been "bored to death by the bland liturgy, the watered-down doctrine, the compromised morals" of the church since the council, says Dr. David Drew, 53, a physician who helped to found a traditionalist congregation in York called Sts. Peter and Paul Roman Catholic Mission.

Traditionalists believe Catholicism is the only true path to salvation -- and that by adhering to church teaching as it was before the council they are the only true Catholics, according to William Dinges, an expert on traditionalists and a professor at Catholic University of America.

They are "the Roman Catholic analogue to Protestant fundamentalism," Dinges says.

The council altered Catholic practices and teachings in myriad ways to make it more relevant to the wider world. Mass is now celebrated in modern languages instead of Latin, and the altar is turned so the priest faces the people. The council decreed that Christians other than Catholics can be saved, and it renounced a notion that had fueled anti-Semitism for centuries: It declared that Jews are not collectively responsible for Christ's death.

Because some people say Gibson's film could stir anti-Semitism, the traditionalist attitude toward Jews is of particular interest now.

Only the most extreme traditionalist would disagree with the declaration against collective responsibility, Dinges says, but traditionalists don't like the church's more accommodating attitude in general toward non-Catholics since the '60s. In 2002, for example, a U.S. Catholic bishops' interfaith committee disavowed attempts to convert Jews to Christianity.

Drew, of West Manchester Twp., puts it this way: "I don't know any traditionalist Catholic who thinks a Jewish person they run into today is ... responsible for the death of Christ. But this isn't to pretend that there isn't a Catholic-Jewish problem.... Jews are wrong. They rejected Jesus Christ."

Drew says the mission has about 100 members, who travel from as far as Harrisburg, Gettysburg and northern Maryland. About 35 of them are children. Unlike most American Catholics, traditionalists honor the church teaching against artificial birth control, says Drew, who has eight children.

Drew says he has sought out Latin Masses for the past 30 years and had been attending one in Baltimore when the mission congregation began to meet in a hotel more than a year ago. Last month, it bought a church in York's historic district.

Seven priests who adhere to traditionalism take turns driving to the mission for Mass, Drew said. He said one of them, a former Jesuit who left the order because of his traditionalist beliefs, plans to move to York from Rhode Island.

Some Catholics who have no problem with the Second Vatican Council still like the Latin Mass, and the Harrisburg Diocese has long authorized one a month, at Trinity High School in Lower Allen Twp. But Drew says traditionalists want a parish life, with baptism, marriage and burial in the traditional rite, and that is not authorized.

Bishop Nicholas Dattilo has publicly rebuked the York congregation. Church bulletins in the diocese have recently carried his warnings that the mission is "not in any manner affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church."

Drew finds the diocese's reaction "plain silly." From his viewpoint, it's the mission that's maintaining 2,000 years of church tradition.

The traditionalist movement has generated many splinter groups, from moderates who maintain some contact with the Vatican to the more militant who reject outright the authority of the late Pope John XXIII -- who convened the council -- and every pope elected thereafter.

Another even more extreme faction believes the council was a conspiracy between Jews and Masons to destroy the church. Some go as far as considering all the popes elected since that meeting "precursors to the antichrist," according to Michael Cuneo, a Fordham University sociologist who wrote "The Smoke of Satan," a book on traditionalists.

Gibson has refused through the years to describe his exact religious affiliation and declined to do so again recently in an interview by e-mail with The Associated Press.

He has said previously that he attends Latin Mass and recently even built his own chapel near Malibu, Calif., so he could worship closer to home. However, it is not clear what traditionalist beliefs he follows.

There are no such ambiguities surrounding the affiliation of the actor's father, Hutton Gibson, who told The New York Times Magazine for an article last spring that the council was "a Masonic plot backed by the Jews." More recently, Hutton Gibson went on an explosive rant against Jews in a New York radio interview-- claiming they fabricated the Holocaust and are conspiring to take over the world.

"They're after one world religion and one world government ... That's why they've attacked the Catholic Church so strongly, to ultimately take control over it by their doctrine," Hutton Gibson, 85, said in an interview broadcast last month on WSNR-AM's "Speak Your Piece," a show syndicated by Talkline, the largest syndicator of Jewish programming.

Mel Gibson has refused to repudiate his father's comments, but he told ABC's Diane Sawyer in a PrimeTime interview last month the Holocaust was "an atrocity of monumental proportions."

It remains unclear what religious beliefs the father and son share.

Dinges has been tracking Gibson's comments and believes the actor is not allied with a specific branch of the movement. Traditionalists are so loosely organized that independent chapels are built around the country with no formal connection to one another.

"I suspect that's the nature of the operation there. He isn't affiliated with a society or any group like that, but he has someone willing to say Mass [in Latin] at the chapel," Dinges said.

The exact number of traditionalists in the United States is unknown. Some experts estimate about 50,000 Americans consider themselves part of the movement, compared with the 64 million U.S. Catholics within the official church.

Mark Alessio, a traditionalist writer who has defended Gibson's movie in the movement newspaper The Remnant, said he welcomes attention to traditionalism despite the controversy.

However, he has been disturbed by some of the discussion of their beliefs, which he said give the appearance that "traditionalists are focused on, 'We've got to blame the Jews.'"

"It's not to blame anyone but to ensure that the Catholic faith is put in its proper place," Alessio said. "If you start saying, 'We can't evangelize this group,' then you've pretty much got a limp Catholicism."

Staff writer Mary Warner contributed to this story.

Saints Peter and Paul RCM Home Page