On January 9th, actor, director, and so-called traditionalist, Mel Gibson, appeared on the Joe Rogan podcast. Since the program’s airing (with over 9 million views on YouTube alone), numerous Catholic commentators have shared their opinion about its contents. Surely, I haven’t read all of them, but in this post we will consider points that seem to have gone without mention elsewhere.
Like all of Rogan’s podcasts, this one is long, two-hours and twenty minutes to be precise.
Even though I’m not a fan of cinema, I watched it mainly to find out how much of Rogan’s conversation with Gibson – who, as most readers know, is a sedevacantist – might be dedicated to the present state of the Church.
On this point, let me just say that I expected Gibson to offer a more compelling testimony about, not just the current state of affairs in Rome, but even more importantly, the objective truth and necessity of the Catholic faith.
Rogan, whose audience is huge, strikes me as a genuinely curious guy who asks a lot of challenging questions. I think Gibson let a good opportunity pass, especially given the fact that the two men are on very friendly terms, i.e., there was nothing adversarial about the conversation.
I also hoped to find out more about the sequel to The Passion of the Christ, how Gibson plans to approach the project, and when the film is going to be released. I’ll come back to this topic later.
About 15 minutes into the podcast, the conversation turned to Gibson’s film, Apocalypto, which, evidently, is about some ancient South American culture that ultimately collapsed.
The transcript at this point reads as follows.
Gibson: Basically, I was trying to talk about our time now and the civilization that we live in, and how close are we to collapse, and what are the things that lead to collapse. You know, it’s environmental stuff. It’s, um, human sacrifice.
Rogan: Yeah.
Gibson: I mean we do that.
Rogan: Kind of.
Gibson: We do.
Rogan: Yeah.
Gibson: Uh huh, yeah, we do.
Rogan: We just dress it up.
Gibson: Yup.
Rogan: When you find out medications are killing people, and they keep prescribing them, and they do it for money. That’s kind of sacrifice. When you find out that wars are irresponsible…
Now, if you didn’t watch the interview and are following along in the conversation for the very first time, my guess is that you (like me when I first listened in) are just waiting for Gibson to say something like:
Uh, no kinda about it, Joe. We sacrifice upwards of a million human beings every year via abortion, and that’s in the United States alone. Don’t even get me started on contraception!
Oddly enough, however, Gibson never mentions abortion much less contraception. Not once. Rather, he put a bow on this part of the conversation by saying:
Anyway, it’s, uh yeah, it’s a mess, but the human sacrifice aspect is alive and well in our society. I think it really is it’s just dressed up in a different way, rhetoric around it, but they’ve always been able to justify it.
Who exactly is the “they” to whom Gibson refers?
Well, in the case of abortion, I suppose it could be just about anyone who has procured, assisted in, or facilitated one. Then there are those who actively support a so-called “right to choose” (aka murder) whether they’ve participated in one or not.
He might also have had in mind persons who publicly insist that limiting access to abortion is a violation of their religious liberty, and what’s more, that lawful access to an abortion mill where human beings are daily slaughtered less humanely than common livestock is a “value” of their religion.
It wasn’t that long ago when the leaders of the pro-abortion movement claimed that no one on their side was actually in favor of the practice, rather, all concerned, they said, recognized it as an unfortunate necessity. How far we have fallen since then!
So, who in God’s name would ever publicly admit that such a diabolical practice as abortion is an integral part of their religion?
Answer: Jews, who just so happen to be, and have always been, at the very forefront of the movement to legalize abortion (as well as homosexual “marriage,” transgender mutilation, and a whole host of other evils).
To anyone who has been paying attention, this isn’t exactly news.
For those who desire empirical data, Pew Research found that 83% of self-identified Jews believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. To be fair, it’s not clear what percentage of these persons would identify child sacrifice as a religious value, especially in light of the fact that religion itself isn’t exactly a Jewish value. (Pew also found that only 26% of self-identified Jews in the U.S. claim to “believe in God as described in the Bible,” and a solid majority consider religion “Not too/Not at all important.”)
In any case, among those who proudly assert that “abortion justice is a Jewish value” (i.e., a plain admission that child sacrifice is a Jewish sacrament) are Congressional Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Doug Emoff (Kamala’s wife), and their friends at the National Council of Jewish Women.
Of course, only Gibson can say exactly whose feathers he was afraid of ruffling had he mentioned abortion during a conversation about contemporary human sacrifice, but it’s at least quite possible that he may have bitten his tongue for fear of the Jews.
Underscoring that possibility is what took place roughly ten minutes or so after his abortion swing-and-a-miss as the conversation turned to The Passion of the Christ. We’ll pick up with the transcript there.
Rogan: That was a crazy movie because, uh, it was a great movie, but it seemed like there was resistance to that movie.
Gibson: Oh, yeah, no, there was uh…
Rogan: Which I thought was very strange. There was like Hollywood resistance to that movie. Like, people didn’t like that you were making it, it seemed like.
Get that? People didn’t like it…
At this, Gibson launched into a lengthy, meandering, tap dance routine as if tiptoeing through a minefield.
Gibson: Yeah, there’s a lot of, there was a lot of opposition to it. And, uh, I don’t know it’s, uhhh, I think if you ever hit on that subject matter, you’re going to get people going because, of course, it’s big subject matter, and it’s like, uh, you know. And my contention is, you know, when I was making it, it was like you’re making this film and the idea was that we’re all responsible for this, that His sacrifice was for all mankind and that for all, all our ills, and all, all the things in our fallen nature. It was a Redemption, so you know, and I believe that, you know. I actually am, you know, I was born into a Catholic family. I’m very Christian in my beliefs, you know. So, I do actually believe this stuff to the full, so depicting that was an honor. But it was also, yeah, you got the, you got the daylights beat out of you for it.
Again with the people… The conversation continues:
Rogan: Yeah, because there’s resistance, first of all, from secular Hollywood where, for whatever reason, Christianity is the one religion that you’re allowed to disparage. Christianity is the one religion where people, all these progressive, open-minded leftist people, they’ll embrace all these different religions until it comes to Christianity. And for whatever reason, that represents like white male, you know, whatever it represents, colonialism, you know, whatever. It, you know, whatever it represents, it’s negative.
Gibson: Yeah, sure, it’s gotten a bad rap and they, people, do feel free to beat up on it.
People, people, people…
If it’s not already obvious, the landmine through which both Rogan and Gibson are dancing is littered with people just waiting to pounce, people who openly disparage Christianity – not for just “whatever reason” but because they hate Jesus Christ – and these people have a name.
Shhhh… now keep this on the down low… it’s the Jews.
No, The Passion of the Christ did not get some generic group of “people” going, as Gibson repeatedly claims. Likewise, there was no unidentified bunch of hyper-offended critics who “beat the daylights” out of him for making the film.
As everyone who was alive and over the age of reason when the film was released in 2004 recalls very well, it was Jewish media personalities, rabbis, their friends and others, like Abraham Foxman of the ADL, who cried ANTISEMITISM! at the tops of their lungs at the mere thought that Our Lord’s passion and death might be portrayed in a manner consistent with the Gospels.
If not for knowing better, listening to the professional perpetual victims wail in protest one would have thought that the entire Jewish population of Jerusalem was on holiday in Boca when Jesus was put to death.
Sure, Jews are not the only people who hate Christ. Even so, the one thing that every Jew has in common – perhaps the only thing – is that they reject Jesus Christ and have, therefore, (if Our Lord’s words are to be taken seriously) rejected the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the process. (cf Luke 10:16)
What’s more, by failing to be with Christ, their posture is not merely neutral – no matter how disinterested in religion they may be – rather, they occupy a position against Him and against His Church. (cf Luke 11:23)
Does this mean that every individual Jew is on a personal mission to destroy Christian culture? Of course not, no more than the Apostles were hiding for fear of every individual Jew prior to Pentecost. (John 20:19)
What it does mean is that, according to Sacred Scripture itself, the rejection of God and opposition to Jesus Christ and His Church are actual Jewish values. And just as at the time of Our Lord’s passion, the most powerful and vocal of today’s Jewish leaders make no bones about it. Step on their toes simply by speaking the truth and look out!
Evidently, Gibson, thanks to his experience with The Passion, is snake bit, and with plans for a sequel based on Our Lord’s resurrection, it seems that he is being extra careful not to poke the Hebrew hornet’s nest.
But what about Joe Rogan? Why did he feel compelled to pin all of the outrage over The Passion on “secular Hollywood,” even going so far as to theorize that it’s because Christianity is perceived as representing white guys?
Surely, he knows better. So, what gives?
Roughly a year ago, Rogan himself was accused of being an antisemite for saying, “The idea that Jewish people are not into money is ridiculous. That’s like saying Italians aren’t into pizza.”
For the record, I could easily, and happily, live the rest of my life on pizza alone (wood fired in a Neapolitan oven) and I am not offended in the least.
Also for the record, even Jewish publications plainly acknowledge (brag, even) that Jews are disproportionately affluent with “a quarter of American Jews reporting family incomes over $200,000, a level that just 4% of Americans overall reach.”
Do we really need an exhaustive study to confirm that Jews (only 2.4% of the U.S. population) are over-represented in key financial positions (as well as government, academia, industry, media, etc.)? No, of course not, and recognizing as much isn’t a racial or ethnic slur, no more than it is to acknowledge that black athletes dominate the NBA and white guys overwhelmingly fill the rosters of teams in the NHL.
In any event, it seems pretty obvious that Rogan is keen to avoid a repeat of the firestorm he created last year by daring to state the obvious. For him, all indications are that it’s a business decision.
Gibson’s case, however, is not so simple.
One may have noticed that even now, more than two decades after The Passion of the Christ was released, Gibson feels the need to grovel before his Jewish critics.
Even without naming them, it is clear that his comments were aimed at soothing the Jews when he said, “the idea [behind The Passion] was that we’re all responsible for this, that His Sacrifice was for all mankind…”
Yes, the Sacrifice of the Cross was offered to God the Father as reparation for the sins of the world, and yet Sacred Scripture does not mince words about who killed the Lord Jesus, and the prophets, and have persecuted us, and please not God, and are adversaries to all men, prohibiting the Church from carrying out her mission. (cf 1 Thes 2:14-16)
This being so, I found it odd (and disappointing) that the allegedly traditionalist sedevacantist Gibson was not only afraid to utter the name of our adversaries, but was also moved to cater to their sensitivities.
On a purely practical level, Gibson acknowledged that The Passion of the Christ was wildly successful despite all of the pushback. In other words, he ought to know as well as anyone that his professional success moving forward isn’t contingent upon winning over the Jews. And yet he seems to be striving to do just that.
This brings us to the sequel to The Passion, which was addressed toward the end of the podcast.
Among the things that Gibson revealed is that he intends to begin the film, which will be titled The Resurrection of the Christ, with a depiction of the fall of the angels and it will end with the death of the last Apostle, St. John. It appears that the project is still a long way off as pre-production hasn’t even begun.
Gibson also confirmed, as expected, that he will be relying heavily upon biblical experts (presumably of a traditional bent) in the making of the film. Based upon his avoidance of the Jewish elephant in the room during his sit down with Rogan, however, one wonders if he’s up to the task.
I mean, how exactly is he going to portray Pentecost? Will he feel the need to tap dance around St. Peter’s declaration that “God hath made both Lord and Christ, this same Jesus, whom you have crucified”? (Acts 2:36)
Will he avoid the miraculous healing of the man born lame and the Jewish leaders’ reaction, namely, warning the Apostles to “speak no more the name of Jesus to any man” (Acts 4:17), thereby setting themselves squarely against the Holy Catholic Church and her mission?
I suppose we will have to wait and see.
