I finally saw the movie The Passion Of The Christ and I was not amused.  I especially couldn't believe that Jesus could climb a mountain after a whipping that should have killed him. 

Mr. Philip Graves

You have a point.  Remember the movie was art, not a documentary (though possibly not your kind of art).  I tried to watch again this Holy Week, and couldn't get through it.  It is a very painful film to watch.

Mel Gibson combined a number of sources, the scriptures, traditions, both sacred and non sacred and particularly the visions of Blessed Catherine Emmerich who lived around 1800.  It is to be remembered that no vision is infallible.

St. Paul says that “we know imperfectly and we prophesy imperfectly.” (1Cor.13:9)

I remember a fellow who used to visit me on Wednesdays and Fridays at lunch to see what I was eating.  If I was eating anything but bread and water he would remind me that our Blessed Mother had said at Medjugorje that we were only to eat bread and water on Wednesdays and Fridays.  I would tell him that seven young Yugoslavian visionaries had said that the Blessed Mother had said that, and besides, the Blessed Mother isn't the Pope!  At which point he would turn red and the little vein on his forehead would stand out and he would storm out of the rectory.  This would happen every few weeks and it was great fun. 

I believe that Medjugorje has become a place of great prayer and pilgrimage and that the Lord is doing great wonders there, BUT it isn't 100%.

I have a huge devotion to Fatima and the Lord touched me very deeply there, BUT Fatima isn't 100%.

Only the prophecies of Scripture, as St. Peter tells us, are 100%.

I can't even get them right without the teaching authority of the church which is 100%.

All that said, Mel Gibson used a lot of different sources and he didn't get it 100% either.  Still, I think the movie is very powerful and really has reminded me of the sufferings of the Lord.  So what did he get right and what did he get wrong?  I will venture my very humble opinion.  Here are my objections: 

1) First of all the Pharisees weren't out to get Jesus - the Sadducees were.  They ran the temple and saw Jesus as a threat, the Pharisees came to the defense of Jesus and the early church.  A number of times in the Bible it is the Pharisees who are the theological ancestors of modern Judaism, not the Sadducees. 

2) Jesus was not scourged as horribly as the movie portrays, despite the visions of Catherine Emmerich.  There is no evidence in history or Scripture that Jesus was scourged with hooks.  The Romans scourged with a three tailed lash that had little metal dumbbells on the ends.  They had the effect of ripping your skin off, but not necessarily your flesh. 

3) Jesus didn't climb the hill of Calvary.  There was no hill of Calvary.  Calvary was quarry, turned cemetery and garbage dump.  It may have had a little rise in it on which Jesus may have been crucified, but Jesus didn't climb up to it.  He tumbled down to it.  He was judged at Gabbatha, which means the high place, probably Herod's palace which had been taken over by Pontius Pilate.  From there he would have been dragged through the nearest city gate down to Golgotha, Simon of Cyrene carrying the cross beam.  The current Via Dolorosa probably has nothing to do with the actual route that Jesus took.

4) Jesus wouldn't have carried the whole cross, but probably just the beam as did the thieves in the movie.  The burden was lighter, but this had the effect of making Jesus’ falls far worse, His hands tied to the cross beam, making Him unable to break His fall. 

So Mel got it all wrong?  So the stations of the cross that we have in church are not accurate?  Should we stop saying them?

By no means!

Blessed Catherine’s visions, Mel's movie, the stations of the cross are all meditations on God's great love for the world.  Jesus descent to the quarry of Calvary was an ascent to the heights of love.  The effect would have been the same.  Jesus was a bloody pulp, half dead by the time He arrived at Calvary and He still lifted His broken body up on the nails to say, “Father forgive them,” and He still rose from the dead with the holes in His hands, glorious in His sacrifice and triumphant over the grave.

Yours faithfully,

Rev. Know-It-All