AmericanPapist Comments
This is a time to pray for Mr. Gibson. He's part of the family who has an alcohol problem.
He took the time and effort to apologize, but I fear it will not be enough. "lilies that fester..."
I'm not quite sure how you got the impression that the police were trying to cover up for him, but even if it were the case I don't really see what's wrong with them being prudent and protecting his reputation.
What Gibson didn't realize was that his DUI arrest would have little effect on his fans, but his anti-Semitic tirade afterward would do far worse damage than a hundred DUIs could ever do.
I understand that Gibson's father is an anti-Semite, and Gibson himself has described his father as mentally "ill." I wouldn't be surprised if his tirade was the kind of talk he frequently heard from his father while he was a child. Gibson has publicly stated that he's not an anti-Semite, and I believe him. Alchohol does a lot of funny things to people, and in Gibson's case, it would appear to make him revert to the kind of behavior he might have seen from this father while growing up. I've watched drunks use racial slurs toward blacks and hispanics that they would never use while sober. In fact, they're quite shocked when they hear what they've said after they've sobered up. Usually the response is something like: "I'm so sorry. I don't know why I said that. I don't feel that way at all."
I'm not making excuses for the man. There is no excuse for what he did -- everything from getting drunk, to the DUI, to the anti-Semitic tirade. The last being the most damaging to his image. Rather, I'm just trying to offer one possible explaination for where that kind of talk might have originated. It is quite possible and probable that so long as the man is sober, he's not anti-Semitic at all.
I agree that it's time to pray for Mel. Alcoholism is a very difficult thing to get in control.
"I'm not making excuses for the man."
Seems like you are.
Gibson has been an over-indulged nutbag for a very long time. Alcohol is a disinhibitor. It doesn't just make opinions appear out of thin air, especially in such a non-sequitur fashion.
This is showing the bag of hot air for what he is.
Alcohol is a disinhibitor. It doesn't just make opinions appear out of thin air
I'd be careful there; this is too simplified from what we mean when we call alcohol a disinhibitor. A person can feel more uninhibited but can simultaneously not be connecting thoughts very well, and construct new ideas they absolutely would not have otherwise. It doesn't mean that those new ideas existed before becoming inebriated, and were latent.
When I get drunk sometimes I get coarse and "channel" a foul-mouthed Marine gunnery sergeant I know who is absolutely nothing like me. He is in my mind an archetype of a controlling man. He controls the room through his very act of being out of control and inflicting a kind of righteous fear out of those around him.
When drunk, many people pick fights with opponents they have no business (or reason) to pick fights with. Many comedians will make jokes about the partners they wake up with after a hard night of partying as if being with someone you do not know and would not otherwise be attracted to is a joke.
But the reality of the situation is that these are not jokes.
And no one can say that no one does things contrary to their beliefs and personality while in a state of extreme intoxication. It is an absurd assertion.
Also, the idea that being uninhibited somehow brings out the "real" you is pure bunk (not to mention an enabling idea for alcoholics). The real you is the person who, with full control of their faculties, exercises conscious self-control in an attempt to keep themselves from sin.
To say otherwise would be to undercut the whole idea of fighting for restraint. This implies that criminals have no hope of attaining a reformed soul. Which is also another way of saying we are all doomed by the very first sin we commit.
There is an unworkable prejudice among Secularites that only the pure are allowed to discuss purity and only the sinless are allowed to mete out justice. To have fallen humans talk about goodness and justice is what they call hypocrisy but this is not the true meaning of the word.
Hypocrisy is not falling from grace (if it were, we all are hypocrites!) rather, it is not believing what you preach. Judging from his apology, Mel falls in the former category and not the latter.
There are many habitual acts which the Church recognizes as self-destructive but the Secular world pays no heed to. To point out Mel's failing as a mark of shame against Catholics is to underscore the very idea that both Catholics and Secularites hold us to a higher degree of morality.
It's not the DUI, it's not the bad behavior, it's not even the cover-up that is going to be his undoing (and I agree, trouble is coming). It's the anti-Semitic rant he went on. Some publications have puiblished his comments ver batim, with swear words and all. It's bad. It's pretty bad stuff. Screaming about Jews being the cause of all wars in the world, screaming that Jews are scum, etc. That kind of stuff does NOT get forgiven in Hollywood. Then to issue this apology where he essentially says "I didn't mean any of it"...oh crap, Mel! Everyone knows booze is the ultimate truth serum. He meant every word he said. That's what is really sad.
"a person can feel more uninhibited but can simultaneously not be connecting thoughts very well, and construct new ideas they absolutely would not have otherwise."
Oh for the love of...
Gibson's father is a complete nutcase Holocaust denier. On at least one occasion he has gone to a revisionist confab to spew his bizarre theories and be around others who do the same. Now, junior is not his father. However, both of them are involved in a pretty whacky ultra-traditionalist anti-Vatican II group, and junior has been fairly swervy in his condemnations of what his very vocal father has had to say. You can put that down to filial loyalty if you like, but in a couple of interviews his ambiguity has been fishy. This theory that he is channeling some sort of inner demon represented by an overbearing father or randomly voicing disassociated thoughts is pretty convenient if you want to avoid what is the Ockham's Razor conclusion: he is a spoiled, indulged bully with a very ugly streak of anti-Semitism.
I really don't know why you people are defending him so strenuously. Both junior and senior railed against JPII. As one of your fabled (no need for capital S) secularists, I certainly don't hold Mother Church in enormous regard, but from my point of view I can't see why Gibson isn't seen by Vatican-loyal Catholics as apostate. It obviously has something to do with the over-wrought nasty piece of didacticism that he made, but I doubt you'd be extending the same courtesy to someone on the other side of the perceived political/sociological divide, somehow.
Do a thought experiment. If this was, I dunno, Michael Moore, would you be so understanding?
Xtra wrote:
"I really don't know why you people are defending him so strenuously. Both junior and senior railed against JPII."
Exactly! I remember when TPOTC came out and all the orthodox Catholics I know were just raving about how great Gibson is. Sure, he made a great movie and sure, he loves God (expressed in his own way), but let's not be naive. You should have seen and felt the stony silence that surrounded me when I pointed out to some well-intentioned folks that Mel isn't exactly WITH the Church. Not only could they NOT believe me...they didn't want to believe me. They just refused to accept that. I would tell them--no, you don't understand: he's OUTSIDE communion. He doesn't consider himself under JPII. He thinks the Pope is LIBERAL.
These good people wouldn't believe it. They couldn't. I think we Catholics have taken such a beating that when we come across someone who actually seems to be on our side we want to KEEP them like a treasure. That's fine. But just know who you're treasuring and why. Treasure Gibson if you think he's a nice family man who makes great movies. That's great! But don't paint a picture of him that is a fiction.
What's saddest (this is certainly obvious, but hasn't been said yet, so I will) is that his slurs repaint TPOTC as anti-semitic, and will make people question any spiritual benefit that they may have gained from the movie.
I'd suggest not going that route--it isn't necessary to throw out the baby with the bathwater. One of the instruments God used to "revert" me was an essay by William James, "The Will to Believe." I read it as a very young adult, and it really changed my mind about the role and limits of rationality in questions of faith.
A couple of years ago I read it again--and found it totally unconvincing! But by then, thankfully, I'd learn to hang my hat on faith for many, many other reasons. It didn't matter anymore, because the essay had been helpful at the time when I needed it, but it was GOD who was using the essay. In the long term, it's God alone who matters.
(This strategy and rationale is also helpful when a Catholic mentor goes astray, btw!)
Getting drunk doesn't make the real you get out; rather, it drives you out of your senses. Drugs and alcohol will make you do stupid things you don't mean. This is what I was told repeatedly in school, and I'm fresh out of it.
I'm not saying this because I like Mel Gibson. He made a good movie which should have gotten an Oscar, that's all I know about him that could make me like him, and it's not all that much -- Tom Cruise also made a good movie, but I don't like him. However, to call Gibson an anti-Semite on the basis of some anti-Semitic comments when he was DRUNK -- that is weak.
Xtra, be careful not to read what isn't there, into what I said. I don't know what Mel really thinks and I don't care much, nor am I defending people's drunken mishaps at all.
The ONLY thing I take issue with is the myth that alcohol is a truth serum, positively and always.
Stubblespark demonstrated the absurdity and simplistic thinking by people who don't think things through and regurgitate what they think they've gathered from overly-simplistic magazine articles.
I can easily contradict the notion that anything that comes out of an intoxicated mind is pre-existing and latent: I've known people to [claim to] discover the "meaning of life" after their disordered thought processes under the influence. Then they sober up and don't have the same conclusions and cannot even follow their own logic from the time. That's proof positive that not everything you come up with under the influence was already there, latent, and existed prior to the intoxication. NEW ideas can form which have a corrupt foundation/faulty reasoning at the source, that a person wouldn't be prone to while sober.
If we're talking about uninhibiting behavioral tendencies, that's a whole other thing. An aggressive person whose aggression is usually latent and controlled, risks surfacing aggressive behavior when under the influence.
If you're the real you when you're intoxicated, then like Stubblespark says, all this idea is doing is enabling alcoholics. So think it through.
You're the real, complete you when you have all of your faculties, not when your reasoning faculties are compromised. That's when free will and rationality isn't compromised. If this isn't the case, then we ought to be self-medicating and drinking all of the time so we can be true to our real selves, and let our behavior under the influence be the only behavior by which God judges us.
Let's not just pray for Mel Gibson, but also for all of those who are happy that he did this and will subsequently use this against him.
Too bad, he made some good movies.
The people who are judging him for comments made while he was so drunk he would break the law (ie, drive under the influence) were not going to see his movies or say anything nice about him in the first place.
As for the Michael Moore thought experiment, yes, I think he would receive pity and more than a mere benefit of a doubt if he said something unacceptable while drunk. Any critical comments made would come from people who had already written him off in the first place (like those who never like Gibson are doing right now).
As for truth serum bit, science says you are wrong. "Those in the field of alcoholism call it a "Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde" change of the personality. It affects different people in varying ways: those who are happy go lucky may turn very sad and morose, and those who are normally quiet and on the sad side will become happy and the life of the party." http://experts.about.com/q/Addic...olic-
friend.htm
Clearly, this is what happened in the case of Mel Gibson. Jump on this bandwagon of opportunists and you will be perpetuating the absolutely baseless myth that deep spiritual devotion leads to madness.
As to covering for his father, I would like to remind people the Ten Commandments demand such respect. In a world where celebrities will sell their mothers for pancakes, Mel's restraint is a mark of honor. It is not so easy to go around finger-pointing when you live by a moral code.
As far as his preference for the Tridentine Rite: it is permissible under the Church. I frequent parishes using both rites. I prefer the older rite to the Novus Ordo, but I do not think Novus Ordo masses are invalid. Nothing about this opinion puts me at odds with the Church. And no amount of unsubstantiated or uninformed outsider speculation as to what it means changes that.
If this event shows any kind of bigotry, it is the bigotry of the religion-hating Secularites that paints the better portion of the landscape of the American mind.
As far as his preference for the Tridentine Rite: it is permissible under the Church.
It's not just that. He doesn't like Vatican II.
Listen to what he has said:-
"Vatican II corrupted the institution of the church. Look at the main fruits: dwindling numbers and pedophilia."
If this event shows any kind of bigotry, it is the bigotry of the religion-hating Secularites that paints the better portion of the landscape of the American mind.
Oh COME ON.
Be serious!
It's not as if Mel hasn't provided the rope himself.
It's hardly OUT OF THE QUESTION, IMPOSSIBLE that this man has some serious entitlement and bigotry issues bubbling away, is it?
Incredible! People who babble about "personal responsibility" suddenly blame everyone but the likely culprit! I mean, really! This is beyond a joke.
I am just as tired of people defending him - and the whole schismatic/sedevacantist pack along with him. He opened his own church. He's not a Catholic. Case closed. All this "but he so loves the Tridentine Mass" is such complete BS. He and many like him are fanatics who reject far more than just the Pauline Mass. They aren't poor alienated Catholics who seek refuge in some SSPX or whatever chapel from the evils of the local ordinary. They're a) traitors and b) do not have the Catholic Faith. There is no Catholic Faith without the Pope - and without accepting an Ecumenical Council. This motley crew of ultra-reactionaries, conspiracy theorists and anti-semites have no place in the Catholic Church. The fact that one may agree with some of their issues doesn't mean that they're right about the solutions. Their warped theology is no better than the progressive/New Age/syncretist/etc. crap.
And yes, some people all of a sudden sound like liberals in their excuses :)
Gerald, just as a full disclosure, I AM a (socially if not economically) liberal secularist atheist and whatever other attendant horrors you can dream up.
Just so you know who you are sort of agreeing with. ;)
There is a saying in German about a blind chicken also finding a grain once in a while ;)
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