April 11, 2004

Violence and sacrifice

Our culture finds the bloodshed of crucifixion abhorrent yet has no problem with abortion.

Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ has stirred up passions of its own in critics, viewers, and even in many who have merely read about it and formed opinions sight unseen. Its graphic depictions of horrific violence are one source of the controversy, accusations of anti-Semitism another. Everyone has an opinion, and everywhere I go, I overhear people discussing it, from Java to Wal-Mart.

I was both excited and apprehensive when I went to see The Passion with members of my monthly prayer group. Indeed, I did have to avert my eyes during some scenes. And watching the film was intensely emotional. Although our group met to discuss the film immediately afterward, I find the further I am removed from the experience, the more my thoughts have crystallized.

Regarding the issue of blame, I am overwhelmingly left not with the feeling that the Jewish leadership, the Roman soldiers, or even my sins killed Jesus—but rather that his death was a loving sacrifice, freely chosen out of compassion for his children. Jesus reminds Pilate that the power he has over Jesus’ life and death is only what is given him from above. The frequent apparitions of the devil, which only Jesus can see, recall to mind Jesus’ temptation in the desert and remind us that Jesus could have decided at any time to give in to the temptation to let that cup pass him by.

Maybe one reason people are uncomfortable with the film is that they are uncomfortable with the notion of sacrifice. It’s not a popular concept in American society, is it? We don’t believe in denying ourselves anything, and when we have to, we don’t admit the possibility that good can arise from sacrifice, anymore than we believe good can arise from suffering. I think that is one way people justify abortion.

Last summer I read an article in a women’s magazine that disturbed me greatly. It described a “compassionate” abortion clinic in which women were encouraged by specially trained staff to discuss their ambivalent feelings about ending the lives of their babies. The staff gave the women and their partners pink hearts on which to record their feelings so those mementoes could be pasted on the walls and shared with other visitors to the clinic. It was clear that the women whose responses were printed in the magazine were willing to sacrifice their babies’ lives but nothing else.

They write of their love for the babies they are aborting, of how they feel they are making a “responsible” decision because it is not the “right time” to bring a new life into the world. They write of hoping to see their babies in heaven, of looking forward to having another baby at a more convenient time.

Our culture encourages attitudes such as these to thrive. In a society in which credit cards allow us to instantly gratify every wish without having to wait and save as our parents did, in which self-fulfillment is the ultimate goal and unconditional love, sacrifice, and forgiveness are often interpreted as a lack of self-esteem, in which most people consider saving the sexual expression of love for marriage an unreasonable goal, can we be surprised that giving up nine months of one’s life seems like an unbearable, unfair burden?

As for the violence of The Passion: it’s funny how violence is OK in shoot-’em-up movies and video games but not OK in this movie. In fact, I’m sure Mr. Gibson felt it was necessary to be particularly graphic just because we have become so inured to violent images from overexposure.

Could people be objecting to the violence in this movie because they don’t want to be reminded that it really took place? Could this be why people who think abortion ought to be legal object so strenuously to looking at pictures of the violent ways aborted babies die?

It’s OK when violence is just entertainment. The funny thing is that this culture of death and violence in which we’re immersed is surely part of the reason we turn to the violence of abortion as a way to “solve” a problem pregnancy.

Leslie Sholly is coordinator of the diocesan Respect Life Committee. She is a member of Immaculate Conception Parish in Knoxville.