Sunday Sullivanalia (With a Frum Bonus)

Michael Williams highlighted this part of Sullivan's comments from my previous Sullivanalia post:

[Mel Gibson] believes that all non-Catholics are going to hell, another heresy.

In an update to his post, Michael beat me to clarifying this point because, in looking into it, I decided to devote a little time to straightening the matter out entirely. As I suspected, the truth actually does much more to illustrates Sullivan's defamatory strategy than to mitigate it. As I noted at the time, he first posted on the relevant Gibson quotation last Monday:

GIBSON ON NON-CATHOLICS: They're all going to hell. That includes all those evangelicals who are flocking to his movie and even his wife.

The internal link goes to an Arizona Republic blurb from February 12, which makes reference to a Gibson interview with the Australian Herald Sun. I can't find that interview online. However, the Arizona Republic piece is actually an abbreviated version of a blurb on MSNBC from February 10. Here are all of the direct quotations:

Gibson was interviewed by the Herald Sun in Australia, and the reporter asked the star if Protestants are denied eternal salvation. "There is no salvation for those outside the Church," Gibson replied. "I believe it."

He elaborated: "Put it this way. My wife is a saint. She's a much better person than I am. Honestly. She's, like, Episcopalian, Church of England. She prays, she believes in God, she knows Jesus, she believes in that stuff. And it's just not fair if she doesn't make it, she's better than I am. But that is a pronouncement from the chair. I go with it."

Gibson also said in the interview that he was nearly suicidal before he made his controversial film. "I got to a very desperate place. Very desperate. Kind of jump-out-of-a-window kind of desperate," he said in the interview. "And I didn't want to hang around here, but I didn't want to check out. The other side was kind of scary. And I don't like heights, anyway. But when you get to that point where you don't want to live, and you don't want to die, it's a desperate, horrible place to be. And I just hit my knees. And I had to use 'The Passion of the Christ' to heal my wounds."

The second statement isn't directly relevant. It does, however, enable us to conclude, with a high degree of certainty, that the Herald Sun interview, whatever it claimed to be, recycled material from Peter Boyer's piece on Gibson in the September 15 New Yorker. Both quotations are verbatim.

You might recall that Boyer's essay was most noted for a comment that Gibson made therein about New York Times columnist Frank Rich: "I want his intestines on a stick. . . . I want to kill his dog." That ought to give some indication of Gibson's state of mind. During the interview period, Gibson had come under attack from major papers on both coasts, and an ad hoc council of Christians, Jews, and academics had recently submitted to him a sort of list of editorial demands presuming to censor certain aspects The Passion of the Christ. Gibson made the statement that found its way into the Herald Sun while flying cross-country:

We talked of the nature of Gibson's faith, and I asked him about an aspect of Vatican II which has not been much discussed in the debate over his film. One of the council's most significant acts was its Decree on Ecumenism, which declared that all Christians, even those outside the Catholic Church, "have the right to be called Christian; the children of the Catholic Church accept them as brothers." This effectively overturned the Catholic notion that the only true course to salvation was through the Catholic Church.

I told Gibson that I am a Protestant, and asked whether his pre-Vatican II world view disqualified me from eternal salvation. He paused. "There is no salvation for those outside the Church," he said. "I believe it." He explained, "Put it this way. My wife is a saint. She's a much better person than I am. Honestly. She's, like, Episcopalian, Church of England. She prays, she believes in God, she knows Jesus, she believes in that stuff. And it's just not fair if she doesn't make it, she's better than I am. But that is a pronouncement from the chair. I go with it."

With that, Gibson excused himself, and headed toward the galley of the plane, where an attendant had laid out supper. I glanced up at the video monitor at the front of the cabin, showing our progress on the journey to Washington. We were forty-five thousand feet over the high plains of Colorado, heading toward Kansas, according to the monitor, which displayed the name of the town shimmering faintly below us. It was a place called Last Chance.

Those who take Christianity seriously enough to debate it will likely know that this very topic can be the subject of lengthy discussion — as can many matters having to do with faith. Here, as his very last comment to a reporter before he heads off for dinner, Gibson offers a first premise. Among the wrinkles that would be ironed out over the course of discussion is precisely the difference between not achieving salvation and, as has been subsequently presumed of the statement, "going to hell."

Gibson clarified some in his interview with Diane Sawyer. Although the summary of that interview that ABC provides doesn't include the exchange, I've confirmed it in enough places to believe that this is accurate:

Diane: When we talked with Gibson and his actors, we wondered, does his traditionalist view bar the door to heaven for Jews, Protestants, Muslims?

Mel: That's not the case at all. Absolutely not. It is possible for people who are not even Christian to get into the kingdom of heaven. It's just easier. I have to say that because that's what I believe.

Diane: You have a non-stop ticket.

Mel: Well, yeah. I'm saying it's an easier ride where I am because it's like...I have to believe that.

The bottom line is that Mel Gibson isn't, and doesn't claim to be, more than a very active layman. This, as it happens, is a pretty intricate and weighty matter, and it appears that he's still working out the specifics — as is the entirety of Christendom. Since most of the evidence lies in postmortem events, the vagueness of "It's just easier" is understandable. (To give just a quick idea of two difficult aspects that come into play: one is whether a particular person's incorrect faith is something for which he or she is culpable; another is, essentially, the idea of Purgatory and what that might entail.)

So, to trace back to the present: Gibson made a quick remark about a sincerely debatable theological question that he later clarified (although not comprehensively). The Herald Sun picked up those comments, and either that paper or MSNBC added the "going to hell" layer. On this slim basis, Andrew Sullivan accuses Gibson of heresy, adding this single statement to his litany as if Gibson laid out his view in a theological press release.

ADDENDUM:
I hesitate to include David Frum in this post, because I hold him in higher esteem than I do Sullivan. But it fits, so here it is. You can read Frum's thoughts on Gibson's interview with Peggy Noonan for yourself, but of the above-mentioned interview with Diane Sawyer, Frum writes:

Gibson used equally stilted language when asked a similar question by Diane Sawyer on ABC: "Do I believe that there were concentration camps where defenceless and innocent Jews died cruelly under the Nazi regime? Of course I do; absolutely. It was an atrocity of monumental proportion." Here again, Gibson seems to bypass the issues of (1) the numbers killed; (2) whether those people were deliberately murdered; and (3) whether that murder proceeded from Nazi ideology.

The internal link is to a piece that is more about Gibson's father. I'm not sure why Frum didn't look for the Sawyer interview itself, but even ABC's summary extends the quotation. Here's the full exchange:

Gibson: You know, do I believe that there were concentration camps where defenseless and innocent Jews died cruelly under the Nazi regime? Of course I do. Absolutely. It was an atrocity of monumental proportion.

Sawyer: Are you looking into the face of a particular kind of evil with the Holocaust?

Gibson: Of course. You're looking- yes...

Sawyer: ...What is the particular evil there?

Gibson: ...what's the particular evil? I mean, why do you need me to tell you? It's like, it's obvious. They're killed because of who and what they are. Is that not evil enough?...

He doesn't recite the boilerplate statement that Frum desires, but Gibson does suggest deliberate killing proceeding from an ethnic ideology. He also comes pretty close to the "don't be absurd" that Frum would have preferred in the Noonan interview.

Frum subsequently posted a number of readers' notes suggesting that he made too much of Gibson's remarks. (Although I only skimmed them, I didn't see any that mention the extended quotation above.) Frum confirms that he's got no special knowledge of Gibson's view, but he still laments that he "can't help wondering why [Gibson] isn't making it easier" for him to offer his stamp of confident approval.

Look, this is a sticky, emotional area, and I've no reason to stick my neck out for Gibson, with whom I surely don't agree on everything. Is he speaking as he does for no reason other than to avoid slamming his father? I don't know. But I will admit that, between Frum, Krauthammer, Sullivan, and the various complaints that I've read about this movie — including the would-be, self-appointed, stolen-script censors, I'm a little... well... disconcerted by the degree to which people who don't believe in their message or import feel at liberty to dictate an interpretation of the Gospels.

There's a line that can be crossed — that has too often been crossed with blithe strides during the past several decades — and can result in unhealthy polarization. Gibson has been on the receiving end of attacks that did cross that line, and I can't say I'm inclined to judge him harshly if his language in these instances indicated a desire not to legitimate expansion of the evidentiary markers of what Frum calls the "primordial anti-semitism" of some on the cultural right.

ADDENDUM II:
I thought it would be clear in my presentation above, but just in case it is not, here's my assessment of Mel Gibson's take on the salvation of non-Catholics based on the limited information available. For preliminary context, I think this is a tough theological question, with a degree of inevitable ambiguity. I don't think Gibson has given it adequate consideration to have a comprehensive "position," and he doesn't seem particularly comfortable discussing it.

With the statement in the New Yorker, I think that, at a stressful time, on his way out the door for dinner, Gibson tried to offer a more profound statement than he was prepared to make. Whether or not he had devoted further thought in between, with the Sawyer interview, I think he was clarifying his bottom line conclusion, which had been obscured by his too-quick declaration while flying over Colorado.

Overall, he doesn't seem to be the greatest analytical speaker, and my main purpose above was to highlight the utter lack of basis for claiming that he thinks everybody who doesn't share his exact religion is going to Hell.