A Marian Movie?

A Marian Movie?

Extremely ecumenical and very pro-Catholic “Christianity Today” (many of the leading signers and promoters of “Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium” are “CT” editors and contributors) supplied the following:

Mel Gibson told “CT”: "I've been actually amazed at the way I would say the evangelical audience has--hands down--responded to this film more than any other Christian group." What makes it so amazing, he says, "is that the film is so Marian."

Gibson knows that Protestants don't regard Mary in the way Catholics do. And Gibson goes beyond many Catholics when he calls her "a tremendous co-redemptrix and mediatrix."

“This evangelical enthusiasm for ‘The Passion of the Christ’ may seem a little surprising, in that the movie was shaped from start to finish by a devout Roman Catholic and by an almost medieval Catholic vision. But evangelicals have not found that a problem because, overall, the theology of the film articulates very powerful themes that have been important to all classical Christians.” (quotations from “Christianity Today,” 3/04 pp. 34, 30)

T.A. McMahon