NATIONAL CATHOLIC REGISTER
AUGUST 2004
Mary’s Feminine Genius in "The Passion"
By Colleen Carroll Campbell

When "The Passion of the Christ" premieres this month on VHS and DVD, it will likely be greeted the same way it was in theaters: with robust sales from the general public and a fresh round of denunciations from the critics.

Long before it opened in cinemas on Ash Wednesday, Mel Gibson’s epic about the suffering and death of Jesus Christ drew accusations of anti-Semitism and excessive violence. Gibson vehemently and convincingly denied those charges, by noting that all sinners are responsible for Jesus’ death and arguing that the film was no more violent than the biblical accounts warranted. Still, "The Passion" continued to provoke condemnation, even as it grossed more than $375 million in ticket receipts nationwide.

One indication of the controversy was vividly on display a few months ago, when my husband and I headed to our local cinema to see the film. As we arrived at the theater box office, we were accosted by a neon-green sign plastered across the ticket window. It read:

NOTICE TO MOVIEGOERS: THE "PASSION OF THE CHRIST" IS R-RATED AND CONTAINS GRAPHIC DEPICTIONS OF BRUTALITY. IT IS SPOKEN IN ARAMAIC AND LATIN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES. AMC STRONGLY ADVISES PARENTS TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THIS FILM BEFORE DECIDING IF IT IS APPROPRIATE FOR THEIR CHILDREN.

The good folks at AMC Theatres did not mention the obscenity, violence, and gore in the other R-rated films playing that evening – films like "The Girl Next Door," about a porn star, and "Dawn of the Dead," about flesh-eating zombies.

Of course, such fare is typical for Hollywood. "The Passion" is not. This film about the suffering and death of Jesus Christ forces us to confront the truth claims of Christianity and the values of our secular culture. One of its most powerful challenges to the secular worldview is embedded in one of its most endearing qualities: Its focus on the quiet strength of Mary, the Mother of Jesus.

As in Scripture, Mary has few spoken lines in "The Passion." But she appears in frame after frame of the film, as her quiet presence sustains her son throughout his suffering. The camera frequently captures the connection between mother and son, as Jesus and Mary lock eyes during his most agonizing moments. Often, Mary’s unwavering willingness to witness his suffering seems to stir Jesus to stand up again, to bear still more beatings, to walk still more steps. In Mary, Jesus has a disciple who will not flee suffering, one who will follow him and love him to the bitter end.

Mary witnesses her son’s crucifixion without turning on his enemies in rage, turning in on herself, or turning away. She is a true contemplative – one who gazes on the face of her God and her child, one whose greatest strength lies not in what she does or says but in who she is. She exemplifies what Pope John Paul II calls the "feminine genius." As he says: "The moral and spiritual strength of a woman is joined to her awareness that God entrusts the human being to her in a special way."

This feminine genius – of compassion for others and contemplation of God – has been largely ignored by modern feminists. They tell us that a woman can only be strong if she imitates the worst qualities associated with masculinity: Callousness, careerism, cold rationalism. They say that the child entrusted to her womb is an impediment to her freedom; that her willingness to sacrifice for her family is a sign of weakness. A strong woman, they say, avoids suffering and prizes her own interests – her own choices – above all else.

The image of Mary in "The Passion" is a rebuke to radical feminism. It is also a rejoinder to our cultural obsession with self-assertion, self-reliance, and the avoidance of pain. By her quiet example, Mary shows that it takes more strength to watch and pray than to rant and rave, to face suffering than to run from it. She does not use force or cleverness to "fix" the problem of her son’s suffering. Neither does she rely on positive-thinking techniques to blunt her pain. Instead, she faces the awful reality of her son’s agony, and accepts the mystery of his death even as she mourns it with all her soul.

Mary’s example reminds us how countercultural our Catholic understanding of suffering really is. Living in a society that shuns suffering, we often forget that our trials can be the means of our sanctification. If we embrace them and offer them to God as a gift, He will use them to bring about greater good in our world, and in our souls.

That lesson, like the Mother of God herself, is often overlooked in a society consumed by noise and action, power politics and self-help schemes. But "The Passion" brings it home again, in the form of a character whose silent surrender reminds us of an enduring truth: God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness, and true strength lies in surrender to His will.

Familiar as it may be, that truth never loses its power to shock. And it always endangers the status quo.

Maybe "The Passion" does deserve a warning label.

– Colleen Carroll Campbell is a former speechwriter to President George W. Bush and author of The New Faithful: Why Young Adults Are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy (Loyola, 2002).