  I wonder what else I can do with this thing. My friend Mary Pat just asked whether I'd seen The Passion of the Christ, yet. I haven't, and I've been wondering whether I could or want to. I've been having a similar discussion with my dad. All of the above were brought up Catholic, MP and I having met at age 5 at Catholic grade school (We're now 35. As of September of this year, we'll have known eachother a full thirty years. Shit, that was fast!).
But I'd be coming at it from the perspective of someone who drew away from a lot of it very early on. And I'd also be coming at it as someone who has a hard enough time watching a kid get his booster shot on a med segment of the news, let alone a drawn out viewing of someone experiencing pain. I sympathize immediately and very deeply with people, identifying. It's reflexive, and I'm glad to have the quality. I love for a person to know I'm "with" them so they don't feel lonely and not understood on top of hurt, whatever the nature of the hurt. When I'm not there, and just seeing an image of it, I can hardly bear that, because I can't do anything. So I can imagine Mel Gibson arguing that, literally for Christ's sake, that's the least I could do.
That's the whole point, to put you in touch with the experience he felt he had to have for the sake of others. Going through the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday has broken my heart. I remember crying at age nineteen or so, having fully realized the process as his very real, human, bodily experience and without the odd remove I had had since childhood. They don't spell it all out when you're six, And I guess you keep that filter up until it's knocked away purposefully.
I'd like to know the movie had a greater good (besides the one inherent in the story), something that could help heal me up after seeing all the vicious violence. Do you see the resurrection? Is there any great sense of Jesus' love that it leaves you with? I haven't heard about it, if so, and I've read tons of reviews. Is all this is a matter of hitting you over the head with how extreme the torture was? Does asking questions like that say something about myself I don't really care for? Do I see this film? Stay tuned... 
