Should this make me nervous? I know I sometimes have the tendency to “throw out the baby with the bath-water” but quotes like this do not do much for my confidence in the effects this movie will have: “After both of The Passion screenings I attended, the Protestant women talked about identifying with Mary as a mother who was watching her child suffer. From whatever point in his spirituality Gibson’s treatment of Mary is springing, it is touching deeply the maternal impulse in his viewers.” Now I’ll admit that Protestants do tend to shy away from Mary, but Gibson’s Marian theology is definitely far beyond what the Bible teaches. He calls her “a tremendous co-redemptrix and mediatrix.”
This article (also at Christianity Today) speaks more about Mel’s faith, focusing a good deal of attention on his use of Anne Catherine Emmerich’s Dolorous Passion of Our Lord.
Interestingly, neither article seems to point out the obvious error (heresy) of trusting in Mary as a co-redemptrix. What an indication of the state of Protestantism that such error raises no warning flags!
