RSN Fundraising Banner
FB Share
Email This Page
add comment
Print

Pierce writes: "I'd like to highlight a bit of Olivia Nuzzi's story about the downfall of Steve Bannon within the upper echelons of Camp Runamuck in D.C. (Nuzzi's hiring by New York is the best personnel move of the past few years not made by Danny Ainge.)"

Steve Bannon. (photo: Getty Images)
Steve Bannon. (photo: Getty Images)


What Steve Bannon and Mel Gibson Have in Common

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

18 April 17

 

They're both big fans of a bonkers 19th century nun.

'd like to highlight a bit of Olivia Nuzzi's story about the downfall of Steve Bannon within the upper echelons of Camp Runamuck in D.C. (Nuzzi's hiring by New York is the best personnel move of the past few years not made by Danny Ainge.) All the stuff about the West Wing knife-fighting is interesting but, as a career RC with something of a sweet-tooth for the eccentrics in the history of Holy Mother Church, I was stopped in my tracks by this passage.

The embattled chief strategist to President Donald Trump is a student of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, a 19th-century nun and German mystic whose visions, documented in The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, served as inspiration for The Passion of the Christ, the 2003 film by Mel Gibson (who, incidentally, Bannon once reportedly tried to work with on a movie about, among other things, Adolf Hitler and eugenics). In that book, in a chapter favored by Bannon, this is how Emmerich describes hell: "All in this dreary abode tends to fill the mind with horror; not a word of comfort is heard or a consoling idea admitted; the one tremendous thought, that the justice of an all-powerful God inflicts on the damned nothing but what they have fully deserved, is the absorbing tremendous conviction which weighs down each heart." Those poor souls in hell are notable not for their misfortune, but for their deservedness."

Oh, dear Jesus, you should pardon the expression, not her again.

As noted above, Blessed Emmerich, an altogether splendid 19th century nutball, was one of the sources for Mel Gibson's sacred snuff film, in which, among other acts of cinematic embroidery, Jesus gets thrown off a bridge wearing what appears to be an anchor chain. Emmerich claimed to have had religious visions from childhood on, but she really went to town after entering a convent in Westphalia. There, having become ill and taken to bed, Emmerich began to have visions of the past and of the future. This enabled her to fill in some of the gaps in the gospel accounts of Jesus' life and, especially, the accounts of his death. For example, Emmerich asserted that the couple at whose wedding Jesus turned water into wine were so moved that they immediately took vows of perpetual chastity, which must have been a considerable drag.

Emmerich is primarily known for The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ After the Meditation of Anne Catherine Emmerich. This purports to be an account of Emmerich's visions, and it was written by a poet named Clemens Brentano, who did not take dictation or anything like it, but, rather, went back to his rooms and wrote down what he said were Emmerich's words. Later, various people published more of Brentano's ghostwriting, including a four-volume life of Christ. Unfortunately for devotees, and for modern readers, Brentano's account of Emmerich's visions included passages about Jews drinking the blood of Christian babies and about how Ham, the son of Noah, was the father of the world's "black, idolatrous, and stupid nations."

(All of this and more can be found in Paula Fredrikson's seminal treatment of Gibson's movie, which set off holy hell when it was published in The New Republic.)

Moreover, HMC never has known what to make of Emmerich. When the cause for her beatification was advanced, a huge dispute erupted over the material Brentano had published.(Were the writings merely meditations or authentic visions? Both? Neither?) In 1928, the Vatican stopped the process entirely. It did not resume until 1973 and, when it did, the writings were specifically excluded from it. Without them, of course, Emmerich simply was another sickly nun of the 1800s. And, in any case, the idea that an adherent of this crackpottery ascended to the highest councils of this government is just another truly weird development in what appears to be an ongoing parade of them.

e-max.it: your social media marketing partner
Email This Page

 

THE NEW STREAMLINED RSN LOGIN PROCESS: Register once, then login and you are ready to comment. All you need is a Username and a Password of your choosing and you are free to comment whenever you like! Welcome to the Reader Supported News community.

RSNRSN