It's funny, when I heard that Mel Gibson is a practicing Catholic, I was no longer nervous or paranoid about his film, the Passion. I guess I understand his film as part of a long traditon of great - and bloody - Catholic art about the Passion of Christ. I know that Isabella and Ferdinand did their anti-Semitic best to murder or convert all Jews in Spain during the Inquisition, but generally, I don't know, I don't find the great (Christian) anti-Semitism of the centuries has come from Catholic persuasions. It feels different - less dangerous, more real, that he, as a devout Catholic, chose to make a Passion film - whatever it's flaws. Saying that, I just realised the Polish are Catholic and the most venomously anti-semitic culture on earth. Maybe it's because he's an Aussie, and where I grew up, Jews and Catholics hung out together - we came from similar enough cultures so we tended to understand, or have sympathy for, each other.