Hey ma! I can see your house from up here.
Practicing Catholic Garry Wills gives a highly critical review of Mel Gibson's lucrative Passion of Christ - the highest grossing R-rated film of all time - in the new issue of The New York Review of Books.

That mood [of persecution] is reflected in the large numbers of people who have praised the movie by attacking its critics. This may be at the root of the "religious" experience so many receive from the film. These people feel persecuted, like Gibson, victimized by a secular world or by unfaithful fellow Christians. The chosen groups Gibson showed the movie to at the outset included members of the Legion of Christ, an ultraconservative group that feels its fellow Catholics have deserted the true faith —the Legion is even included in the movie's closing credits.

Wills goes on to explore Catholicism's Wahabis and the "black hole at the center of the institutional [key word for Wills] Catholic Church."