In the Associated Press report on Mel Gibson’s film on the final hours of Jesus Christ’s life (Aug. 9), Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, was quoted as saying that only if the film proves to be “a loving film, a sensitive film” will he be “out there proclaiming . . . it’s wonderful.”

In other words, only if it’s an airbrushed affair that departs in a significant way from the Gospel accounts of the crucifixion – accounts that Christians believe have God as their principal author and which must, for that reason, be accepted as true in every particular.

That’s certainly Gibson’s belief as a Catholic, and I can’t imagine him passing it over to appease anyone.

The article pointed out that Gibson belongs to “an ultraconservative Catholic movement which rejects the Vatican’s authority over the Catholic church.” But that statement must have baffled many readers; after all, doesn’t being an ultraconservative Roman Catholic positively demand acceptance of the Vatican’s authority, which is actually the pope’s authority first and last?

The truth is, the members of this movement don’t reject belief in the papacy, as the article seems to imply; they reject a number of changes in the foundations of Catholicism instituted over the course of the last several decades, which they insist no pope is divinely empowered to make.

For my part, it’s largely because of these deep-seated changes, which clearly contradict teaching once trumpeted as infallible, that I’ve finally quit believing in Catholicism altogether.

William LaRochelle, Lewiston