Jesus Christ Superstar?

[patrick457]

If Then We Are Decided is about Annas’ convincing Caiaphas to be aggressive in making the Sanhedrin accept his decision, here we see that the Caiaphas does not have to exert too much effort in persuading them, since the priests already apparently all share the same feelings as he about Jesus. As soon as they talk about Him, they all answer with one voice as a chorus (there it is again): “He is dangerous!”

In fact, all of the priests seem to be a syncophantic bunch, who merely echo Caiaphas’ sentiments without any visible dissent. Now there is no indecision, no debate: the Council has already fixed their minds about Jesus, but are only at a loss for practical ideas. All Caiaphas - who is apparently a strong individualist - needed to do is to force them to do his will, and let momentum take care of the rest. In contrast to Judas’ character, Rice has - quite unfortunately - retained the one-dimensionality of Jesus’ opponents in the Gospels. (This was what may have prompted the charges of anti-Semitism against JCS.)

In the Gospels, Jesus’ ‘enemies’ are never given a reason for their opposition to Jesus: they are just there to provide tension. They appear as a group, they denounce Jesus with one voice, they sometimes get denounced in turn by Jesus, then they disappear again (only to reappear later in the same fashion), without the Evangelists clearly explaining their motives or where they go to after they’ve been refuted, or whether they had any disagreements within the group. The closest one gets to indications of individuality is in John’s Gospel, where those who support Jesus sometimes verbally quarrel against those who don’t, sometimes within the same group itself:

The officers then came to the chief priests and Pharisees, who said to them, “Why did you not bring him?” The officers answered, “No one ever spoke like this man!” The Pharisees answered them, “Have you also been deceived? Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd that does not know the law is accursed.” Nicodemus, who had gone to him before, and who was one of them, said to them, “Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?” They replied, “Are you from Galilee too? Search and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.”

Caiaphas has a little foreboding of what may happen should they fail to put Jesus in His place:

I see bad things arising -
The crowd crown him king which the Romans would ban
I see blood and destruction,
Our elimination because of one man:
Blood and destruction because of one man.

Which as most readers would know is from John itself (11:47-53):

So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the Council and said, “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all. Nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.” He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad. So from that day on they made plans to put him to death.

Both the 1973 and 2000 films attempt to visually portray this homogeneity by having the priests wear virtually the same clothes as each other (and to mark them off as villains, the color of their garments is black ). The 1973 film ups the ante by including a shot of a wake of vultures, which then segues into the priests gathering into the, erm, scaffolding (interestingly enough, at the Trial before Pilate, Pilate offers to have Jesus flogged “to keep you vultures * happy”). The 2000 film has them holding council in a dark meeting room (which lights up temporarily as we hear the voices of the cheering multitudes) as television screens show Jesus being hailed by His disciples and flyers fall down from the ceiling - after all, don’t evil committee-types always congregate in meeting rooms?

Finally, there is one curious line where Caiaphas says: “One thing I’ll say for him / Jesus is cool,” (presumably his recognition that Jesus is popular; that there’s no denying that) which has been altered in the 2000 version to: “Infantile sermons / the multitudes drools,” which to me kind of only serves to emphasize more that these are the bad guys. To which I say: yeah yeah, we get it, it wants to show us that the priests are evil, I just hope they don’t shove it down our throats further. The line has also been reassigned to one of the lesser priests.*

 

[patrick457]

Hosanna

http://www.antiochianarch.org.au/Re...Feasts of the Church/Entry into Jerusalem.jpg

We now go into the Triumphal entry itself (of which I believe I have no need to summarize). The fans now hail their Superstar as He makes His way to the holy city. Over all, the scene as it is in the opera resembles more closely the one contained in the Gospel of Luke (19:36-40):

And as he rode along, they spread their cloaks on the road. As he was drawing near—already on the way down the Mount of Olives—the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”

The complaining Pharisees in Luke is here replaced by Caiaphas (as we’ve mentioned: chief priests does not equal Pharisees ), who mocks the disciples at every turn of phrase :

Tell the rabble to be quiet
We anticipate a riot:
This common crowd is much too loud.
Tell the mob who sing your song
That they are fools and they are wrong
They are a curse; they should disperse!

Caiaphas now voices out in public the concern which bugged him the most: “We anticipate a riot.”

But beneath all this cheerful facade, there is also a dark irony present. Everything that Judas feared in Heaven on their Minds is now coming true. Jesus Himself now seems to “matter more than the things He says;” the ‘blind’ disciples are now organizing a cult of personality around Him!

Hey J.C., J.C. won’t you smile at me?
Sanna, Ho Sanna, Hey, Superstar!

This is again interestingly visually portrayed in the 1973 and 2000 film versions: in the 1973 film, Carl Anderson is notably absent during this sequence, while in the 2000 film version, Jerome Pradon spends much of the song’s duration pouting, looking too exasperated with the ‘rabble’. By the end of the sequence, Pradon gives Glenn Carter (Jesus) a ‘I-told-you-this-would-happen’ look as the crowds start singing: “Won’t you die for me?”

Which brings us to a short trivia: the entire third verse, along with the refrain “Hey J.C., J.C. won’t you die for me?” was actually originally written for the 1973 film. The original 1970 concept album simply ends with a short instrumental fanfare after the second verse and its refrain (“Won’t you fight for me?”).

The addition of the third verse - which seems to encapsulate in a few words the whole point of the Beatitudes: “There is not of you who cannot win the Kingdom: the slow, the suffering, the quick (in the archaic sense of ‘alive’/‘living’), the dead” - and refrain adds a new dimension to the song. The crowd’s choruses gradually reveal that they, too, misunderstand the whole point of Jesus’ being here (“Won’t you fight for me…won’t you die for me”). As Judas warned, the conflict between Jesus and the apostles occurs when they misunderstand Jesus, dreaming of a revolution against Rome and pursuing crowns of glory, with Jesus as the means to triumph. In effect, they serve as yet another example of the Markan theme of the disciples’ blindness.

But there is also a double meaning present. “Won’t you die for me,” gives Jesus - and us as well - yet another foreshadowing of the Cross. What is notable is that in both film versions, the smile on Jesus’ face is gone as He hears this line: the 1973 film freezes for a few moments on Ted Neeley’s shocked face to emphasize this, while the 2000 film has the crowd accentuate the word “die,” all the while pointing to a bemused Glenn Carter. Was it a reaction to the disciples’ failure to understand, or to the prefiguring of the Passion that He must undergo?

Oh, and one more thing. We have another ‘halo moment’ in the 1973 film at the second refrain, as the people lift Jesus up on their shoulders. The camera is looking up at Ted Neeley with the sun directly behind his head, again forming a radiant nimbus.

 

[patrick457]

Simon Zealotes

This is yet another song which has no direct Biblical counterpart, so I’m gonna devote quite a good length on this as well.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cc/Brooklyn_Museum_-Saint_Simon-James_Tissot-overall.jpg/200px-Brooklyn_Museum-Saint_Simon-James_Tissot-_overall.jpg

Simon the Zealot/Zealous is admittedly one of those Apostles who never do anything utterly important to the main story that the only reason we know that they existed in the first place is because the Evangelists list them, and then again, they themselves do not seem to agree upon their exact names. The name “Simon who was called the Zealot” (Greek: Σίμωνα τὸν καλούμενον Ζηλωτὴν) only appears in Luke’s list of the Apostles (6:14-16; cf. Acts 1:13). In place of this, Matthew and Mark gives the second Simon the label Kananaios, or Kananites (Matthew 10:4; Mark 3:18). It would seem that both names come from the Hebrew/Aramaic word qana’ (‘zealous’, ‘jealous’). His nickname has given rise to various speculations, one including about whether he is/was a member of the Jewish political revolutionary movement which Josephus calls Ζηλωτής (Zēlotēs ‘Zealous’), the Zealots. Tim Rice adopts the idea that he is, and thus constructs a number based on it.

In general feel, I personally think that this number shares a number of resemblances with a similar scene in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1927 film The King of Kings. In that film, after Jesus cleanses the Temple, the flock of crowds that welcomed Him to Jerusalem - under the instigation of Judas - attempts to crown Him as King. Jesus runs away from them and has an encounter with Satan (which tempts Him to accept what the disciples are hawking for; cf. Matthew 4:8-10). Jesus rejects Satan’s - and the crowd’s - offer, which prompts a disillusioned Judas to betray Him. I note with interest in that this scene appears in DeMille’s The King of Kings, since as we have mentioned, this is the exact same film that Norman Jewison uses as a prime example of the standard Hollywood over-grandiosity he wanted to avoid!

The one thing I knew for sure I didn’t want was a King of Kings job. I’ve seen Pasolini’s The Passion According to Saint Matthew (sic; the English title is The Gospel according to Saint Matthew - Jewison never did get the title right) at least eight times; it’s so sparse and simple and close to the Bible - and that’s what I had in the back of my mind. The first scenario that Webber and Rice came up with - can you believe it - was pure King of Kings with all the trappings; cast of thousands, you know. They had this very modern concept for the music but when it came to the visuals they lapsed back to sheer Hollywood 30’s.

In place of DeMille’s Judas, Rice’s Simon the Zealot now offers Jesus a 50,000-strong army ready to do His bidding. Like DeMille’s Jesus, the Jesus of JCS rejects such offers of worldly authority.

As I’ve said, I feel that this section is the weakest in the 1973 film for various reasons; stripped of its militaristic overtones, Jewison has turned the song into a mere dance number complete with camera tricks complete with period fashion. Simon’s offer of a huge military force now seems to be quite out-of-place! Not to mention that the whole dance just reeks of the 70s and thus, hasn’t aged really well. That being said, I’m really impressed with the stop trick effects Jewison employs here: they are reminiscent of the experimental films in the early days of cinema, when filmmakers such as Georges Méliès toyed with the newly-invented camera. Simple, yet impressive.

The 2000 film version has IMHO a slightly more superior depiction. Continuing with Hosanna, it shows the Temple guards (with costumes reminiscent of Darth Vader! ) being involved in a scuffle against the disciples, while Jesus stares in horror at the violence occurring around Him. Jesus even calls Simon’s name in a rebuking manner as they sing the chorus, but to no avail; in fact, throughout the song, Jesus stands looking rather annoyed with everyone. Beside Him stands a still-exasperated Judas (gee, can you guess why?)

 

[patrick457]

In the song, Simon convinces Jesus that He has now amassed enough popularity to be able to take on Rome, "the filth…who rape our country and who’ve terrorized our people for so long," and suggests adding overt anti-Roman material to His preaching to incite the people to riot.

“There must be over fifty thousand
Screaming love and more for you;
And everyone of fifty thousand
Would do whatever you asked them to.
Keep them yelling their devotion,
But add a touch of hate at Rome.
You will rise to a greater power;
We will win ourselves a home!”

He then makes a reference to the (in)famous doxology of the Our Father, “You’ll get the power and the glory, for ever and ever and ever.”

A little bit about the doxology: the doxology of the prayer is not contained in Luke’s version of the prayer, nor is it present in the earliest manuscripts of Matthew, representative of the Alexandrian text, but is present in the manuscripts representative of the Byzantine text. It is thus absent in the oldest and best manuscripts of Matthew, and most scholars do not consider it part of the original text, but a later addition which may have crept into it as time passed. The first known actual use of the doxology, in a less lengthy form (“for yours is the power and the glory forever” - note the clearer similarity of the words to the lyrics!), as a conclusion for the prayer - in a version slightly different from that of Matthew - is in the early Christian document known as the Didache (8:2).

Do not let your fasting be with the hypocrites, for they fast on the second day and the fifth day of the week [Monday and Thursday], but you shall fast on the fourth day and the day of preparation [Wednesday and Friday]. Neither pray as the hypocrites, but as the Lord commanded in his gospel:

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, as in heaven, so also on earth. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debt, as we also forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for yours is the power and the glory, forever.”

Pray this way three times a day.

Rice again engages in moving around Gospel material and putting them into new contexts at this point. Whereas in the original context, the obvious meaning of the doxology is praise and worship of God, here Simon applies it in the wrong way (as Jesus would later point out in Poor Jerusalem): he is thinking of earthly power and glory, the exact same things that Jesus rejected and which He commands His followers to reject also if they wish to attain true glory:

And Jesus called them to him and said to them, “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Mark 10:42-45

Yet again the motif of blindness is thrust onto our faces. Simon and the others once again show off their misunderstanding and lack of comprehension.

Christ you know I love you,
Did you see I waved?
I believe in you and God,
So tell me that I’m saved.

Jesus I am with you:
Touch me, touch me, Jesus!
Jesus I am on your side:
Kiss me, kiss me, Jesus!

I often joke here about how the latter half of the first verse is eerily similar to the idea of Sola Fide (that we are justified by faith alone) , but I’ll refrain from it now. There is but one passage that comes up to my mind when I hear this (repetitive - yet again) chorus:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”

• Matthew 7:20

Which adds another layer of irony. Despite their claims to love Jesus and be on Jesus’ side, the disciples are not doing what the will of the Father is, or more specifically, they’re forcing Jesus to choose a way that is not God’s will.

 

[hawkeye]

Is this movie/musical blasphemous? what do you think?

Probably, and I don’t care for musicals… watched snippets of it, but couldn’t sit through it all…

 

[curlycool89]

patrick, these are some of the best analysis I’ve read of JCS. Did you put these together yourself?

 

[Tsuwano]

patrick, these are some of the best analysis I’ve read of JCS. Did you put these together yourself?

I agree with this post and look forward to reading more from Patrick.

 

[patrick457]

patrick, these are some of the best analysis I’ve read of JCS. Did you put these together yourself?

For the most part, yes.
BTW, thanks for the comments, everyone!

 

[pnewton]

For the most part, yes.
BTW, thanks for the comments, everyone!

Include me in. I’ve been lurking these past days here and reading your posts. Good work.

 

[patrick457]

Poor Jerusalem

http://www.s-studies.0catch.com/Olivet Prophecy/destruction of Jerusalem 4.jpg

As a response to Simon’s proposal (the tune of the song’s first half is a slower, more poignant version of the melody of Simon Zealotes), Jesus points out how he, and everyone else, do not really understand anything (here it is again: the motif of blindness).

Neither you, Simon, nor the fifty thousand,
Nor the Romans, nor the Jews,
Nor Judas, nor the Twelve,
Nor the priests, nor the scribes,
Nor doomed Jerusalem itself
Understand what power is,
Understand what glory is,
Understand at all,
Understand at all.

Jesus again does not spare everyone, not even the Temple priests and Judas (who thinks himself to be more superior than the others by being enlightened!) and even “doomed” Jerusalem: in the eyes of Jesus, each and every person around Him do not really get what is happening and the reason behind it all. Everyone is ‘blind’ in his/her own way, and their blindness is a very detrimental one.

He then turns His attention toward Jerusalem:

If you knew all that I knew, my poor Jerusalem,
You’d see the truth, but you close your eyes,
But you close your eyes.
While you live, your troubles are many, poor Jerusalem:
To conquer death, you only have to die,
You only have to die.

Again, the ‘blindness’ motif, here made more explicit in the lyrics: “you’d see the truth, but you close your eyes.” The whole song here is based from a passage in Luke (19:41-44):

And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”

In the Lukan original, the thing that Jerusalem refuses to recognize is "the things that make for peace." ‘Peace’ has been in Jerusalem’s grasp: the Kingdom of God has come in the person of Jesus (as Origen would say, Jesus is the ‘Kingdom in person’). But because of Jerusalem’s failure to recognize “the time of [her] visitation,” now there is nothing left for her but judgment.

In JCS, however, Jesus’ words have an air of paradoxical fatalism over it, reminiscent of a saying of His:

And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul?”

• Mark 9:34-38

What everyone therefore does not recognize is that death is actually a path to redemption! Annas and Caiaphas are busy trying to fend off any possibility of Roman reprisals to their nation, but all their worst fears will come to being within a generation, eventually rendering all their thinking futile. Simon et al. are busy trying to fend off the Romans and make Judaea a place ‘of the Jews, for the Jews’; soon enough, many would follow in their line of thinking, thereby invoking the wrath of Rome and crushing all of the people. They all strive for preservation, but by doing so, destruction becomes inevitable. “Whoever would save his life will lose it.” Now, Jesus is teaching Jerusalem (and His disciples) this very important - and timely - lesson. There is no crown without the cross, so the saying goes. These words makes one remember of an old Negro spiritual:

Soon-a will be done a-with the troubles of the world
Troubles of the world, troubles of the world
Soon-a will be done a-with the troubles of the world
Goin’ home to live with God

In this song, the singer will do away “with the troubles of the world” by “goin’ home to live with God;” i.e. by death! Death, the thing everyone fears and hates, then becomes a door for something better. “To conquer death, you only have to die.” Soon enough, Jesus would practice what He preaches and do the exact same thing. As a troparion chanted in the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom puts it:

O only begotten Son and Word of God,
Immortal as you are,
You condescended for our salvation to be incarnate
of the holy Theotokos and ever Virgin Mary,
and without undergoing change You became man,
You were crucified, O Christ God,
and You trampled Death by Your death,
You who are One of the Holy Trinity,
equal in glory with the Father and the Holy Spirit,
Save us.

 

[patrick457]

The 1973 film again makes this a special moment. Jesus temporarily loses His smile in Hosanna, as we have noted; He takes time to listen to Simon, but when it becomes apparent that they are full of misunderstanding, His smile leaves His face again, never to return (this is in fact, the last time Jesus smiles in the movie). The 2000 film, as we’ve noted, has Jesus visibly showing an exasperated/annoyed demeanor from the start. By Poor Jerusalem, Glenn Carter looks as if he’s about to burst weeping at any moment. But then again, the disciples have been at it since Hosanna, so who can blame Jesus?

The way the two films handle Judas and the others are also of note. The 1973 film has Carl Anderson come in the middle of Simon Zealotes (after being absent from Hosanna; in the film Judas noticeably keeps his distance from the others - he is the only disciple noticeably not dancing!) and look all shocked at the dancing all around him (I sure sympathize for him; if I ever see a bunch of 70s dancers all around me, I’d have the same reaction as well ). Jesus points out Judas at the distance, who at this point begins to walk away; the latter stops dead in his tracks. By the end of the song, Simon looks rather puzzled over Jesus’ words - how thick can you get?

In the 2000 film, when Jesus points out to Judas, he pulls out a ‘hey-don’t-look-at-me-what’d-I-do?’ gesture. One nice thing about this film’s portrayal is the now-armed disciples gradually abandoning Jesus as soon as they realize that He’s not playing their game. By the end, the only ones that remain on the scene are Jesus and (a very troubled) Judas. To me this is reminiscent of another instance where followers also leave Jesus when He starts spouting out a ‘hard saying’ (John 6:66).

 

[Portrait]

There are some problems with that assertion:

(a) The characters who assert that Jesus is “just a man” are, in context, clearly struggling to convince themselves of that. Mary Magdalene, for instance, attempts to calm herself in “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” by reassuring himself that Jesus is just a man, but then the way she launches back into her anxieties in the next verse reveals that she has utterly failed to convince herself of this obvious falsehood.

(b) While JCS does portray the story of the Passion of the Lord from Judas’ perspective, that doesn’t mean that it portrays Judas’ perspective as correct. On the contrary, Judas sings, “Every time I look at you I don’t understand why you let the things you did get so out of hand. You’d have managed better if you’d had it planned” (The Last Supper, Superstar).

Elsewhere Judas emphasizes the same point: that Jesus is getting himself into deep trouble and is too reckless to notice it. But the musical reveals that Judas’ assumptions are wrong in the song Gethsemane, in which Jesus reveals that he has known all along exactly what will happen to him.

So what JCS gives us are characters (Judas, Mary Magdalene, Pontius Pilate) who struggle unsuccessfully to convince themselves that there’s nothing special about Jesus. Judas almost admits that he was wrong - that perhaps Jesus knew what he was doing all along - in the song Superstar.

Dear Fone Bone,

Cordial greetings and a very good day. Hope all is well, dear friend. Thankyou for your repsonse above and apologies for the delay in replying.

Undeniably, this rock opera has engendered questions concerning Christ in the minds of old and young alike and inasmuch as it has sparked a degree of genuine interest in Jesus, I would concede that it does have some positive value. However, the crucial questions that must needs be asked are: what sort of an image of Christ does it actually give?; what precise sort of interest in Christ does JCS really represent? Moreover, is this irreverent rock opera a fitting medium through which the critical seeker after truth can make honest investigation of the claims of Christ and the Gospel? Then there is the whole issue of whether or not a rock style of music is even an appropriate medium with which to treat a sacred theme.

Even before we have begun, we must say quite emphatically that, irrespective of the writer’s motives and intentions, the addition of the noun, ‘Superstar’ to the name of the the second Person of the Holy Trinity, is both blasphemous and impious. The linking of our Blessed Saviour with a word that is used in the entertainment industry to describe an extremely famous or renowned actor, film star or musician etc., is surely enough to appal any God-fearing Catholic and make them want to recoil. This alone ought to put us on enquiry respecting this rock opera at the very outset.

Let us be perfectly honest, Jesus Christ Superstar was written to tickle the avant-garde musical palates of spiritually adrift youth and is nothing more than a trendy rendition of the Gospel, according to Judas’ perspective. The testimony of the traitor regarding Christ is set in opposition to the testimony of the other Apostle’s which has come down to us in the fourfold Gospel. In the canonical Gospels even the enemies of Christ testify to the fact of Christ’s miracle-working. Whilst it is true that these miracles did not lead our Lord’s Pharasaic critics to faith in the Gospel - they credit it His miraculous powers to the Devil - according to JCS, however, Judas, an apostolic witness, clearly denies the historic reality of the miraculous works of Christ: “Strip away the myth from the man…Jesus. You’ve started to believe the things things they say of you. He’s a man - He’s just a man”. This sounds very reminisent of the ‘demythologising’ heresy of Rudolph Bultman and his attempt to find the real ‘historical Jesus’ behind the supposed layers of the Gospel narrative.

If the apostolic witness of Judas is true (and as confirmed by the passionate conviction ascribed to Mary Magdalene, “He’s a man - He’s just a man”), then the testimony of all the other Apostle’s can rightly be discounted; the latter falls to the ground as mere myth! My dear friend, can you not see that the pronounced emphasis in JCS upon the testimony of Judas is, effectually, equivalent to an implicit philosophical statement that there is no rational reason for belief in Christ as the Divine Son of God. Moreover, this is corroborated by the fact that everything Christ says and does in this sacrilegious rock opera confirms the accuracy of Judas’ judgement which, incidently, happens to be the verdict of the writer’s of JCS, who have reduced our Blessed Saviour to the level of some dissenting liberal reformer who has run afoul of the establishment.

Sorry, but yours and Patrick’s specious rationalization of this rock opera fails to cut any ice and neither does it have the ring of truth. The fact is that the writer’s of JCS have created a false, mythical Messiah according to their own image and likeness. Today’s youth will never encounter the authentic Christ of the canonical Gospels here, only the apocryphal ‘Superstar’ version of two atheists, Messers. Webber and Rice.

Beloved, let us keep our distance from such a ‘broken cistern’ that can hold no water and let us return to the Jesus of the fourfold Gospel, ‘the fountain of living waters’ (cf. Jer. 2: 13) - the contrast will be abundantly self-evident.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait

Pax

 

[pnewton]

Sorry, but yours and Patrick’s specious rationalization of this rock opera fails to cut any ice and neither does it have the ring of truth.

You forgot to add “with me.” It fails to cut the ice with you. I think most here found his posts effective ice picks.

 

[Portrait]

Personally, I never really like the distinction some make between “pre-Vatican II” and “post-Vatican II” as if the Church that existed in both times are different entities. I mean, we might as well distinguish between the pre- and post-Tridentine Church, or pre- and post-Nicaea, pre- and post-Vatican I, or pre- and post-Jerusalem.

Dear patrick457,

Cordial greetings and a very good day.

If men do draw a distinction between the pre and post Vatican II periods, then it is because they perceive that the Council by its ‘opening up to the world’, tended to foster a mindset that was eager to embrace as much of the modern spirit as possible so as to appear world-affirming rather than world denying. Be that as it may, I have yet to see after any council the sort of absolute chaos that the Western world has endured post Vatican II. Whilst the mood of the modern world and the cultural revolution of the 1960’s may be contributing factors to the general decay, Vatican II did create an atmosphere that was favourable to some rather radical innovations and movements within Holy Mother Church e.g., the progressive Catholic movements (which are thankfully loosing steam now) and neo-Catholic orthodoxy.

It is undeniable that in the aftermath of VII standards of Catholic practice began to decline as the faithful adopted a more hand in hand with the world type of religion, unkown in the more austere days of the pre Vatican II period, when Catholics strived earnestly to live up to the arduous demands of their faith and shunned many worldly entertainments. Nowadays, these ‘ancient paths’ are held up to riddicule and are dismissed as being too prissy and ‘Puritan’. This simply would not have happened in the pre-Vatican II times when every Catholic was expected to live a life of self-denial and godly separation from the world.

However, I must not deviate from the topic currently under review, suffice to say that hardly anyone would have endorsed or commented favourably upon, as you have done, such a blasphemous and irreverent musical production like Jesus Christ Superstar. This could only occur in the Laodicean times in which our lot is now cast, when multitudes of the faithful have adopted a ‘Catholicism Lite’, which is seemingly quite happy to swim with the stream by assimilating as much of the world as it can. No wonder we have to witness the scandalous spectacle of ‘clown masses’ and masses that have exchanged the organ and sacred music for guitars and drums and the singing of repetitive ditties that are hardly conducive to worship and contemplation of the Blessed Sacrament.

Yes, Vatican II must take a large share of the blame for many of the troubles that now afflict contemporary Catholicism and which seriously undermine its credibility in the eyes of the watching world. However, it is not all doom and gloom, for the Church will survive the troublous period which it is now passing through. The Church may presently be infected by the spirit of the age, but it will not be entirely overcome by it - as our dear Lord said “the gates of hades” will never prevail against the Church of Christ.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait

Pax

 

[pnewton]

However, I must not deviate from the topic currently under review, suffice to say that hardly anyone would have endorsed or commented favourably upon, as you have done,…

And the USCCB. Let us not forget that they seem to agree with Patrick. Hey, and they happen to be our shepherds. Laodecia? That’s rich.

 

[Portrait]

Dearly Beloved Friends,

Cordial greetings.

If Rock music is debased sensory material, then clearly it is hardly appropriate or even possible for a sacred theme. Music is not some pliable medium that can be bent in any direction; it is decidedly not neutral but does speak a language and does create an atmosphere. In the case of Jesus Christ Superstar, that atmosphere is the very antipode to the world of the sacred. Music can, itself, utter blasphemy, especially if it is wedded to a debased art form such as rock. Some art forms have been created to express certain philosophies and are so inseparably linked to those godless philosophies that they convey a certain outlook. Since the message of rock has always been sexual permissiveness and a rejection of authority and restraints, it is impossible for it to be a fitting medium for religious material, especially material dealing with the Passion of our Lord. Rock music is so tainted by its immoral associations, that to uitilise it for a sacred theme is surely the height of impiety and disrespect. This, per se, is sufficient to condemn JCS.

As many have remarked, the Christ of JCS is a pathetic, shrieking, howling misfit. He is weak, despairing, confused, self-centred, a sort of hysterical witch-doctor - though actually quite a boring one at that. He is ignorant of his mission and destiny and is going through an identity crisis, as following clearly shows:

“If you (the apostles) knew the path we’re riding, you’d understand it less than I”;
“I must be mad thinking I’ll be remembered - yes I must be out of my head”;
“I have changed - I am not as sure as when we started, then I was inspired; now I’m sad and tired”;
“There may be a kingdom for me somewhere - if only I knew”;
“Who is my mother? Where’s my mother?”.

Weary and exasperated with his role as a faith-healer, he yells at the crowd, “heal yourselves”. In fact, he basicly despises the crowd. Before the queries of Pilate and Caiphas concerning his messianic dignity and divine claims, the Christ of JCS strikingly eschews any such perogatives, lamely replying, “That’s what you say”. Having earlier been the romantic interest of a prostitute who feels genuine human love for the very first time and does not know how to cope with it. the Christ of JCS here refused the attributes of the Divine Lover.

How far removed is all this nonsense from the Gospel narratives that we know and love so much? Apart from the blatant impiety of it all, the elements of farcical Hollywood are clearly in evidence.

JCS is, incontrovertibly, a travesty of the ineffably holy picture of Christ that the written Gospels and unwritten Apostolic Tradition, transmitted by the magisterium, have given us. It is an impious caricature. All holiness and majesty are not only conspicuously absent, but the very opposite is depicted. It is blasphemy by definition - an evil or profane speaking of God or sacred things. How prophetic the 19th century Danish philosopher, Soeren Kierkeggaard, was when he wrote:

“When secular sensibleness has permeated the whole world as it has now begun to do, then the only remaining conception of what it is to be a Christian will be the portrayal of Christ, the disciples, and others as comic figures. They will be counterparts of Don Quixote”.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait

Pax

 

[Portrait]

And the USCCB. Let us not forget that they seem to agree with Patrick. Hey, and they happen to be our shepherds. Laodecia? That’s rich.

Dear pnewton,

Cordial greetings and thankyou for the above, dear friend.

To question an opinion given by the USCCB is not synonymous with questioning the Catholic Church. The USCCB is not the Church, but merely an organization of Bishops and experts within the Church that functions as a sort of think tank. It has no authority over Bishops or the global Catholic Church. Indeed, as I understand it, some Bishops are on record as having stated that the USCCB have been wrong about their evaluations and recommendations on several occasions.

Whilst their reviews etc. may be useful sometimes, they are certainly not morally binding proclamations, thus we do no wrong in concluding that they may be wrong.

As I stated previously, the Church was only promised infallibility as regards its teaching of Divine faith and morals, but this charism cannot preserve it from becoming worldly or from lowering its standards - as the plight of contemporary Catholicim bears ample testimony. It is important that we distinguish between things which essentially differ.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait

Pax

 

[patrick457]

Dear patrick457,

Cordial greetings and a very good day.

If men do draw a distinction between the pre and post Vatican II periods, then it is because they perceive that the Council by its ‘opening up to the world’, tended to foster a mindset that was eager to embrace as much of the modern spirit as possible so as to appear world-affirming rather than world denying. Be that as it may, I have yet to see after any council the sort of absolute chaos that the Western world has endured post Vatican II. Whilst the mood of the modern world and the cultural revolution of the 1960’s may be contributing factors to the general decay, Vatican II did create an atmosphere that was favourable to some rather radical innovations and movements within Holy Mother Church e.g., the progressive Catholic movements (which are thankfully loosing steam now) and neo-Catholic orthodoxy.

Good day to you too!

On this Pope Paul VI says the following:

Referring to the situation of the Church today, the Holy Father affirms that he has a sense that “from some fissure the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God.” There is doubt, incertitude, problematic, disquiet, dissatisfaction, confrontation. There is no longer trust of the Church; they trust the first profane prophet who speaks in some journal or some social movement, and they run after him and ask him if he has the formula of true life. And we are not alert to the fact that we are already the owners and masters of the formula of true life. Doubt has entered our consciences, and it entered by windows that should have been open to the light. Science exists to give us truths that do not separate from God, but make us seek him all the more and celebrate him with greater intensity; instead, science gives us criticism and doubt. Scientists are those who more thoughtfully and more painfully exert their minds. But they end up teaching us: “I don’t know, we don’t know, we cannot know.” The school becomes the gymnasium of confusion and sometimes of absurd contradictions. Progress is celebrated, only so that it can then be demolished with revolutions that are more radical and more strange, so as to negate everything that has been achieved, and to come away as primitives after having so exalted the advances of the modern world.

This state of uncertainty even holds sway in the Church. There was the belief that after the Council there would be a day of sunshine for the history of the Church. Instead, it is the arrival of a day of clouds, of tempest, of darkness, of research, of uncertainty. We preach ecumenism but we constantly separate ourselves from others. We seek to dig abysses instead of filling them in.

How has this come about? The Pope entrusts one of his thoughts to those who are present: that there has been an intervention of an adverse power. Its name is the devil, this mysterious being that the Letter of St. Peter also alludes to. So many times, furthermore, in the Gospel, on the lips of Christ himself, the mention of this enemy of men returns. The Holy Father observes, “We believe in something that is preternatural that has come into the world precisely to disturb, to suffocate the fruits of the Ecumenical Council, and to impede the Church from breaking into the hymn of joy at having renewed in fullness its awareness of itself. Precisely for this reason, we should wish to be able, in this moment more than ever, to exercise the function God assigned to Peter, to strengthen the Faith of the brothers. We should wish to communicate to you this charism of certitude that the Lord gives to him who represents him though unworthily on this earth.”

It is undeniable that in the aftermath of VII standards of Catholic practice began to decline as the faithful adopted a more hand in hand with the world type of religion, unkown in the more austere days of the pre Vatican II period, when Catholics strived earnestly to live up to the arduous demands of their faith and shunned many worldly entertainments. Nowadays, these ‘ancient paths’ are held up to riddicule and are dismissed as being too prissy and ‘Puritan’. This simply would not have happened in the pre-Vatican II times when every Catholic was expected to live a life of self-denial and godly separation from the world.

This I think is a problem that has been with us since the beginning. The only reason it seems such a very big deal to us is because we are living through it. Now that is not to say that there is indeed some differences between problems back then and those right now.

Just a little off-topic muttering. The days we are in now reminds me of the good ol’ days post Trent. There were folks, who, in the ‘spirit of Trent’, wreckovated (yes, I’ll use this word!) the rood screens in churches throughout Europe. The council did enjoin that the celebration of the Mass should be made much more accessible to lay worshippers, but it never had an explicit condemnation of rood screens, so theoretically, they could have been left where they are. But removed they were - ostensibly because they violate the council’s mandate - and new churches were built without rood screens.

 

[patrick457]

Of course, the medieval hymns and sequences were not exempt from the change. Pope Urban VIII (famous for his involvement in the Galileo affair), an excellent classical Latinist, felt that the hymns of the Roman Breviary needed to be reshaped into classical models, in true Renaissance fashion: Medieval Latin apparently grated in his ears. He was by no means the first to feel this way, but he has the distinction of being the Pope who actually carried out such an extensive revision of the hymns. While a committee was appointed for the task, it is clear that the Pope personally oversaw the revision. Urban was not content to leave alone the works of Prudentius, Fortunatus, or even Ambrose, but instead molded their works and the works of others into the more ‘proper’ classical forms. The revision of the texts was approved by the Congregation of Rites on 1629 and on 1631, the revised Breviary was authorized for publication.

Of course, by hindsight, we can see that Urban’s revisions were generally ill-advised, having more to do with contemporary fashions than any real need. Indeed, those orders who were able to resist the revisions did so. Claiming the privilege of exemption granted by Pope Pius V because of the antiquity of their own Breviaries, the Dominicans, Benedictines, Cistercians, and Carthusians refused to adopt the revisions. Moreover, the revisions were never accepted at St. Peter’s or the Lateran in Rome itself! This produced two distinct versions of the Latin hymnal that were to coexist for more than three hundred years. Indeed, one of the criticisms against Urban’s revisions was: Accessit Latinitas, recessit pietas. “Latinity came in, piety went out.”

Finally, liturgical music. The Reformation presented a challenge to the Church by introducing new vernacular hymns that could be sung by the people and by engaging fine composers to produce great choral works. Trent did not rise to the challenge and merely affirmed the use of Gregorian chant, allowing some polyphony in the form of motets in some parts of the Mass. Trent wanted uniformity of music (with some provisions of course for local flavoring) throughout the Catholic world: theoretically, anything that reeked of secular music or that made the text unintelligible was prohibited. Theoretically, because in some parts of the world, local dioceses have developed vernacular hymnals, and in addition, parts of the liturgical prayers were sometimes replaced with hymns of similar meaning. (An early example of liturgical abuse! ) Eventually of course the trend within most sectors of the Church would be innovations in music throughout the late Renaissance and the Baroque periods, to the detriment of Gregorian chant. It would only really be in the 19th and early 20th centuries when plainchant would make a huge comeback.

All these examples - which has some parallels with the wackiness that we are surrounded by now - serve to me as a reminder: “There is nothing new under the sun.” From our perspective, it could seem as if the Catholics of old were more orthodox than we are now (partly maybe because of our human tendency to beautify the past), but part of me is more cynical: could it be that by outward appearances many were ‘orthodox’ but were actually so full of filth inside? In which case people in our age are just being more ‘open’, which of course is not really good as well.

 

[patrick457]

However, I must not deviate from the topic currently under review, suffice to say that hardly anyone would have endorsed or commented favourably upon, as you have done, such a blasphemous and irreverent musical production like Jesus Christ Superstar. This could only occur in the Laodicean times in which our lot is now cast, when multitudes of the faithful have adopted a ‘Catholicism Lite’, which is seemingly quite happy to swim with the stream by assimilating as much of the world as it can. No wonder we have to witness the scandalous spectacle of ‘clown masses’ and masses that have exchanged the organ and sacred music for guitars and drums and the singing of repetitive ditties that are hardly conducive to worship and contemplation of the Blessed Sacrament.

“Favorably.” Well, that may be the case, but let me just clarify that I don’t deny that I see holes in the production itself. On the contrary, I try not to be particularly favorable of JCS right now (if I ever become sycophantic over it then that’s a sure sign that I failed in my analyses); I won’t – and hope that don’t – pretend that there are no problems from a Catholic where there are. Thanks again for the reminder anyway; henceforth, I’ll be a bit more scrutinizing.

And hey, as much as I’d like to listen to What’s the Buzz? I’d probably also have an outbreak of allergies if I hear it in a Mass.