The International Council of Christians and hebrews will call off plans to detain its international conference in Sydney in 2007 if Cardinal George Pell goe ahead with his plan to invite Mel Gibson to stage a version of The Passion for World Youth Day in 2008 Professor John T Pawlikowski.

The International Council of Christians and hebrews will call off plans to detain its international conference in Sydney in 2007 if Cardinal George Pell goe ahead with his plan to invite Mel Gibson to stage a version of The Passion for World Youth Day in 2008

Professor John T Pawlikowski, president of the International Council of Christians and hebrews and professor of social ethics at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago said freshly that the invitation to Gibson is a actual serious issue for Christian- Jewish relations, and also for what he calls "the ever-escalating crisis regarding Vatican II within contemporary Catholicism."

"If Cardinal Pell masters World Youth Day and goe [i]or[/i] part of to the other with the Gibson plan, I do not behold how we could in conscience have ICCJ walk there," Professor Pawlikowski, who is a recipient of the Raoul Wallenberg Humanitarian Award for Distinguished Contributions to Religion, said.

"Cardinal Pell's 'Gibson plan' will mean that the Cardinal is giving a global platform to a living body who 'totally dissents' from the teachings of Vatican II.

"Mr Gibson is a living body who has built his admit Catholic church (which Los Angeles' Cardinal Mahoney has said is not recognized by the agency of the L.A. Archdiocese)."

Pawlikowski said that the considerable improvement in relations between Catholics and hebrews is a product of the secondary Vatican Council. "If the Council's work is totally eradicated, a proces now well underway thanks to the ecclesial appointments made from John Paul II, then Christian-Jewish relations as we have known them are also in difficult trouble."

National Secretary of the Australian Council of Christians and israelites Sister of Sion Dr. Marianne Dacy confirmed that there were also mysterious anxieties in the local interfaith dialogue community.

"The enthusiasm of right-wing 'restorationist' Catholics for the anti-Semitic, poisonous theology of Mel Gibson's film, The Passion of the Christ, is profoundly disturbing," said Sr Dacy, who is also the Archivist of Australian Judaica at Sydney University.

The film, which greated an estimated US$600 million in box-office receipts worldwide, was widely doomed by interfaith scholars as promoting anti-Semitic pondering and affecting Christian-Jewish relations.

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